Be My Guest

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!

New Years Advice & SoHo Nuisances

Spending New Years in New York? Want to party?

(Which I don’t suggest.)

This comprehensive website outlines every single New York club / bar hosting overpriced New Years festivities and allows you to purchase tickets (all in the $100 and up range) for entry, an open bar, and the privilege of being allowed to watch the ball drop in their establishment.

Frightening: This website also has a New Years countdown clock. Like right now it’s 26 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 30 seconds till January 1.

Grrraaar! Who cares!?!!?!?!?

Now while $120 may seem reasonable for a 4-hour open bar, don’t be fooled. These people are selling tickets to capacity. Even if you make it into the club without being trampled, your chances of body surfing toward the bar and then actually succeeding in getting a bar tender’s attention are about as likely as Pink Elephant miraculously going bankrupt. It ain’t going to happen. You’re essentially paying to rub up against people…and if that’s your thing, go for it.

In selecting a New York New Years locale, I also highly suggest choosing something within walking distance of where you plan on passing out that night. It’s more likely you’ll stumble across a leprechaun with a pot of gold than a free taxi. And even if you see a free cab, you’ll most likely have to club your fellow Manhatteners to get it. So put a crowbar in your purse.

Now that we’ve covered that horrific topic, onto more bad news…

MANGO one of my favorite European semi-affordable designers has taken up residence on Broadway near Prince Street in SoHo. Now I know what you’re all thinking:

“Model Behavior, shouldn’t you be happy one of your favorite clothing stores is now available walking distance from where you live?”

Me: “NO!”

Perhaps 60% of the chicer part of my wardrobe is Mango, and until now it looked incredibly coveted and unique.

“Amazing top,” some girl would say, “Where can I get it?”

“You can’t,” I’d reply. “It’s Ming by Mango. Only in Europe.”

She’d be crestfallen and I’d get style points, which I need. Despite a background in the world of fashion I have very little natural fashion sense. Am I a bit evil? Perhaps. But Mango was my special thing, and now that they have a Zara-like department store on Broadway.

Nothing’s sacred.

In addition, word’s out that Penelope Cruz is designing for them. I saw her on a Mango billboard and was like, “Yikes, she’s getting old. Good thing she’s pulling in these last minute endorsement deals.”

Now I find out she’s also designing the clothes! Shouldn’t that be left to the professionals? Why aren’t actor-models ever content just being actor-models? Why do they always have to sing, make a fragrance or start a handbag line?

I worry, because the last time I saw Penelope Cruz in Union Square she looked like she’d gotten dressed in a dumpster. And I don’t really buy the whole “woe is me the superstar, I’m trying to blend in excuse,” because she’d have had more success blending in wearing jeans and a sweater rather than the black, wool, seemingly lice-infested mui mui she’d awkwardly wrapped around her frail body: an outfit so horrific I noticed it before I noticed her.

This is the person who’s now designing for my once-favorite, once-Euro, now Americanized clothing store. None of that’s going to be on my Christmas list.

I previously mentioned, I’m not a fashion expert. I just have the good sense to blatantly copy whatever my fashion savvy roommate Tatas is wearing – the dress story being a prime example. So having renounced any claim at expertise, I’ve just gotta say: Would any woman in her right mind wear this?

And it’s been in a SoHo boutique’s front display for WEEKS. I learned at Pink’s space party that silver, pleather-like fabric is unflattering no matter how thin you are. The dresses’ unusual collar / necklace looks like part of an android suit. Can they just ship this thing off to a Star Wars convention already so I don’t have to scrunch my face up at it bi-daily as part of my morning and evening walk?

Home is Where the Heart Is (Question Mark)?

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.

Ode to the Animal

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…

Model Behavior Recommends: European Travel Edition

1. Summer READING. Manhattan’s not really a city that’s conducive to curling up with a book. I find I’m either frantically running around, productively working, or unproductively dancing intoxicated. In my spare moments at home, after I’ve swept, sanitized my sink, and done laundry, I have little will-power to read. I prefer to pass out in front of my overpriced Time Warner cable and indulge in watching some really bad TV. The best part about aspiring to write for television is that hours of relaxation in front of shows like Ugly Betty and Greek can be justified as ‘researching the industry.’ Now that I’ve extracted myself from
a) Manhattan
b) My social life
c) Work and
d) Domestic chores of any kind
for more than a long weekend, I finally have the opportunity to relish in fictional literature that I don’t have to write term papers about. Since I thought reading for pleasure again might come as a shock to my system, I decide to start with some trashy chick lit to slowly acclimate my brain to the idea of un required reading. Lauren Weisberger’s attempting to sustain a writing career after getting lucky with The Devil Wears Prada, so I chose to read her second stab at literary greatness, Everyone Worth Knowing. I hoped to connect with the book since it’s primarily about New York nightlife. I also hoped to observe and perhaps learn a thing or two from Lauren’s apparently successful chick lit writing style. Well, Lauren thinks that Bungalow 8 is still a hot spot, that Cipriani’s Downtown is only a restaurant, and that Rush and Malloy would stalk and publish photographs of a nobody PR assistant. Some of her observations were dead on, but similar to Devil Wears Prada, the book only hit one note (Devil Wears Prada being: My boss is crazy. My boss is crazy. Everyone Worth Knowing being: People who party for a living are crazy. People who party for a living are crazy.) Neither of these points are especially revolutionary.

After breezing through the book on my first plane ride I moved on to John Fowles’ The Magus. Dauntingly thick, wonderfully written, and a must-read in my opinion. I’ve never read a novel with so many plot twists. My jaw was continually agape. Men: You’ll like The Magus as well. The narrator’s a dude.

Having finished that I indulged in my current historical fiction obsession, the princess books by Philippa Gregory. There’s no drama like that of Henry the VIII, the Tudors, war, trade, and marrying for power and position. There’s always the threat of getting tortured, beheaded or thrown in the tower. Besides learning English history, you learn fascinating facts like the gents in 1550 had condoms made of sheepskin and thought that vegetables were unhealthy. The books also serve as an excellent stepping-stone for fantasizing continually about how awesome it would be to be Queen of the world (an activity I like to indulge in often). If you want to check out Philippa Gregory start with her bestseller The Other Boleyn Girl. Sadly, it’s being made into a glossy movie with Natalie Portman and Scarlet Johansson. I really hope the script’s good enough to carry the movie since these star’s acting ability is squat.

2. Hotel Reservations Online: Since I’m essentially a gypsy floating around Southern Europe with my travel plans in continual fluctuation, I’ve found the concept of reserving hotels on the Internet especially helpful. Since Cingular delightfully charges me two dollars a minute for using my phone outside the USA and rejects my Italian SIM (even though the phone is technically unlocked, Cingular you are crooks) calling places to see if they have available rooms is out of the question. I’ve become obsessed with Hotel Reservations.com, and not just because the site name’s super easy to remember. First off they have cool discounts. I booked a stay at the absurdly expensive Exedra in Rome for 30% off. It was still expensive, but the Exedra gets away with high prices since it’s the only hotel in central Rome with an outdoor swimming pool, an infinity pool that is, overlooking majestic Piazza della Republica.

The site also has super sophisticated search options, like searching for hotels near certain landmarks (Termini train station in Rome for example) and it organizes the results in any manner you choose, telling you literally how many kilometers the hotel is from the landmark (since we all know hotels LIE – they’re actually NOT a five minutes from Piazza di Spagna unless you take the subway and then sprint.) The best feature however, is that they don’t charge your credit card in advance like many discount, online, hotel reservation services do. So you can cancel and book something else with ease. It’s the inability to cancel or modify reservations that’s kept me away from online hotel booking in the past. This is Europe for Christ’s sake. No plans hold firm. Here you can secure a good price in advance, and not be penalized when your romantic getaway is thwarted, you break up, change vacation destinations or realize you never wanted to go to Riccione is the first place. You can also search hotels by ‘user ratings’ and discover quirky pre-approved hotels and off the beaten path Bed and Breakfasts. Or you can search using my personal favorite criteria, ‘cheapest double room’ near the best shopping street in town. See link below:

3. For my Expat in Italy friends: LA GIOSTRA restaurant in Florence. Nobody knows about it, it’s centuries old, unpretentious, and the best food in town. Pear and prosciutto ravioli in a light cream sauce in a quiet, romantic environment, eating among locals with an appropriate price. Need I say more?

4. OTRANTO.

Want to take an Italian vacation without being run over by herds of Japanese tourists and American backpackers with iPods? Head to the deep south and check out this amazing fortified walled town. It’s ten times lovelier than the south of France with that same charming feel and the beaches are actually NICE. There’s 5 star hotel hidden inside the town, extraordinary sandy shores nearby, and a fascinating history. The Roman city-state / port was used by the Greeks and eventually conquered by the Turks. Otranto’s lighthouse is the Eastern most point in Italy, and on a clear day you can see the snow capped mountains of Albania on the other side of the Adriatic.