thursday, december 27, 2001
okay, i'm jetting off to d.c. tomorrow for real. wooh! leanne and i AND JOHN CHABALKO are also going to meet up with a random pita reader here. any other fans dying to buy me a drink? come on down!

oh noooooooooooooo: rumors are swirling about the fate of the old 97s. it looks pretty clear that the band has been essentially dropped from elektra, though rhett has signed on for at least one solo album. which to me is kind of bullshit. but. word is they've got expanding families and stuff and wouldn't mind the time off. boooooo families. i've got another article if you want it (not online), but i don't think we're going to get the real story for a while yet. this is so not good at all.

wednesday, december 26, 2001
hi there. happy boxing day. my christmas was quite nice, thanks. i ate not one but two big dinners, a practice common to kids of divorce that really isn't as bad as it sounds; received some nice presents; beat both brothers in poker! i just got back from the rather gauche yet sometimes necessary day-after-christmas trip to the stores to return stuff. and so: new crushed-velvet curtain and "cotton cashmere" blanket instead of not-my-style picture frames. made out pretty well on that one!

in other news, i won i won i won! definitely sliding deeper into my ebay addiction, i realize. but how cool is that watch?!

tonight i get a ride back to nyc (major debt to steve for that one) and then i really am going to plane, train, or automobile down to d.c. for some serious booty-shakin'. can someone tell travis it's my birthday and we are clearly soulmates? thanks. later kids: laundry calls.

tuesday, december 25, 2001
merry xmas, everyone!

my gift to you: i'm going to tell you that the mexican is not a good movie, is a terrible movie in fact, and if you rent it despite your better instincts, you might find yourself wishing you'd gone for cats and dogs instead. there, i just saved you four bucks. now where's my present, huh?!

monday, december 24, 2001
saw lord of the rings yesterday. visually stunning and plenty entertaining, but not really my kind of movie. i was expecting it to be a little bit deeper, somehow. but it was good. and elijah, well, he's very pretty. and i had this crazy coffee drink featuring caramel, chocolate, and butterfingers. mmmmm. today i hope to find the used bookstore (to go xmas-shopping for steve, who has left it to the last minute as usual), read my book, and possibly help the moms bake cookies or something. yay christmas...

saturday, december 22, 2001
this quote makes me long for my news-reporting days: "it's global warming, dude. I don't care if the whole planet burns up in a hundred years. If I can get me a fish today, it's cool by me." well said, dude. although i'm very happy i get to wear my brand-new FDNY skully (thanks bets!) in this cheek-chapping weather.

friday, december 21, 2001
ahoy there mateys! i have no links for you, just some space-filling words. everyone is flying the coop, including me. which is just as well, cause our directv is out, with the working theory being that the boys upstairs from whom we bootleg it have failed to pay their bill. [update: it seems that the boys' tv was fine, and eventually justin figured out that our "4" button on the remote was stuck, preventing us from getting to that channel, which the tv needs to be on in order to get the satellite signal and which the "channel up" button was skipping for some still-inexplicable reason. a great deal of pressure was applied to the "channel 4" button and now everything is a-okay.] so happy holidays, all; i'm going back to jersey tomorrow for a few days, then i'll be back, then i might bomb on down to d.c. to catch the dismemberment plan on my birthday. i just can't think of anything better to do, and hardly anyone is going to be in town, and d-plan rock me harder than just about anything else, so. all i need is for leanne to say it's okay.

oh yeah! i have to tell you that i saw the Well, There Are Hotter Boys Than You, But You Are Still Pretty Freakin' Hot Construction Boy this morning. we had a quick chat as a crane lowered large unidentifiable metal objects onto the street. he was slightly embarrassed about his (extremely tall) hardhat; i inwardly berated myself for forgetting to put on lip gloss. one day, i tell you, everything will come together for us. we are meant to be.

thursday, december 20, 2001

am i not the greatest present-giver ever? i also gave this TRL-luvvin' girl a pavement cd, to kind of even things out.

we have discovered that wednesday night at swim is 80s night. in between suzy q and old-skool hip hop, holly even got her madonna.

great story on all the excellent, and strangely political, graffiti applied to the britney-in-vegas subway posters at mr. beller's neighborhood. just click on "defacing britney."

gross: pete yorn is now dating winona.

wednesday, december 19, 2001

last night at the otherwise-uneventful christmas party at tavern on the green, i discovered that betsy cannot resist the electric slide. i urged her on, of course, because we should all follow our dreams, you know? the results were quite humorous. but i swear to you her nose doesn't really look like this:

and now it's time for Random Stupid Internet Thing: what's your hobbit name? mine is daisy sandybanks of frogmorton.

tuesday, december 18, 2001
i don't have much for you today. were you as shocked as i was by the whole tom-drew split? or as delighted by how much of a doofus george w. is in that picture? or as skeptical that one in four brits has sex in a car after the office christmas party? well.

the truth about rudolph the red-nosed reindeer. he did in fact have a very shiny nose, but he also had a perfectly good self-image, it turns out.

yay, the fruit bats are coming to the merc. (where by the way i saw slobberbone saturday night. i think i liked them but can't say for sure.) and did i mention the spectacular, chocolate-and-peanut-butter-caliber double bill of d-plan and death cab? it's never too early to plan for these things.

monday, december 17, 2001

friday, december 14, 2001
so i was hanging out at my favorite local bar, swim, last night, digging the reggae, when in twirled chloe sevigny, all fashiony in a white fur jacket and black lace mini tutu. she has the most ridiculously bad, frizzed-out perm, like i haven't seen since my little-league days. she drank stella artois, a weird beer whose instant rise to hipness i have a really hard time understanding. her friends were also passing around a j.lo, which i don't know if that was okay because of all the jamaicans and incense floating around or because of the star power involved. hmmm. if i had had the opportunity to speak to her i would have asked her whether she thought winona was more punk than her. chloe, you see, lamented her limited punk status in an article earlier this year, saying she'd only stolen from the salvation army, whereas she had friends who had stolen from chanel. and now i have written entirely too much about the chloe sighting. as you were.

thursday, december 13, 2001
this is absolutely great: winona ryder arrested for shoplifting at saks.

really amazing photo site: frankieboots.com. i am pretty much blown away. check especially the 9-11 pics.

wednesday, december 12, 2001
oh man, there's still like five more albums from this year that i have to buy: the onion av club's best albums of 2001.

via whitney, a most insane time-waster: this 80s lyric quiz. let's compare notes later, okay?

tuesday, december 11
wow. two and a half days of work with a totally busted computer. not fun!

while i was gone, i grew an obsession with ebay. that was kind of fun. i bought a couple of cool gifts for people. and then i got caught up in a ridiculous last-minute bidding frenzy and, fortunately or unfortunately, won, which means i spent way too much money on an 1990 album from a pre-old 97s band called sleepy heroes that rhett and murry were in. i'm calling it my christmas present to myself.

salon on why women's mags don't print fiction anymore. the short-short answer is that they just suck, every last one of them.

thursday, december 6, 2001
people are clamoring for udpates. sor-ry! i've been b-u-s-y (truly a four-letter word). not just work but, you know, looking for rock posters online (my new obsession, thanks to slatch) and, of course, christmas crap. on that note, here are a couple of cool designy-type web shops that could help you fill those blank spots on your list: benza design and mousse shop. i went through about a hundred sites featured in instyle's online shopping guide, plus several more from lucky, and i really didn't find anything right. but you might. tell me if you know of any other cool gifty sites.

also, if you're in new york, mr. pink in chelsea is the place to go for vintage ornaments and lights. i got some of those old-school colored lights and some cool stripey balls in order to give our tree a bit more funky downtown flavor than it might have had if "classic" girl holly got to have all the fun...she's just lucky i didn't find the budweiser-bottle lights.

wow, that dean kamen (IT) guy is really crazy, huh?

and here is a whole story all about how sophisticated buffy is about sex (thanks nate!). all that remains to be seen is whether the writers will be brave enough to let this "unhealthy" relationship work. i think they'll be great together once buffy gets over her "no i can't love another vampire" hangup. ooh, and wait, here is a really funny buffy thing sent to me by a boy who wants to name his band "catherine's pita." thanks francisco!

that's all you get today. (ask not what the pita can do you for you.....)

tuesday, december 4, 2001
everybody look sharp, it's another nationwide terrorism alert.

remember IT, that mystery invention that had the web world buzzing a while back? it is, yes, a dorky-ass scooter. oh, the power of hype.

i was kind of upset the other night during project greenlight when the talkative, frattish dude got the go-ahead over the more maladjusted, artier dude just because he knew how to bullshit his way through a meeting. the execs clearly had major reservations about the guy's movie but because he was so personable and kissed their ass, he got the nod. anyway, looks like a cool series about how an indie movie gets made. and how cool are ben and matt?!

while i was watching "the royal tenenbaums" last week, i kept saying to myself, "whoa. this is a really great soundtrack." later i would amend it to "exquisite." now i have more info. and i also have this nytimes magazine piece on the director, wes anderson, whose movies are odd, funny, and completely unique, even if i don't completely get them.