Panamamacitas

Know what I've learned from traveling to seemingly warm weather destinations? I should have listened to Mrs Napolitano, my 3rd grade Science teacher. The closer you are to the Equator, the warmer the weather. I'm not taking any more chances with my vacations and I'm going after hot and humid. Panama's year round avg temperature is 90+ degrees!

It's cold in NYC again - I can't count on it being warm for another 2 months, so I'm packing ONE bag and hightailing to Panama for a few days with my sis. I am insisting we hike through the jungle, jump off cliffs, docks, helicopters (hmmm, maybe?) into the the azure blue ocean, bike into town, drink ice cold Balboas at a roadside shack, maybe go see the canal... (I don't really care for this last one, but she might want to do it.)

Oh my dearie dear dear dear...give me a hammock and a drink in a coconut.

Weekend plans

OH Merciful God, I have to go to a male strip club for a friend's bachelor party. A few things made me sort of hesitate....

1. The thought of a dude's gyrating crotch in my face to Geunwine or Usher or Justin or they might go old school and gyrate to Toni, Tony, Tone... or the Thong Song. Thong th-thong thong thong.

2. The thought of the above with some of the people we are going with-- including overweight transvestites -- think of John Waters' Hairspray, Ricki Lake's mom... Mama Turnblad. They def do not look like the ladyboys I met in Thailand.

3. I might have to sit through my own lapdance. What if something happens... like mid-dance.. the dancer gets too close and beaded butt sweat is flung on to my face.

I'm kinda scared but I just love how weird this is going to get. Bwahahaha!

sigh -- new york it is

i've been trying to run away to warm weather cities for the past year now... but looks like a higher power is telling me i should stay. good things keep happening in ny, keeping my feet firmly planted to the cold pavement and mother nature keeps telling me i can't move somewhere just for the sunny weather. (it rained the entire time i was in lala and yeah it really sucked.)

so i'm staying and turning up the heat, wearing uggs when i have to and trying to get used to the cold, even though i refused to believe i'd be here for the entire winter season. the other day, i looked up at the empire state building from chelsea and thought that i can't leave just yet. ny and i have a love/hate thing going on and i'm not hating it so much anymore.

im making huge vats of tasty lemonade out of my lemons--- trust me, it's that good and you're going to want some of it.

DABA

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/nyregion/28daba.html

is an acronym for:
a. Daily Accepting Boob Augmentation (as a birthday/anniversary gift)
b. Dare to Achieve Botox Association
c. Dating A Banker Anonymous

It could be all of the above, but the answer is C. (It's always C, didn't you know that?)

DABA is a support group for women who are dating (now out-of-work) bankers, which means the following for them:

1. Lots of pouting because there are no invites out to the Hamptons, no expensive dinners out, and no $1000 table reservations at the clubs on their bf's dime and social network.

2. Planning more nights out with your group of semi-pretty friends (so you can look the hottest out of them) and nab/steal/cajole the Banker WHO STILL HAS A JOB away from his current girlfriend/wife. (DABA for life!)

3. Taking a refresher course on pole-dancing and other techniques of people who work in the sex industry.

4. Cutting back on limo services, personal shopping, trips to the spa, cutting back on BOTOX maint to every other month. Recycling last season's hot handbag and making other tough sacrifices.

What happened to women making their own money?

AKIMBO

I remember when I first came across this word. I was 15 sitting in English class and we were doing our vocabulary review. Yes, even back in 1995 we were preparing for the verbal assault of the SAT's. I remember envisioning a crazy cool samurai warrior princess outfitted in a sleek dark kimono-esque outfit, strapped with sharp blades and wielding an ancient and powerful samurai sword.

Unfortunately, the word is derived from an middle English word "kene" + "bow", and there are a few definitions. Contextually, you use it to describe the physical position of the person, it usually connotes a rather stand-offish and superior attitude to the person who is standing akimbo. It can also refer to being bent or I like to think mangled lying on the floor, limbs akimbo. Think of the sharp angles your body can make with your elbows and knees and voila you are now akimbo.

Nevertheless, I wanted to introduce her to my cool clique of familiar words. But Akimbo was aloof and didn't want to play with the other words. She only had one cool thing to say and she would say it and then suddenly shut up again, leaving us all confused and wondering WTF? I couldn't get the other words to be friendly either. She exuded a cool superiority but for some reason we had seen through her one-trick pony but were still mystified that she would still feel like she was better than us. In turn we were fascinated all the more for it.

To this day, Akimbo stands in the periphery of my mind. She has been invited to join in on the clowning multiple times and has quietly refused fraternizing with the other words. She'll always be there in striking distance.... ready to stab our roundabout conversations with an exclamation point. Again we will be awed by her cool factor and she will recede from the limelight leaving us thinking WTF!

WTF!

WTF!
WTF!
WTF!
WTF!

I can't believe I'm going to quote Paula Abdul here but "one step forward, two steps back"

The item for auction is Natalie Dylan's virginity and it's now worth $3.7M. Is she the ultimate American capitalist? She's identified a market, she has a unique product and she's branded herself as a young college grad trying to pay for grad school.

Franklyn - Looks awesome but no US distro!

You don't gotta go home but you gotta get the hell up on outta here!

I'm talking about the pity party for one I've been at for the past few days. There are a million reasons why I thought I should be there: I caught the flu, winter in NY, the recession, lack of direction in my career, uncertainty about whether I wanted to stay in NY, etc, etc, etc, ad nauseum.

I was celebrating BY MYSELF with my Debbie Downer tiara firmly placed on my crown of uncombed hair, slow-dancing to a loop of Celine Dion's "All BY MYSELF" in semi-darkness. Mood lighting provided by the glow of the television set to VH1's Rock of Love. Drinks provided by I-don't-know-what-flavor-green-is-but-I-think-Vick's-calls-it-original-flavored Nyquil.

Mid-dance, my ego flips on the light switch. Goddamn egos! They ruin everything! I was just getting into the chorus again (for the 6th time). The bossy, opinionated loudmouth that she is told me to get out of my stinky sick clothes and take a freaking shower. So here I am at work today, clean and feeling fresh and i think i'm looking kinda hot in an casual workwear way.

Big shout out to my overblown know-it-all newyawker ego who can 3 finger snap me back to reality. I thank thee for not letting thyself wallow and despair as queen of Loserdom!

wanna talk recession?

It's 1am and I can't fall asleep. So many thoughts are running through my head: all the stuff my sister threw out during her move, BBC news reporting that the toxic recession in the US is trickling down into the global economy, and OK! magazine reporting that celebrities are cutting back on their Christmas spending even though Christmas time as Macys so brilliantly coined is the "gift giving" season. I have one thought and that is that this recession has seriously made me think about my consumption habits, the things I throw away and the things I refuse to let go.

This year my family decided to have a Secret Santa. It's not because we couldn't afford to buy each other gifts but because we wanted to concentrate our individual efforts on buying something special for one person. How many times have we gone gift-shopping and picked up the same sweater or ipod for multiple people and how disingenuous is that?

We as a Western society have taken many things for granted. We have taken our material wealth for granted and we glutted ourselves on things that we never even thought we wanted. We took for granted the value of our homes and thought that this was something special that WE did rather than an error in the system. Keep the good times rolling, right? One of the things that really struck me over the past year was that countries that relied on importing grains for food could not afford them because of the demand for it due to biofuel. This in turn drove sharply higher grain prices. Countries could not afford to buy grain for food and in turn its people had to cut back on them or go hungry.

Yet I said more, more, more. We all chanted it.

I have personally thrown away clothes that I have never worn, let food rot in my refrigerator untouched, spent thousands of dollars on things that I never used. In light of the economic slowdown, I have spent less on things I don't need and really thought about what I value materially and spiritually.

What do I want? I want people to think about what they buy and how they consume. I want all our talented and creative people making innovative and inventive products that shine beauty and truth and I want the consuming masses to seek it if it's not there. I want to go into a store and find everything beautiful and seek the one beautiful thing that sings to me. I want American Consumerism to stop behaving like a bloated glutton and say no for once to the marketers forcing bland derivatives of true beauty down its throat. I want this recession to revolutionize how we think about our wants versus our needs.

Call me an an idealist but I think we can do it. All we needed was a catalyst to make it happen. We needed to be shaken up. I needed this change so I could put my faith back into what we create as a nation, as a society and as a generation.

I want to be Ong Bak but does that get in the way of GOOD EATING?

For the first time in a long time I got my body fat measured by my new personal trainer, Emile, who trained four of the contestants from last season's Biggest Loser show. I am officially on the "fit" side meaning that my body fat is between 15-20%. This totally threw me by surprise. I have never thought of myself as fit, maybe thin, definitely not fit. (Mental note to quite smoking once and for all!)

I am flashing back to when I was called Sumo Susan. I was 10 yrs old and overweight and I could call Ronald McDonald and Burger King my 2nd and 3rd best friends (Jane was and always will be my first BFF). I remember Mr. Poter (our gym teacher) measuring the body fat of everyone in gym class with the pinch test because our school was participating in the Presidential Physical Challenge. I was a whopping 32% (no pun intended). I didn't think much of it back then because I didn't know what was healthy. I had no concept of what was healthy and you know what, he never told us!

My parents showed me love through food and all I wanted was the international chicken fillet sandwich, fries, and the paper Burger King crown. The bonus was making my own drink concontions from the free refills on the fountain drinks. So the only thing I gained (no pun intended again) was my love for food. Even though it is officially cool to be a gastrophile or foodie, I have always been and will be a food lover. I think it is because I was born with extra-sensative taste buds. I've been judging every meal I've had with my previous one my whole life and I can relate how I feelings with all the foods I have eaten. If you ask me what I thought of the merguez at the facy restaurant in Morocco, I will say it was just ok and list out what was right about it and waht could have better. My first and foremost sensual taste experience was when I had my first bite of the supreme pizza from Chris' Pizzeria in East Rutherford, I think I must have been 8 yrs old. I was born to be a foodie because now I can taste anything and recreate it, make it my own. I digress, because my philosophy and passion for food deserves a post of its own.

Back to 2008, so working out definitely has its rewards. I feel better mentally and physically and all the extra neuroses I had pent up in my head have now been replaced by the slow burn in my hamstrings from the high leg kicks. It's so liberating to have a strong body. It is absolutely empowering. Who cares what I look like?! I can punch, punch, duck, punch, punch, high kick. That's right, I am kickboxing and once I rent and watch Ong Bak again, I am going to be a peaceful but potentially dangerous ass kicking machine.

You betta watch yo'self, before you wreck yo'self or just give me a hug and let's call it even.