Bartok gets the credit for finding this gem and emailing me: “Why hasn't this video been better publicized??”

I think I'm just going to start saying, "You've got the green light" to men I like when I'm out just to see what kind of reaction I get.

Bartok had somewhat of an emotional breakdown yesterday. Being the supportive friend I am, I went into my building’s stairwell for some privacy to talk to her for about twenty minutes. Since I’m incapable of standing still, I walked up and down the stairs repeatedly.

I was winded after three flights, and today I’m sore.

In the evening, I found myself sprawled on the couch waiting for Project Runway to start killing time with my roommate Tatas. She was watching the college ‘Dance Team’ nationals on ESPN 2 or something insane like that, although it actually isn’t as lame as it sounds. These girls are flexible like pretzels, have the precision of ballerinas, the coordination of hip hop dancers and do these impressively choreographed routines all with Vaseline on their teeth while smiling! It was then that I thought:

a. where’s my DVD copy of Bring It On and when can I watch it

b. I haven’t been to the gym in FOREVER!!!!

Stairs make me sore? My after work activity is power napping or eating on my futon in the fetal position? All this while inspiring young women from the University of Kansas are re-telling ancient Shinto mythology through sweat-inducing dance routines wearing spandex!

When did I become a sloth?!?

That question’s only for dramatic effect since I can tell you exactly when I stopped going to the gym. Sometime this past fall, in the waiting room of some doctor’s office, before I owned an iPhone in which to channel all my A.D.D., I started looking at magazines.

Note: I hate magazines. If I want to read girly shit I go online. If I want to read something meaningful I open a book. I guess I never just understood the concept of paying for literature that you’re going to throw away.

Anyway, I came across an article published by the pricks at New York Magazine entitled: “The Scientist and the Stairmaster: Why most of us believe that exercise makes us thinner—and why we're wrong.”

Since doctors tend to run about forty-five minutes behind schedule, I was able to read the entire article. Twice. The Wall Street Journal does a good job summing it up:

The idea that exercise produces weight loss is seldom questioned in workout-mad America, but Gary Taubes says evidence for this belief is, well, thin. Mr. Taubes writes in New York magazine that most studies on the link between swimming laps and losing weight demonstrate little beyond one widely accepted fact: “exercising makes us hungry.” In fact, he says, exercise may even lead to a weight gain, though he doesn’t deny its many health benefits.

So the idea of a guest is not such a novel one. In fact it’s one of the most dreaded for me, especially at this time of year. To me, guest implies the obligation of hosting; and the idea of hosting implies the responsibility of entertaining, caring for, and generally being concerned about the well being of another person for a period of time that probably exceeds my tolerance (when I’m not getting anything out of it, it’s about 5 minutes). The way I see it, if I wanted children, I would have them. I don’t.

Frequently, guests are the culprits of much discomfort, awkward interactions, and an uncomfortable sense of obligation to perform on behalf of both the host and the guest. On the other hand, there are some guests that are generally welcome in my world. More favorably thought of guests sometimes include guest speakers, guest appearances on my favorite shows, and so following the vein of entertainment, today, I give you, myself, your guest-blogger. I am Bartok.

While Miss Model Behavior is out of the country gallivanting, completely and blissfully cut off from technology and reality, as most sane people know it, here I am, babysitting her blog. No, I do not share MB’s literary aspirations, or background in writing. My friendship with Miss MB began during high school while we were studying abroad in Italy. Our friendship began in the forum of debauchery that only 16 year old girls let loose on a small town in Italy, are capable of. We began with a minimal comprehension of the language being spoken around us and absolutely no comprehension of how a country that had, from our perspective, a grand total of 0 work ethic still “functions” and continues to be a legit global contributor.

Years later, we still wonder the very same things. We have, however, come to appreciate many Italian traditions and mannerisms. The Italian male maintains an elevated place in our hearts, and the month of August is, as the Italians ordained, a month of rest with no exceptions. I, personally, am particularly fond of the mandatory evacuation of all cities aspect of this tradition. It implies that all offices must be evacuated as well starting August 1, and the mandatory pilgrimage to a quality seaside location, uniformly known as mare for the entire month! It’s safe to say that our antics have only been shifted from suburban Italian discotecas to sites of mischief like Cipriani’s and the Inferno on this side of the Atlantic.

And, speaking of seaside pilgrimages, it has come to my attention that Miss Model Behavior is making the most of hers. The last time I spoke, she was calling from a payphone, having held true to her word to leave behind her beloved iphone and baby mac laptop, and has ventured into yet another country in which she knows nothing of the language, little about the geographic characteristics, and a minimal amount about its customs. It sounds like a recipe for success!

I had a momentary flashback when I saw the unfamiliar area code come up on my phone screen to countless other phone calls that seasoned our international travels. So many calls that filled the gap between departure and the switching on of the international cell, and served to either calm the pre-departure anxiety, and get ourselves excited for the adventures to come. She repeatedly tried, with gestures that I am sure are generally used only in drunken games of charades, to fend off assaulting non-english speaking travelers who claimed that she was monopolizing the only working payphone. I agreed that it seemed ridiculous that she had found the holy grail of the only working payphone in the entire airport. Not even we are that lucky.

Having developed and perfected the art of persuasion and emotional manipulation in countless relationships, I was finally able to employ those arts for good, and convinced Miss MB that she was embarking not on a safari adventure doomed to end in turmoil and disaster, but that this trip would be one of those life changing positive experiences that would be forever remembered in the history of great vacations. You saw the events list, how could it not be?!

So while my inbox is still flooded with potential party options from Miss Model Behavior, I am reassured that my childhood dreams of European country parties that involve multi-day trips to ostentatious villas where never ending games, entertainment, and debauchery ensue may still exist. It sounds like Never Never Land to me, well, without the pirates or Michael Jackson, and where the lost boys are actually millionaires, attractive, intelligent, have sexy Latin accents, and were born to appreciate, entertain, and spoil girls like us.

Oh, the possibilities!

Karaoke rarely sounds good, but it’s usually not this bad.

You guessed it. This time around at Cipriani’s Upstairs’ weekly Sunday night shit-faced singing shebang I had the genius to videotape what was going on. I wanted visual and auditory proof of the ridiculousness because I don’t feel anyone who reads this blog can fully understand what an embarrassment this entire establishment is to the human condition.

For juicy background details on Sunday’s at Cipriani’s Upstairs check out my previous article.

The brief 411: models, modophiles, creepy Italian men, Giuseppe, gold diggers and extremely drunk partiers gather together on Sunday nights in this private club to enjoy spending a few thousand on tables while singing along to karaoke.

DON’T EVEN WALK UP THE NARROW STAIRS TO CIP’S IF YOU’RE GOING TO STUMBLE.

You must attend this party entirely inebriated. Not doing so will result in death, as I’m pretty sure any sober person would hang themselves with a tablecloth from the rafters mere moments after having to endure this adult sing along.

Bartok and I prepared appropriately. We consumed an entire water bottle full of Bacardi and Diet Coke on the walk from my place to West Broadway. Then we jumped around like apes at Diva as the lounge was celebrating its Four Year Anniversary with a Euro dance party starting at 8 P.M. The Diva party was noteworthy, and I’d like to take the time to write about the fabulous Enrique look alike DJ, the relaxed vibe, and the delicious aromatic seafood at another date. For now, just know that Diva served at the perfect vodka heavy pre-gaming event to our eventual arrival at Cipriani’s across the street at 12:30 A.M.

So here you go. It’s dark, my camerawork sucks, the visuals are bad. What’s more noteworthy is the singing – or lack there of. What’s amazing is that when you’re standing on top of a table at this party, you actually feel like a superstar. Looking at these videos, in retrospect, you can barely even decipher what song is playing. Even the karaoke machine sounds like it’s on crack.

Observe my drunken genius in Video 1, as I attempted to create a lighting system for my movie with a candle.

Observe the cocktail waitresses slithering together on the bar in Video 2.

And please, don’t judge me.

I actually saw and spent time with the entities that gave birth to me this weekend, something that doesn’t happen too often since accessing them is similar to trying to get a direct call into the Pope. They travel frequently. By frequently I mean like three and a half weeks out of the month. They have a lot of phones. By a lot I mean like six. A completely futile system since they never seem to answer any of them, and when I call I’m never sure if the cell’s going to ring American style or beep and inform me that they’re in Europe or go static and inform me they’re probably in Asia and I should use the Asia mobile number I’ve failed to program into my phone despite the fact that I’ve had it for over seven years. Don’t get me wrong; we all love each other (with the assistance of consistent therapy). Our paths just don’t cross as much as some ‘more normal’ families (in my words) probably do.

Seeing them was all the more poignant because our reunion took place in our home. And because of unusual circumstances, I actually stayed with them, in my old bedroom – an event that hasn’t occurred in ions. I utilize our house. It’s empty three hundred and twenty days a year, in a fantastic location, can hold a great party, and has a lot of bathrooms, something a cramped Manhattaner especially appreciates. I love washing my face in one bathroom, filing my nails in another, showering in the master and putting on make-up in my mom’s. For someone who lives in New York-size apartments, the sense of this extensive hygienic space is oddly orgasmic. The point is that it wasn’t weird being at home. What was weird was being there with them. Sitting in my bedroom, hearing them chat a floor below me, I felt like a high schooler again.

I’ve found family visits such as these seem to follow a distinct pattern. You arrive with a really expensive bottle of Napa wine in hand, enjoy fab hors dourves, stake on the grill, and alcohol and you think, ‘wow, I feel really grounded. These people are great. We’re getting along well. Maybe they see me as an actual adult now instead of the unachieving moron they happened to spawn. I should come back more often. The free gourmet food is abundant. And they really know how to marinate meat!’

Then, much later…just when you’re glowing in your newfound familial happiness and are at ease at your laptop, feet up, finally with your guard down, they say the comment. A comment that references the biggest mistake of your life, a snippet from your dirty past, proof that they haven’t forgotten: You’re still the irresponsible girl who absentmindedly drove her bike into a tree, smashed the car diagonally into the garage, dyed her hair black and looked like a heroin addict – and they’re never going to let your forget it, EVER. They will hold all relevant information against you in a court of emotional blackmail whenever need be.

It’s around that time that you want to S.O.S. in a helicopter and get out fast.

I really can’t complain. This visit was conflict free, and it remains comforting to see them. Some other pluses from the trip:

1. I gave myself my most successful at-home mani pedi EVER utilizing my Barbie doll mother’s insanely extensive beauty tool kit.

2. I rediscovered some lovely/creepy childhood objects in my room such as my senior year prom beer mug, my high school eye glitter, and platform sneakers (who allowed me to wear those!!!)

3. I received a pile of new trendy clothes and super cute fuzzy warm ski pants from my mother. No one can say the woman doesn’t shop for me.

4. I remembered that since the great Model Behavior laptop crash of last year, a lot of old music is missing from my digital collection. I transferred all of my CDs home three years ago when they were taking up space in my Manhattan apartment I needed for shoes, so I got to flip through these albums again and re-install the childhood songs that brought back good memories. This included a lot of Italian pop, especially Nek and Eros, The Calling, All American Rejects, and yes I’ll admit it, one song by BBMak.

In the sprit of remembering memories through music, I leave you perhaps the most ridiculous song in the history of our planet which I re-discovered on a middle school mix CD of mine. Bartok and I used to sing this to cheer one another up in times of teen angst, because you literally can’t be sad and listen to Humpty at the same time. The lyrics (which, by the way, I know by heart) are just too funny.


For those of you with more romantic sensibilities, I leave you with another favorite I rediscovered. Nek’s Sei Solo Tu. I don’t even want to get started on my Nek crush since I feel he merits his own blog entry in which I properly worship his fabulousness complete with pictures, but I will say that while this may not be his best song, I felt like I’d been punched in heart when I heard it again.

Huh. Maybe that means there’s hope for my jaded, game playing, Manhattan heart yet.

I knew the Linanimal’s solo trip to Amsterdam would be an irrevocable disaster from the get-go. My prediction was confirmed when she phoned me from the Rome airport and cheerfully announced that she had forgotten her passport.

“You what!??!?!” I exclaimed.

“I’m in some sort of security room. I think they’ll let me through though. I have my German identification,” she breathlessly broadcast.

From her tone, it was unclear if she was telling me this for my own personal amusement or because she was hyperventilating and desperately needed someone to talk to. I could never tell with her.

“You can’t travel without a passport. Even if you get through, how will you get back IN?” I pointed out. See. I was a smart fifteen-year-old.

“I just don’t want them to call my parents,” was Linanimal’s non-sequitur answer.

Who were this girl’s parents?

The Linanimal was sounding wackier by the minute. We hung up, and I never got confirmation that she had indeed made her flight and arrived in Amsterdam until several days later. Bartok and I were midway through our vacation in Florence (a vacation which deserves its own separate mini-series – a mini-series I’d write if I thought I could paste together any of those barely-memorable, frighteningly intoxicated nights, nights when the concept of unlimited alcohol was still a novelty…I think you the picture) when Linanimal called us shrieking, crying, barely decipherable, wailing things like:

“My life is superimposed on the ceiling. I’m so scared. The chair’s attacking me. So many colors. The window’s the devil. Waaaaah!”

It took us about forty minutes of Gandhi-like patience to get some straight answers out of her. The synthesized version is that she bought shrooms and thinking that a package full was a single dose, ate them all. Yeah. She’d ingested the equivalent of shrooms for a small house party all by herself. She was alone in her hotel room in Amsterdam, tripping, and freaking the fuck out.

Here’s a question for you all: What do you say to someone in that situation?

I credit Bartok for being thoroughly more helpful than I. She’s the one who got Linanimal to spit out story of what happened and suggested she throw up, much better advice than mine which was to “take deep breaths and close your eyes.” She didn’t want to close her eyes because doing so resulted in entering “a scary place.” I mean, what do you say to someone who’s in another country and thinks furniture is attacking them?

And here’s the second million-dollar question: How do you ever get this person off the phone?

It’s pretty difficult. Hence why Bartok and I traded off phone duty in front of Italian MTV for the majority of the afternoon. I wish I could remember more specifics, but I think in the end she puked. She called again several days later announcing that Amsterdam was fab and she’d seen the Van Gough museum. She’d also figured out that her parents would inevitably find out about her trip through her credit card and phone bills.

Duh.

You’d think as semi-professional delinquents we’d all have thought of that earlier.

Now I know you’re all currently musing that maybe Linanimal’s whole trip was a ruse. A prank. A way for her to entertain us while she spent winter vacation happily eating and laughing her ass off on her apartment floor. I considered the possibility. I mean, the entire trip was crazy and broke every school rule, not to mention international transit laws. But the truth remains that Linanimal returned to Italy with photo proof of her trip and several bras worth of narcotics that she never could’ve acquired in Italia. That’s right. She smuggled drugs from Amsterdam to Italy in her BRA. She then did shrooms (in the correct dosage) with many of our classmates, and everyone had a positive experience. I often regret not taking part as shrooms are a drug I’ve always wanted to try, and don’t think I have the nerve for as an adult.

For our purposes, the story of Linanimal culminates at the end of the school year party. She came shroomed out and naked, wearing only the German flag somehow stylized into a dress with safety pins. I think some teachers made her change.

After that, Linanimal ended up back in the States, then at St. Andrews in Scotland, then back in the States again, always with her devoted boyfriend from her hometown who she’d met right after we finished high school. In short, they’ve been engaged forever, not without some minor bumps, but those are other stories for another day, stories which I wouldn’t feel comfortable telling without Linanimal’s permission. And next month, Linanimal and her beloved are participating in a handfasting ceremony, which according to Linanimal is like a religious wedding ceremony but without the legal aspects because she needs to retain her parent’s current insurance in order to attain some sort of medication (see, she hasn’t changed that much). Yet at the end of the day, I think Linanimal is the only person I’ve met in this world that I can conclusively say has found true love. Someone who loves her with all her quirks. So wedding? Handfasting ceremony? I don’t think it makes a difference.

And you know what? I’m happy for her.

Women cumulate many groups of female friends over a lifetime: childhood friends, sports friends, high school friends, international friends, college friends, work friends, partying friends, writer friends – the list goes on and on. The mystery remains who in this colorful array of female acquaintances will be the first to get married? Move to a suburb? Have a baby? The answer to these questions is rarely who you’d expect.

On a notoriously long phone call with Bartok this past weekend; we noted that the winner of the marriage race is going to be someone we’d have defined as kids as an unlikely candidate. This is the story of Linanimal, an eccentric female friend of ours who attended high school with us in Italy.

Why the name Linanimal? While this works as a codename, this is in fact what we often called her years ago. Her proper nickname began with an “L,” and we called her “the animal.” These two concepts were abbreviated and the ‘Linanimal’ was born. Linanimal was a high school female version of your stereotypical class clown. Her goal seemed to be the identifiable ‘outrageous one’ in every situation. She strived to make people laugh, and especially to make her close female friends laugh, a task she succeeded in, whether it was signing her credit card receipts at the local restaurant with the signature “S & M is good for me,” sexually eating muffins, or doing obscene things with bananas in museums on school field trips.

I fear not all of this humor was planned on her part. The animal was on tons of whacko medication that none of us had even heard of. She did have a stash of Adderall that circulated the school during exam time, but most of the pills she sucked down weren’t even stuff an adventurous high school druggie would want to sample. I never knew if she was crazy because she failed to take her meds regularly, or if it was actually the meds that made her hyperactively irresponsible.

I guess I’ll never know.

Linanimal was somewhat of an international as she had previously lived in Germany and spoke the language well. In English, she was often difficult to understand as she was eating 90% of the time and usually had her mouth completely full. Despite this fact, she remained remarkably thin. We found her simultaneously disgusting, entertaining, and somehow lovable – like a pet bulldog. Her sense of adventure was unparalleled; she explored new places with an ungraceful vigor and pushed the envelope until we all squealed with discomfort. Ultimately, we adored her for how far she went each and every day to make us cry with laughter.

While Linanimal was attractive (at least when her mouth wasn’t catapulting forth crumbs), she seemed basically A-sexual. She took no romantic interest in Italian men or our male classmates, although she would often excitedly hump furniture for our amusement. When Linanimal dressed up and swiped on eyeliner she was undeniably hot. Her wardrobe was sassy for a fifteen-year-old’s and we shared clothes. Bartok in fact, still to this day has one of her black halter-tops that never found its way back to Linanimal’s closet. Yet even decked out in a black evening dress, the animal surrendered to her inner comedian, whether by flashing her leopard skin bra or throwing her high heels into a nearby Italian military camp.

The animal’s Italian host family had an apartment right in the center of the city, which placed Linanimal at the center of most social activities. If you wanted to stay out all night, go clubbing, get drunk, or generally misbehave, sleeping over at the Linanimal’s infamously messy lair was a must. On any given Saturday night, half our high school would be technically “sleeping over” at her place. The good news is none of our parents ever communicated with each other and therefore remained oblivious to the fact that “sleeping over at Linanimal’s” was code for indulging in every illegal activity known to teenagers. The bad news was that if you weren’t tight friends with the animal, you ran the risk of getting locked out of her apartment and wandering the city streets till dawn. The basic rule remained that Linanimal’s apartment keys were always left outside the front of her house in a large plant. Whenever Linanimal would leave a bar to go home, there’d be a general chorus from everyone at our school:

“Remember to leave the keys in the plant! Leave the keys in the plant!”

As Linanimal wasn’t stable and appeared drunk at all times, we’d chant this to her continuously as parents would give instructions to a small child. We always knew that on a whim, if feeling evil, she might take the precious apartment keys inside with her, rendering the rest of us homeless for the weekend. Stumbling up the steps of Linaminal’s apartment at five in the morning I remember all of us secretly praying, “please let the keys be in the plant, please let the keys be in the plant.” Seventy percent of the time they were, thirty percent of the time you ended up sleeping in the drained fountain in the nearby piazza Rialto and taking the five thirty am bus back home.

Looking back, I commend Linanimal for being in the business of outrageous fun. Some of my fondest high school memories involve her at the focal point. She was one of the few students with a laptop that played DVDs, which meant every school field trip (of which there were a lot) the ‘cool kids’ got to chill with her on the back of the bus watching films beyond our years like Pulp Fiction, the notoriously scary K.I.D.S, and Boogie Nights. If in class, she’d sit in the front of the room with her computer and we’d watch the movies on silent with subtitles.

Linanimal referred to our school principal as “MoFo” (the abbreviation of ‘mother fucker’) often to his face and had a flair for making Italians as uncomfortable as humanly possible by utilizing her weird faces, broken Italian, and unusual eating habits. She once screamed at the top of her lungs at a pricey restaurant when served fish with the head still intact. And her general outrageousness extended beyond school grounds. She had the nasty habit of purposely dripping candle wax from her apartment window onto cars parked in the street below, often ruining the vehicle’s paint job. Linanimal also got a kick out of cleaning her room by throwing garbage out her bedroom window. These things caught the attention of the Italian police but she eventually got out of jail time by paying some sort of fine, a fine of which she ultimately only paid half. Note: Everything in Italy is negotiable.

When winter break arrived, the school broke down into various groups of friends that decided to vacation together. Bartok and I set off for Florence and Linanimal was determined to assert her independence by traveling somewhere by herself. We weren’t allowed to leave Italy without hefty paperwork from our actual parents. But our headmaster MoFo’s pesky rules were not going to stop Linanimal from going to the one place that people like her should never be allowed to go.

Yep, you guessed it.

Amsterdam.

To Be Continued…

My posting schedule this week has been a little cracked out. Don’t worry. I’m chalk full of excuses, the most pertinent and truthful of which is that this weekend I suffered several near death experiences, all in the same 10-hour period. Stressful? Yes. The chords in the back of my neck have only now (four days later) begun to relax into their normal position, and that’s only because in an act of desperation I used one of my roommate’s sun salutations yoga stress-reliever DVDs. Note: old men in instructional yoga videos are creepier than your average pedophile. What I gained in flexibility I lost in peace of mind.

So how was my life endangered repeatedly? Well. This past Labor Day Sunday night could perhaps be defined as the night to be in the Hamptons. There was P Diddy’s silly all-white extravaganza, there were six zillion ‘fashion week parties’ (whatever that means), there was the end of the summer fiesta at that club that starts with a ‘T’ that I can never remember, and then there was Rocco’s Sunflower children’s charity event and finale blowout at Pink South Hampton hosted by Buddha Bar. Now we all know I hate the Hamptons and that I haven’t ventured there since Memorial Day. But when I got a last minute invite for a ride to Long Island on Sunday morning, I succumbed to the idea. I decided I’d begin and end my summer in the Hamptons on the two hot holiday weekends that open and close the summer. What can I say? I like symmetry.

The adventure that ensued is still too raw for me to talk about fully. I haven’t really progressed to that funny ‘ha ha’ looking back in joyful retrospect stage of a situation that was at the time, dreadful. I’ll kick off by saying that I was in a car with seven people. Uh-huh. You do the math. We also had six cases of Veuve Clicqout in our car’s trunk, so everyone’s luggage was on their lap or at your feet. The fact that there was NO space was remedied by the fact that our happy jeep-bus of seven was drinking insanely expensive sake out of Starbucks paper cups. Our hosts also had some champagne on ice. There was also the distinct odor that several joints had been enjoyed in the vehicle before Bartok and I had even been picked up. And how many bottles of sake had already been consumed before our arrival remained a mystery.

Our designated driver was not drunk, per se. I think he was just a really bad driver in general and one of those people incapable of multitasking: i.e. every time he’d speak on his cell phone, send a text, or smoke a cigarette (which was about 90% of the voyage) we’d often drift into the opposite traffic lane, come close to rear ending someone, or miss turns. The car had a satellite navigation system, a function the driver thought was purely decorative, as we got lost several times. My favorite moments on this hellish journey had to be:

1. After pulling over for a pit stop, when everyone was piling back into the jeep, our driver took off with two of us still in the parking lot and one girl’s body half-in / half-out of the moving vehicle. She’s lucky to be alive.
2. When I saw the ‘Montauk to Hamptons’ exit sign over five times, each from a different direction.
3. When our driver pulled into a jail / concentration facility to ask a cop for directions. The moment we pulled into this sketchy parking lot, complete with a guard, a high fence, barbed-wire, and a big yellow sign that read “Correctional Facility” to turn around, I knew our driver was officially insane and that it might be time to start text messaging people my will.

With everyone acting as a backseat driver and me shrieking out directions and survival techniques like an opera singer on steroids, we ultimately arrived at SAG Harbor with a newfound appreciated for life. I then made it my personal project to get me and the people I cared about as far away as possible from the aforementioned driver. Me and my girl’s had a conference. Our driver and our host (by association) were clearly out of their minds. And our host is someone I know quite well. I don’t know if it was the glare of the full moon or his eighth glass of sake after two joints, but I no longer saw him as an entity to be trusted. And if this was the drive up, did we really want to stick around to see what kind of Hampton’s accommodation these whack-jobs had to offer? From that moment on, the night metamorphosized into a game of survivor. And I think girls alone in the Hamptons is a much more frightening prospect than girls alone on a deserted island.

I proposed we find a way to get to Rocco’s party at Pink in Southampton because at least at Pink we’d know half the club. The majority of our friends were there, so I game-planned that at Pink we could recount our story of woe to sympathetic ears and locate a friendly soul who’d take us in for the night. This meant scouting prospective transportation from SAG Harbor to Southampton in a nearby bar, since our hosts were preoccupied drinking the Veuve we brought with us out of paper bags on the street. Every time a police car passed us, I feared for my life.

Luckily, after much research and over an hour of conducting interviews of eligible bachelors with licenses and cars, we found gentlemen responsible enough to lend us a ride to Pink, where they were going anyway. Our now officially drunk driver from before a little too carelessly tossed me his car keys so we were all able to retrieve our luggage out of the large, crack-den on wheels that had transported us to the Hell which is the Hamptons.

I like having millions of cabs surrounding me like Christmas lights. I like the 24-hour subway system. I like being able to walk everywhere. You mix with the wrong crowd in the Hamptons and you are STUCK in all caps. There’s no escape, except for the one you create yourself. And me and my girls epitomized that Destiny’s Child song ‘Survivor’ last Sunday night as we bailed out of SAG Habor looking for safer territory.

We left our overnight stuff in an anonymous friend’s trunk and made it into Pink by two thirty am. Naturally, the place was a shit-show. Rocco stripped and danced and fell off the bar. And for three blissful hours, as sad as it may sound, I felt safe and at home in the company of my fellow douchey partygoers. And when Pink becomes a sanctuary you know you’re in a freaky, emergency-like situation.






My bliss was naturally cut short because at five thirty am I had to deal with where we all were going to crash. I won’t go into details, but let’s just say my stress level rose another thirty percent. We ended up all four of us in a bed trying to get some shut-eye at six in the morning. Sleeping was an impossible task since house music was playing in the adjacent living room at mega-watts and the majority of our companions were engaged in those never ending, coked-out, seven am in the morning discussions about the meaning of life that are more painful than nails on a chalk board to listen to if you aren’t also high. Needless to say, our crazy driver and negligent host had failed to provide us with any kind of dinner, so at this point we were more starving than your average child in Somalia. One of the owners of the house kindly offered us all that was in his fridge: some wheat bread. So we nibbled on that and drank water and realized we surviving off bread and water – literally. We were prisoners in a Hamptons jail.

The minute I saw the sun had fully risen, I knew it was safe to venture out of the shed/refugee camp where we’d spent the night. I gathered my girls and high-tailed it out of there, stepping over unconscious bodies on my way to the door.

We walked around a random, cute, Hamptons street before seeing our equivalent of a rescue helicopter – a Hamptons Jitney put-putting by at eight in the morning. We all waved our hands in desperation, and even though we were no where near a Jitney stop, the driver pulled over and let us in. I think he just took a look at our smeared make-up, haggard faces, luggage, and weary walk and knew this was a legitimate emergency. And once we were on the Jitney, I finally felt safe. Traumatized, but safe. And just like in any rescue aid vehicle, support started flowing in. The Jitney hostess gave us water (be blessed), muffins (nourishment!), and a New York Post (where we cautiously read reviews of the parties we attended from the night before).

I wanted to kiss the Manhattan sidewalk when I exited the bus onto 3rd avenue. I wanted God Bless America to start playing and to crescendo at the moment I’d dive into my own warm bed, huddled under my covers in the fetal position like a genocide survivor. And the Hamptons – well, until I’m married with a mansion in Montauk – I’m never going there again.

Cajun Boy in the City recently and perceptively created an accurate analogy in which the NYC clubbing establishment Pink Elephant is Heath Ledger and I, Model Behavior am Jake Gylennhal whining, "I wish I knew how to quit you." This astute remark not only rang as true to my house-music damaged ears, but also reminded me to give Brokeback Mountain a second watch on DVD.

The truth is I’d like to quit Pink. I’d run into a lot less people I’d rather not see, my alcohol calorie intake would drop significantly, and I’d no longer have Bob Sinclair in my head 99% of my working hours. But as in dealing with any addiction, walking away cold turkey is rarely the best strategy. That’s why I’ve often wished a new Manhattan club, far from meatpacking or the 27th street strip, would open, providing me with a fresh, more private, and perhaps even less douchey location to waste my inebriated nights.

Finally, my wish has come true.

Sort of…

This Friday my friend Safari did the impossible – she took me to a club I’d never seen or even heard of that wasn’t a remake of another failed establishment. She described it as:

‘A new hotspot. Small. Intimate. Top crowd. Think Bungalow. Meet there 1 am.”

Naturally, I was hooked and Bartok and I began preparing outfits. Perhaps the best perk of writing this blog is that a great deal of social misconduct can be justified as “research.” So off we went and at around one thirty am climbed the rickety, filthy stairs which led us to this supposedly secret, new lair of treachery – the club upon which I’m bestowing the code name ‘The Inferno.’ Why? Because the activities taking place inside this undisclosed joint too closely mirror Dante’s description of the third circle of Hell.

When my eyes first swept across the club it appeared empty. The music sounded, as I’d describe, ‘lame.’ I’m not a big fan of large empty spaces when I’m going out. Breathing room is appreciated, but especially after one thirty I feel any place worth its salt should theoretically be rockin full of people. So I’ll describe my first emotional state upon entering the Inferno as ‘disappointment.’

The bar was void of human activity. The entire crowd consisted of six or seven tables in an elevated privet. Bartok, Safari, and I ascended the small stairs to mesh with our fellow party seekers. We said hello to our host, and around this time I was overcome by my second strong, reactive emotion of the evening, this one similar to a kick in the stomach – ‘horror.’ I was surrounded by dozens of baby models, some swaying back and forth in a seated, drug induced stupor, others performing lap dances, some grooving to their own queer beat, some spastically twitching as if being continually electrocuted by barbed wire. For those of you lucky enough to be ignorant of this phenomenon, I’ll explain that baby models are dangerously attractive girls, usually foreign, and always under the age of twenty-one (often under the age of eighteen) who hang out at places like Cipriani’s Upstairs and now the Inferno because of these institution’s extremely lax carding procedures. I wanted to open my mouth to scream but before I could manage our host (kindly?) stuck a joint in my mouth which I had to immediately focus on spitting out since I don’t smoke.

I was momentarily ‘wowed’ by the fact that this place was so chill and so clearly unconcerned with keeping their license that they were letting people smoke joints in public, until I noticed a man in a striped shirt doling out cocaine on his house key to the six baby models the surrounded him. Now I literally double taked. I mean, in the Old Fashion privet in Milan I once, repeat once, saw crazy Arabs do lines off their club table in public, only to be scolded by their bodyguards moments later. Even in Hollywood, Milan, everyone had the common decency to go inside the handicapped bathroom to get snow-blown. Here, keys of cocaine were being innocently passed around as if they were maraschino cherries. Had I taken a wrong turn up the creaky stairs and ended up in some sort of time warp ala Studio 54?

Me and my girlfriends shared a look of mutual shock before shrugging and pouring ourselves drinks. My first instinct was to have a Peroni and then high tail it out of there to attend some less novel location, like the city’s standard Friday night at Room Service. I mean, the DJ was playing 50 Cent, the place was empty except for the privet, the palm trees were faker looking than Bungalow’s, and the poor bathroom attendant was dressed in a joker costume (complete with multi-pronged hat). This just wasn’t my scene.

Three glasses of an anonymous brand vodka brand later, Safari, Bartok and I had somehow magically meshed into the crowd. The fact that the club was 80% women, 40% of which hadn’t celebrated their sweet sixteen, no longer seemed as bothersome as it has upon our arrival. Since there was no crowd surrounding the DJ booth, I gave him some musical instructions to which he was extremely receptive. The musical situation improved. At around two thirty, I again considered heading over to Room Service, the same moment in which our Room Service Friday night crowd strolled into the Inferno themselves. Wow. Maybe this place really was going to be something good.

I went to the bar and got the Inferno low-down from one of the Pakistani owners. It had been open about a month, but only for private parties and events related to fashion week. Jay-Z had been there on Tuesday, blah blah blah. You get the picture. They’d recently been letting ‘civilians’ in on a very limited basis – only people they could trust (probably a smart policy since the amount of illegal activity going on in there required two hands to count). The owner insisted he didn’t want anyone to know about the place. I admitted to him that in preparation of my arrival, I had googled the club’s real name and come up with nothing. And google’s a hard monster to hide from. So I promised the owner I’d write about my experiences at the club with the utmost discretion for the time being. Let’s not fool ourselves. In six weeks, this place will be the new 'The Box' and it’s name with be zipping through Manhattan like wildfire.

The Inferno theoretically stays open until six am (also illegal), but Bartok insisted we leave at around four thirty am to attend after hours, which was being held at a large man’s house nearby. This jovial after hours host was sporting a long white beard, wearing a kilt and had a yellow sash across his chest. Weird? Definitely.

Everyone piled into cabs and entered what appeared to be a federal building. That’s right: a federal building. Our host, Mr. King of Scotland enjoyed serving more drugs to baby models by the small square bar at the far side of his enormous high-ceiling loft. I got immediately distracted by his ping-pong table and began playing matches against fellow partygoers. I used to compete in New England level tennis tournaments, so like to think of myself as a kind of ping-pong princess extraordinaire. Unfortunately, it was dark, making it difficult to see, and I was drunk, making it difficult to focus. Somehow I still beat my most worthy opponent and was rewarded with a pair of chopsticks as my prize (it made sense at six in the morning). At one point in the night, Bartok and I scampered around trying to find the bathroom, yet every door we opened revealed only another loft-like space filled with Apple computers. Finally, King of Scotland’s assistant escorted us to the ladies room on the federal building’s main floor. It was soon after admiring the thirty, empty, glistening bathroom stalls and noticing the security cameras everywhere that Bartok and I decided to high-tail it out of there.

The next morning, piecing together details of the Inferno, she and I both concurred we’d officially been to hell and back. I’m appropriately worried since the club’s walking distance from my apartment. Let’s all think about how often I go to Pink and realize with this place I won’t even have to set foot in a cab to get there. Dangerous? Definitely.

So I’m back in civilization aka America and decided to start my reentry to Manhattan with a bang. My return fortuitously coincided with the reopening of my favorite douchey club location Pink Elephant. ‘Reopening’ you may ask? That’s right. Much to the dismay of New York alcoholics, the club closed for a week to undergo important renovations like shining the disco ball and buffering the floors to mask patrons nightly puke stains. This Wednesday it reopened and Manhattan nightlife junkies were happier than children. The place filled up especially early and patrons enjoyed many benefits of the ‘renovation’ such as a new and improved entrance with Veuve Clicquot bottles now lining the walls and a new, blinding neon green light show – none of which I noticed as new but had pointed out to me. I’m not an observant person. Especially when in a Pink Elephant state of mind.

Some bad news is that Pink has stooped to the level of Donald Trump and made their own vodka.



The good news is that it went down frighteningly easy. I suspect it might be ‘imported’ from Arkansas. But the real highlight of Wednesday evening was the hateful song ‘Last Night a DJ Saved My Life’ finally resonated with me for the first time. I LOVED the music at Pink last night and expressed this sentiment by screaming out sexual things I wanted to do to the DJ at various moments throughout the night. Who is he? His name DJ Roctakon and while his name’s kind of silly sand sounds like a dinosaur species, he brought an energy to Pink I didn’t think possible. Why I want to insert your own sexual fantasy here] to him is because he sublimely balanced house with commercial music while throwing in some mellow hip-hop. I mean, who can do that? Most DJs are tribal house junkies or hip hop fiends. This guy blended those genres together while adding classics like ‘Jessie’s Girl’ and ‘La Bamba’ without it sounding the least bit weird. I marveled at Mr. Roctakon abilities, and wanted to climb over into the DJ booth just to make sure he didn’t have my iPod back there as he was spinning my own personal hit list. I planned to become this guy’s groupie but after stalking him on the web have realized that he’s already left our island to spin at Mansion in Miami.

Thursday night Bartok arrived so staying in and coddling my massive hangover wasn’t even an option. Luckily a long shower and Excedrin quickly put me back on the party train. I planned to spend the evening at Cipriani’s but my girls and I were lured back yet again to Pink after my friend invited us to hang out with him as he was hosting the Prince of Saudi Arabia and his entourage in New York. The thought of going to Pink two nights in a row made my brain want to bleed, but my friends and I figured we should probably show up and try to make the prince marry at least one of us.

Hence we ended up meeting the prince and doing whatever girls do at Pink (Dance? Sway back and forth? Look retarded?) at his table. You’d think this would set the stage for a killer evening, right? Wrong. The truth is that after the superbness that was DJ Roctakon, Pink’s house DJ’s music sounded especially crappy. I feel like he takes lounge CDs and just cranks up their volume so it sounds like innovative house, and expects everyone to be shit-faced enough to accept this as ‘cool’ (which, granted, they are). Also, the prince’s entourage of guy friends was rather large. As in so large it was difficult to move / get into close proximity of one of the two tables where the massive amounts of alcohol were stocked. His four enormous bodyguards (who doubled as bartenders) made this already claustrophobic situation only more uncomfortable. And since most people still haven’t got the memo that Wednesday has replaced Thursday as Pink’s ‘in’ night (at least in my book), the club was overflowing with normal Thursday eurotrash as well.

When the prince’s bodyguards decided to rope off our table with those black dividers used to make airport check-in lines, I had had enough. Now there was no escape. It was impossible to leave to go to the bathroom and equally difficult to return, unless you limbo-ed under the dividers, which I did many times much to the bodyguards amusement. Besides, how exactly do these tiny plastic dividers protect Mr. Prince in anyway? I mean, I don’t think they’d really deter a bullet or a crazy assassin wielding a knife.

So I went into Pink’s hallway to make some calls about where else we could pass our already blurry night and ran into the Made in Italy crowd, all fresh off an AlItilia flight, just like me. So we transferred over to their table where activities such as breathing and standing on two legs were blissfully realities. Bartok and I wandered a bit, but she became frantic and traumatized as the new, industrial strength, post-renovation fog machine kept deafening and blinding her. After she’d screamed at the top of her lungs, ‘I feel like Helen Keller and can’t take it anymore,’ six times I knew it was time to go home.

The good news is that for the first time in my New York life my cab driver spoke English. The bad news, was that he was actually engaged in phone sex with someone (his wife?), which spiced up my ride home and broadened my dirty talk vocabulary. He picked me up when it was past five am and I guess he figures all his passengers at this hour are probably too drunk to listen / care, which was partially true. I stumbled home, made mac and cheese and enjoyed watching the new acne Murad complex infomercials on my television. I found them extremely moving, especially the before and after pictures, but eventually (thank god) I slithered to bed.

So partying with princes isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

An anonymous reader recently commented on my taxing going out schedule and inquired how I manage to work / lead a productive life. While initially taken off guard, I’ve realized that this is in fact a FABULOUS question, one I often roll around in the back of my mind myself. Take last night’s stint for example, home at 3:45 a.m. in bed by 4 a.m., up to start the day at 7:30 a.m. Let’s not even bother counting hours of sleep because they wouldn’t exceed one hand.

Partying like a rock star while working is a skill that requires persistence, dedication, and endurance. I feel it can be likened to training for an Olympic sport. And every morning is a little different. Like usually my hangover descriptions involve midgets and power drills making noise in the back of my head. Today, it’s more like a family of seals are violently oarking near my skull while being stabbed to death by a bounty hunter.

The first way I cope with going out and getting up early is to make sure my night is fabulous by drinking a lot. This may seem counter intuitive: If one knows they have to be productive the next day wouldn’t they party with friends and perhaps forgo alcohol? WRONG. See, when I’m drunk, even if I have the luxury to sleep in, I always wake up exactly four hours after I went to sleep. And I’m just not a weird specimen of human abnormalities; other friends of mine have concurred that when they drink too much they wake up early, probably because their bodies are too messed up to perform healthy human actions like continual sleep. If I pull myself out of bed after a 4 a.m. night having not consumed alcohol, I’m actually cruelly waking myself from a deeply pleasant sleep via my alarm clock. If having stumbled / fallen into bed highly inebriated however, I wake up at 7:30 anyway, usually exactly eight minutes before my alarm – so I don’t even have to suffer through hearing its heinous noise. If not having drank I tend to feel intensely tired all day and often fantasize about dozing off somewhere in a corner with my childhood pink blankie. If previously shit-faced, at least the midget and seal sounds serve to keep my awake, and I fantasize about the long-haired guys I saw out last night.

Another party endurance no-no is counting how many hours of sleep you got. Don’t make your trembling, abused brain aware of such harsh, unpleasant facts. Manipulate your body as if it were a naive child with psychotic interior dialogues like this:

Me: Body, do you really feel such a physical difference from how you function when I give you 8 hours of sleep versus 4?
My Body: Yes! You just walked me into a table you bitch.
Me: That’s because somehow the table moved mysteriously overnight. We can function fine; see I just dressed myself without putting anything on backwards. We got enough sleep body. Remember?
My Body: No evil task master. You’re I liar and I hate you.
Me: You can get through the day. You’re phenomenal! These are the best years of your life. After this it’s all wrinkles and hip replacements. It’s all downhill from here.
My Body: I guess I don’t feel that different from how I normally do.
Me: That’s right – you don’t.

To help you body sustain this illusion of seeming normalcy, target and heal problem areas. Healing doesn’t have to mean more sleep. For example, the only physical reason I can really tell I slept four hours is that my eyes hurt like hell (thanks to all you smokers on the party circuit) and it feels like miniature dumbbells have been attached to my eyelashes. Hence why moisturizing eye drops are every party-recoverers best friend. Enough drops and the physical maladies of your night out begin to slowly subside. Give your body an aspirin as well for physical and mental comfort – (Me: See I even gave you medicine. A cure. There’s no excuse for you to be tired now). You can also pump your body up with a reward system (Me: Help me get through writing these next three agenda items and I’ll give you a horse pill size Ambien and a twelve hour nap this Saturday.) In short, manipulate yourself in everyway known to man in order to make it through the day, and you’ll find this process of convincing yourself you’re fine becomes easier and easier the more you do it – until you actually start to believe it and the amount mental convincing you have to do is minimal.

Last night started with a huge group dinner at the Upper East Side restaurant Per Lei. As a Tribeca resident, I call the Upper East Side “the other side of the planet,” and adamantly refuse to go up there, as I nothing in my life actually takes me any higher than 29th street. For Per Lei on Thursday nights, I make an exception. Not only is the food delicious, but they have a wonderful outdoor seating area, and the whole restaurant is taken over by really ridiculous Italians who own things like fashion companies and shares of Pink Elephant the club. The place morphs into its own little disco at around midnight with a fabulous DJ who alternates between house music and Latin dancing. People salsa and losers like me always end up getting tossed onto the bar. Next we transferred over to Room Service for the sole purpose of drinking a promotional bottle of vodka one of our friends from dinner had there. Our group guzzled that up pretty fast and headed to the classic Thursday night douche location Pink at around 2:30 a.m. It was at full-capacity but my dancing enthusiasm began to wane since I was now in teeny stilettos since nine p.m. and arching my foot the reverse direction of my heel was almost physically impossible.

At 3:30 a.m. Bartok and I called it a night, and ushered all our other girlfriends safely into cabs having only lost one, my girl Twiggy, in the club (not to worry she properly phoned to inform me that she survived the night). On the cab ride back to my apartment, it seemed like a good idea to drunk dial everyone I know. The telltale sign that I’ve had waaaay to much to drink is when I start pulling out the phone and using it as a weapon to shoot myself in the foot. Fortunately, this only happens about once every three months. Bartok, being the irrational advice giver she is, encouraged me to call everyone who didn’t pick up again to “show them I really cared.” Talk about the worst suggestion ever. So now I’m some crazy desperate nighttime stalker.

This morning I looked at my phone and realized I have a missed call from a new number I programmed as “Michela form Bali" and that I called a friend repeatedly last night whose name I then changed in my phone to “Worthless.” I don’t know who this is. So until “Worthless” calls me back, I guess we’re all just living in suspense…

No one (especially me) is over the fact that the birthday is over and life has to now resume seeming normalcy. In an attempt to stretch out the birthday madness as long as possible, I encourage you all today to check out Ha Ha Sound’s especially humorous recap of the party.

Last night, Bartok and I spent an hour getting pedicures in an attempt to revive our feet from the brutal treatment they’d received the evening before. We then foolishly entertained the idea of going out before passing out on my futon with Chipotle burritos watching reruns of 30 Rock and Entourage. Now that I’ve had a reasonable eight hours of sleep drained into my abused bodily system, there’s no way Bartok’s letting me keep my ass on the couch tonight. No official plans have been made but I have a hunch we’ll end up at Pink (Cajun, feel free to grab a gun, hunt me down, and shoot the heels off all my stilettos. I deserve it. I’m a full blown Thursday Pink addict.) The good news is the club’s ridiculousness never ceases to amaze me, and I only gain delightfully absurd story after story when I attend. Tonight Bartok and I plan to shake things up at the club by pulling out some of these new super sexy dance moves we’ve learned from James Brown’s instructional video.



I think the men are going to go gaga when we start rocking this stuff on the table banquet. Depending on how much energy and how much liquor we’ve consumed before going out, we might even practice the moves at my apartment so we can perform them in unison. So I’m going to leave you with that visual. If you want more entertainment check out these real 911 calls for a chuckle. Reports about tonight’s outing tomorrow…

BELIEVE it or not, these are REAL 911 Calls!

Dispatcher : 9-1-1 What is your emergency?
Caller: I heard what sounded like gunshots coming from the brown house on the corner.
Dispatcher: Do you have an address?
Caller: No, I have on a blouse and slacks, why?

Dispatcher : 9-1-1 What is your emergency?
Caller : Someone broke into my house and took a bite out of my ham and cheese sandwich.
Dispatcher : Excuse me?
Caller : I made a ham and cheese sandwich and left it on the kitchen table and when I came back from the bathroom, someone had taken a bite out of it.
Dispatcher : Was anything else taken?
Caller : No, but this has happened to me before and I'm sick and tired of it!

Dispatcher: 9-1-1 What is the nature of your emergency?
Caller: I'm trying to reach nine eleven but my phone doesn't have an eleven on it.
Dispatcher: This is nine eleven.
Caller: I thought you just said it was nine-one-one
Dispatcher: Yes, ma'am nine-one-one and nine-eleven are the same thing.
Caller: Honey, I may be old, but I'm not stupid.

Dispatcher: 9-1-1 What's the nature of your emergency?
Caller: My wife is pregnant and her contractions are only two minutes apart
Dispatcher: Is this her first child?
Caller: No, you idiot! This is her husband!

Dispatcher: 9-1-1
Caller: Yeah, I'm having trouble breathing. I'm all out of breath.
Darn....I think I'm going to pass out.
Dispatcher: Sir, where are you calling from?
Caller: I'm at a pay phone. North and Foster.
Dispatcher: Sir, an ambulance is on the way. Are you an asthmatic?
Caller: No
Dispatcher: What were you doing before you started having trouble breathing?
Caller: Running from the Police.

DISCOVERY: Plastic glasses are not champagne flutes. Despite what I wrote in jest yesterday, last night on my birthday I, a stunning model of good behavior, intended to remain cool, calm, collected and not drunk like a proper hostess my mother would be proud of. This quest was thwarted: Why? Because plastic glasses are not champagne flutes. This may seem self-evident, but allow me to explain. When drinking in a club or bar one can at least attempt to keep track of how much alcohol they’re consuming. Theoretically at a house party you can do the same. Yet the liquid volume of a champagne flute is miniscule compared to the volume of an even half-filled house party plastic cup. Hence we can construct a mathematic formula that goes something like “every 1 glass of house party champagne = 3 glasses of champagne if we were measuring in flutes.” Unfortunately, the average party-goers brain is not aware of this discrepancy, causing them to think they’ve had 5 glasses of champagne when in reality they’ve had 15. I was a victim of this logic. What can I say? I never made it past pre-calculus. Throw in 3 Bacardi mixed drinks and the occasional shot and you have my mental state last night. I’m actually listening to throbbing house music right now on my iPod to prevent myself from falling asleep over my desk and to wean my body off the party train / the reality that I’m no longer mistress birthday girl of the moment. Even with the music it still feels like midgets are building a fortress with electric drills in the back of my brain.

Flashback to yesterday: After coming home from work, stopping to get another round of liquor on the way (and haggling the price of my Malibu down $2 – go me) I hoped into the shower and began a lengthy beautification process. The majority of this process is always taken up by deciding what to wear. During our pre-party lunch conference, Bartok and I deiced that we wanted to go casual: jeans, a nice top, maybe heels. I even managed to fit in time for a power shopping spree on my lunch hour to purchase a new top. Our overall outfit goal with the casual route was to send the message, “This party is no big deal. We throw fifty-five person soirées all the time, no sweat.” Needless to say, we began trying stuff off and ultimately were both dressed up enough to go pick up Oscars on our way home. Tatas and Bartok ended up in fancy black dresses and somehow talked me into this obnoxiously shiny gold mini-skirt my that (surprise surprise) my Barbie-doll mother bought for me when I was sixteen. Jeans. Who were we kidding?

Since the party was at Mr. T’s place, next we had the delightful challenge of transporting cake, ice, cases of beer and liquor and mixers for fifty-five people to his house without the aid of professional moving men. Tatas had the genius idea of using this ginormous suitcase I keep hidden behind our futon. I only use it when moving between New York and Italy. This suitcase could fit furniture inside. So all the booze and mixers were stuffed into this enormous wheeling duffel bag, which Bartok and Tatas later told me they took TO the liquor store earlier that day to wheel all the gin, rum and bottles of champagne back to my apartment. I’m really sad I was at work and missed that visual.

So we loaded all the stuff onto my building’s bellhop wheeling transportation device and somehow talked a cab into taking us, with all our luggage, just five blocks up into Soho to Mr. T’s. Men on the street would happily approach us eager to help lift the duffel bag (thinking it we were traveling and it was filled with clothes) and then reel when it weighed more than six human bodies. That was highly entertaining.

Only the ever gentlemanly Classic and his friends arrived at the scheduled party start time of nine p.m., but by ten we had a pretty full house. Perhaps the most delightful surprise is that my fabulous girlfriend Safari solved all my woes about whether to serve food or not / what was cheesy and what was not (see yesterday’s entry) and arrived with an entire gourmet rotisserie chicken, couscous, arugala salad, dill, French bread, potato salad, salmon and chocolate meringues. Talk about a good friend! We set up an entire top notch buffet.

A lot of my college friends, most everyone from the New York clubbing circuit, and even a few fellow bloggers were in attendance – the majority of whom brought champagne. At around eleven p.m. we had a vodka shortage, at which point Safari kicked in yet again with a forceful champagne PR campaign. I literally think we had enough champagne to fill the Hudson. Some guests even splurged on the nice stuff – Moet, Veuve and crazy French names that I can’t pronounce. My childish ice cream cake was presented with the appropriate number of candles which I managed to blow out in entirely after having happy birthday sung to me in both English and Italian. Needless to say, the Italians were the life of party with friends of friends of friends from Sicily in continual arrival. They also orchestrated multiple encores of happy birthday and popped a lot of champagne. The Brazilians played their part as well, especially when my friend Classic force fed everyone in the kitchen tequila shots at around eleven thirty. The party plundered forward into the early morning and according to my cell phone text messages, I got home at around two thirty. Many guests headed over to The Box at around one a.m. Thank God they couldn’t convince me to go with them. My night was spiningly joyful enough without getting lost in the vortex.

That’s right. Today’s the day. It only comes once a year. Fortunately, I’m still at an age where birthdays are an excuse for out of control fun and a lot of naughty behavior, although watching your youth further recede into the distance is never a good feeling. So what’s the plan? Bartok is arriving from DC yet again, totally breaking her bi-annual visit rule (we might die, link here for our previous adventures). Her arrival can be compared to having Santa Claus sled by twice in one season as Bartok was just in New York over the fourth of July. Basically, we’re going to stop being the irresponsible freeloading party crashing alcoholics we always are and instead are going to actually host – that’s right HOST my party at my close friend T’s SoHo loft. Why there? Because it’s significantly larger than my living room which can barely fit an extra five fold-out chairs. Plus Mr. T’s pad has a much better stereo and ambient lighting system. I’m really into ambient lighting and at my apartment the only tools I have to work with are the stove and oven light. That’s just not as fun as professional dimmers.

Group and personalized email and text invitations have been sent out to mine as well as Mr. T’s friends. The confirmed count at this moment is about fifty – but this is New York, this number could quadruple or disintrigrate to twelve at a moments notice depending on how the Manhattan party Gods are feeling. The sky got all the rain out of its system yesterday, so bad weather shouldn’t deter people from coming out. Isn’t this weather intolerable? I think we should stop calling the warm season in Manhattan “summer” and refer to it instead as “the monsoon.” I’m seriously thinking of investing in some yellow rubber duck boots and one of those absurdly large umbrellas that people steal from hotels.

So, I’ve decided the most responsible thing to do as co-hostesses of this party is for Bartok and I and my fabulous Asian roommate to get completely shit-faced the three of us before the first guest arrives at 9 p.m. I mean, how could it possibly be a bad night with us pre-drunken running around and making merry. The guests, cake, and perhaps gifts just become an added bonus. I also plan on a hugging reward system for anyone who brings liquor. I also plan on one of us monopolizing the stereo the entire night (music control being the biggest perk of the house party). That means Euro house trash, my nineties favorites, T’s Brazilian stuff, and inevitably a teeny bit of Kylie Minogue.

My preparation list so far looks something like this:

1. A bottle of vodka too big to carry (preferably something cheap, Svedka or Finlandia would be great. Perk of cheap vodka: it goes down easy!!!)

2. A similarly large bottle of Bacardi (I don’t think the euros in attendance will be able to live with their Cuba Libras.)

3. Mixers: OJ, cranberry, tonic, sprite, coke, anything else more creative that I can find. Pineapple would be swell.

4. The men’s favorites: Jack and Rum.

5. Limes (thanks to Mr. T for reminding me of this one)

6. Ice (yeah, how we’re going to get all of this to T’s house in one cab ride remains a mystery)

7. The cake – this is a coffee and chocolate ice cream cake with health bars in it. Is this gourmet? No. But I really have no issues with having a 5-year old flavor cake. It’s MY birthday and I want ice cream!

8. Beer – I’m not supplying a lot. If you wanna sip on Buds all night that’s your prerogative.

9. Snacks? I always feel grossed out by chips and pretzels and cheese doodles at parties. A lot of germs live in those bowels with an abnormal amount of fingertips passing through. Plus that kind of snack set up always reminds me of really awkward high school dances. So the snacks aren’t happening. Bartok and I have decided to go with something more gourmet like grapes. This whole party is about us pretending to be responsible adults. Hopefully we won’t get too drunk and start doing cartwheels like we did the last time we were left unsupervised at a Manhattan apartment with open space.

Anyone else have any other suggestions? Like a net to catch people when they get too rowdy or a shovel to knock people out? You should all feel free to let me know.

My most inappropriate friend Bartok’s final night in New York was on Sunday, leaving me no choice but to take her to witness the infamous Sunday night karaoke at Cipriani Downtown’s upstairs private club. While we drank and put on make-up at my apartment, I attempted to prep her for what I knew would be an inevitably raunchy evening:

“The whole upstairs club is run by this ominous figure Braid who’s ultra scary, intimidating, and what I imagine a physical manifestation of Satan to look like. He subtly runs the door from upstairs via a headset while Jack, his right arm, physically enacts his orders about who gets in and who stays out below on street level. Men who are members (membership involves giving Braid/the Cipriani’s establishment $2,000 - $4,000 depending on how well-connected you are) always get in and usually have house accounts. Very hot women that Braid hopes might double as prostitutes for his clientele of elderly Guido members also get in, assuming they have at least one name to drop of a resident table-hound inside. A man who’s not a member is subject completely to Braid’s “mood,” which is utterly unpredictable and sadly holds the fate of many a ruined evenings. In fact, if you walk around West Broadway and Broome eavesdropping between the hours of 11 p.m. and 1 a.m., the main subject of discussion by practically everyone is if Braid is in a “good mood” or “bad mood.” “Good mood” means Braid’s accepting non-member parties who want to purchase tables, assuming they
a) have an equal number of girls and guys in their party
b) sign on for a 2 bottle or Cristal minimum and
c) slip him at least $50 throughout the course of the night.

As I found out, failure to spend what Braid considers enough dough (which he never clearly outlines, so you basically have to guess) or failure to slip him enough cash homage results in essentially being blackballed from the Cipriani’s clubbing establishment. This happened to two male friends of mine in from London. I took them there with some female friends of mine and “good mood” Braid granted Jack to grant us entrance. Several nights later, we returned, the same group of people, and were informed by Jack that Braid felt that we hadn’t spent enough last time and that my male friends were talking to too many ladies. I pointed out to Jack that my London friends would have gladly spent more dough had our waitress politely told us (I mean, they earn money in pounds, partying in America is like a tax deduction for them). At this point Jack took my arm, ushered me away from my group and said:

‘Braid is not happy with you right now, bringing men here. We don’t need their business. The good time upstairs is for members. Take them somewhere else.’

A nearby girl overheard this exchange and touched my shoulder. ‘It’s not you,’ she said. ‘Braid’s in a ‘bad mood’ today. People have been texting about it all night.’

I was flabbergasted (although I shouldn’t have been considering I know the drill), left, and boycotted the establishment for several weeks until, like every faithful going-out addict, I ended up there drunk on an anonymous Sunday.”

As Bartok and I walked to Cip’s from my apartment, drinking vodka out of plastic cups we’d brought from my apartment, I attempted to outline for her the cast of characters:

“On karaoke night they utilize the best promoters since is the ‘glitterati night.’ This means a lot of starving models at the centerfold table, who usually pass one of the two mikes among themselves. Sundays at the corner table is usually Calvin, who’s rumored to own the largest escort company in the world, surrounded by his goons and (surprise surprise) a lotta escorts. On the table against the wall is Giuseppe Cipriani himself and his entourage. As you move back toward the fireplace you have members’ tables, usually in order of spending and frequency.”

We arrived and sure enough, everything I’d previously outlined stretched out before us. Alcohol is really the only thing that makes the whole Cipriani’s karaoke experience tolerable, hence why I ensured us getting a head start on the drinking on the way over. My friend who we chilled with for the majority of the evening forwent bottle service in lieu of ordering round after round of kamikaze shots. Nothing gets me retarded (and inevitably puking) like the liquor combination in kamikazes. A close Italian friend of mine at his own table was doing champagne. Hence a combination of vodka, Bellini’s and shots ensued. I even got retarded enough to tackle some skeletronic super model for the mike and ran around with it for a bit before Bartok saved me from myself and took it away. Braid happened to be in a “good mood,” making the entire evening that much more pleasant. He even took a liking to Bartok and forced her into doing his signature dance with him. I think he looks like a high leprechaun doing the jig, but whatever. The dance routine signals Braid’s level of wrath at the world is down so I like it. Later, Giuseppe Cipriani himself found Bartok’s unparelled charisma irresistible. It was late when we ended up at his table, Bartok – Giuseppe – Me – and a cute boy in a hat on my left. Since Bartok and Giuseppe were chatting it up I, very inebriated, turned to the young man on my left and commented that I approved of Giuseppe’s taste in women and had his type totally pegged. The young man agreed with my analysis of Giuseppe’s tastes:

“Yeah, you’re totally right. Trust me, I know. He’s my father.”

HUH!?

I double-taked and analyzed him with alarmed eyes: “Are you serious?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you? Like fourteen?” I asked in horror.

“Seventeen.”

I apologized profusely in a drunken stupor for making sexual observations about his father, to which he replied:

“Don’t worry. I know all abut Dad and his women. He’s crazy.”

“Where’s your mother?” I asked appalled. I knew Giuseppe was divorced, but how could his ex-wife let him take an impressionable teen boy into the evil sketchiness that is Cipriani’s Upstairs. “Is she in Venice?”

“Nah, she’s moved to New York now too.”

I turned to Giuseppe, pointing at the boy and inquiring, “This is your son?”

Giuseppe gave a small smile and nodded in agreement. The young man got up, “Bye Dad, I’m going home.” And off he went, leaving me and my open jaw flabbergasted at the table.

Just another night out drinking in SoHo.

An interesting article about Giuseppe and the Cipriani dynasty can be found here.

The gloom, rain, lightening, and summer thunder did not keep people away from Pink Elephant last night, hands down my favorite douchette location in New York. My excuse for attending this time around is that Bartok is visiting, and Pink is a good luck place for us. We’ve never had a bad, let alone mediocre, night there. I think it’s all the crazy Euros who feed our Italy nostalgia with their colored shirts, tight pants, and hands enthusiastically in the air. They also give the place this unmistakable energy. If you’re fortunate enough to have a table where you can remain on the banquettes and never actually enter the club’s crowd or dance floor except to occasionally venture to the ladies room, it’s really an enjoyable time – assuming you:
a) Like house music
b) Don’t mind the siren noise, occasional cold blasts of air, confetti, and fog machine
c) Don’t mind half the people you meet being French
d) Don’t mind the other half of the people you meet to being metrosexual and,
e) Don’t mind being ripped off.

As an ashamedly frequent Pink Elephant attendee and a borderline club addict in general, I thought I had seen it all. Well, last night, I encountered not one but, TWO new phenomena. I think it was my father who said that “life is a constant learning experience.” How right he was. Last night I learned
1) That men can look sexy in headbands (something I never thought feasible) and
2) You can actually buy a $6,000 bottle of champagne that’s larger than a twelve-year-old in New York establishments. I’d only seen them as decorations at Nikki Beach, and didn’t think they existed for purchase in real life.

Humor me as I delve into these two discoveries.

Headband Boy I spotted instantly in the crowd since he was a head taller than everyone else and wearing white. Nothing says “look at me” in a club like the color white. Now as I indulge in writing about this, ya’ll are going to learn a little about what my type of guy is.

Note: Girls who say they don’t have a type are lying.

So here goes nothing…Model Behavior tends to aim for these basic characteristics in the opposite sex. I realized after compiling this list, that I described all the basic characteristics of a Guido. I’m humiliated, but please, try to think of the qualities below in an “Italian Royal Family” light not the “E-ed Out Sleezo From Long Island” light.

1) Tall. This is often a challenge since I myself, am rather tall. I like two to three inches taller than me, anything more is unacceptable. What can say? I’m used to looking down on people. Super tall people freak me out.

2) Big shoulders and nice wrists. Big shoulders is no surprise. Apparently all women are attracted to men with a sturdy frame because it meant they could more effectively club wild boars and similar menaces to death to protect and feed us in the cavemen days. Wrists are just my psychotic thing that I developed a fettish with at the barely sexual age of eleven. I like them square and sturdy. A great watch is a plus – it means my prospect might actually care about being on time.

3) Longish hair. Note the “ish.” Hair longer than mine is unacceptable. Actually, hair past the shoulders is unacceptable. As is hair that looks like a woodland creatures home. Visible gel or product of any kind is grounds for elimination. I’m looking for that thick, slightly wavy, longish hair that doesn’t make a man look effeminate but that’s long enough for me to properly grip when we’re in the throes of passion. Get it, already?

4) Dark everything. Dark hair, dark eyes, dark – well, okay – olive skin. That Mediterranean skin. Cut me some slack. I did pass my most formative sexual years in Italy. I don’t like blondes because well, in my experience there’s only room for one blonde in a relationship – and that would be ME. I’m also not a fan of light eyes. They’re cold, cruel, and unnecessarily bright. I want warm, chocolate-like eyes. Green are tolerable. Blue absolutely not.

5) Well dressed in casual clothes. What does this mean? That my prospect knows how to put himself together with a sense of style other than dress shirt and suit. I want form-fitting t-shirts. Jeans that give me a sense of what your ass looks like. Cute jackets and sneakers. Basically, a gay man that’s not gay.

So now that you’re all heartily chuckling after my pathetic Italian stallion description of what I’m sexually attracted to, let me move on to say that Headband Boy possessed all these qualities – with perhaps the most important, unmentioned one of all; Charisma. Let me make it clear that I never spoke to him. No, I was having much more fun gazing at him from post on the elevated banquette, much as I imagine Goddesses like Venus looked down upon their half-mortal children like Aeneas. I watched him scamper around, and especially in observing his interaction with other men, I could see it: the charisma. In watching two men interact with each other, one-on-one, I feel I can tell which one’s the “dominant” figure between the two. It’s extremely subtle, yet somehow instinctually obvious at the same time. It’s a fun game to play ladies, as well. (Men I’m sure you can play it on us, although I think your guys version of the game goes something more like ‘which woman is more fertile’ which usually boils down which girl has bigger gazongas). Anyway, it’s highly entraining and kinda like the Discovery Channel – two male lions fight over a wilder beast – in a low-key human setting. If the club had morphed away and Headband Boy had to ape-wrestle whoever he was talking to that night, he’d inevitably be the winner. I could actually picture him victoriously romping around with the winning piece of bloody animal meat clenched between his gums. I know you all think this sounds UNsexy, but oddly enough, it’s not. My point is, that Headband Boy was such a fine specimen of good genes at work, he could even put on a HEAD BAND (yes, like one with teeth/a built in comb, the kind I USE) and still look brutally hot. Kudos to him. I glad we never spoke because I’m sure anyone that good-looking is a moron.

Below is a photo I attempted to snap in order to forever prove the existence of the $6,000 bottle of Verve (and that people are crazy enough to purchase them.) Two waiters had to carry it. Compare it in scale to the Red Bull in the corner. I don’t feel it comes across as large as it really was, keep in mind half of it is submerged in that ice bucket.



I didn’t take a photo of Headband Boy because I know a candid shot of him by me, his stalker, wouldn’t capture his true beauty. Then I’d feel like an even bigger douche for writing him this pathetic ode.

Bartok is here through the weekend. I have no doubt more absurdity and inappropriateness will ensue…