As the Statue of Liberty shimmers in the distance like a ghostly sentinel in "On the Outs," its image of promise seems to belong to a country apart from the mean streets of Jersey City...

Thats the review of this movie/docudrama "on the outs" based in JC. I had no idea I lived in a blighted area. I think thats a little dramatic. How can a blighted area be full of brownstones, have a few very cool fine dinning resturants, hipsters crawling all over and have me living there? I don't buy that at all.

On another note, next week is vacation week! Woo hoo. I go to Detroit for business. I'll be staying in a delux W hotel- they have the "heavenly bed" which is heavenly. I bet the room is bigger than my entire apt. Then off to see momma ho and lilho. I can not wait :)

Yesterday I decided to take a hiatus from my shopping ban and go shopping. Apparently July is sale-o-ramma here and I couldn't resist. I restricted myself to buying things I actually need, like shoes and bags.

First for the shoes- $16.99 super duper wedges. The "it" shoe of the season. I decided to be adventerous and buy the melon colored ones.

Lesson learned: Sometimes going for the unexpected (color) pays off. These shoes are a hit.

Seondly the bags- now I don't really need a purse. Well I do (just ask lilho) but I am not a big purse person so I headed for the duffle bags. I need a gym bag. The Diane Von Furstenberg just is not cutting it for the gym. So I head over to the gym bag section. I look and don't see anything overly great. I saw a green old school adidas, but it just didn't work for me. So I head off to my secret corner. There is this one part of the sale section that is hidden where the tourists can't find it. Then I head for the bottom shelf. Many a great thing I have found on this very shelf. I begin to dig. All of the sudden I hear something. I look over and there is a huge roach. When I say huge I don't mean "I live in Buffalo and this is a big bug" I mean huge as in "I used to live with roaches and am not afraid of them" huge. This mofo was looking me right in the face, then crawled back up and into one of the bags on my fave shelf.

Lesson learned: Sometimes bargin hunting just is not worth it.

In any case I went back over to the normal section, left my secret place behind forever, and bought a no name duffel for $10. I'm probably better off this way. I mean I am tying to not be a label whore anymore right?!@

Holy Crap- Me and Mimi's night of insanity has landed us on Craigslist! Sweet!!!

So today a tall dark handsome man from my past called me and made my day. I just couldn't keep my excitement about that in and I had to share and I can't really tell anyone here about it because we have worked together previously. My new favorite age for a man is 37. I am now content for the next 24 hours at least.

So last night I was watching TV in order to chill out before bed. Because network TV can be crap I turned to PBS. And i stumbled upon the most interesting documentary. It was about Newark.

A little background:
New Jersey has huge problems so politics are very big in NJ. Northern NJ being so close to NYC has even bigger problems. This is due to many factors: huge value of the land-major water ways. ports to supply NYC, terror threats being close to NYC- but no money to fund prevention (the 93 terrorists were from NJ) and HUGE political corruption, pollution, kick backs, the list goes on and on. Frequently people can not believe things like this are allowed to go on and comment how this would never happen in New York.

So the documentary was about the most recent mayoral election in Newark. There were two candidates- the incumbent and an ivy league young guy. Both were black. So basically the whole point of the film was to show the insane amount of corruption by the current mayor and how the people of Newark are just shooting themselves in the foot by keeping this man who has been in office for 30 some years in office. Yet they continue to just because he is viewed as more black than other people.

So with out going into this huge replay of the story i'll just go into how corrupt this man is. He had the challengers office broken into several times, bugged his office, used police intimidation for any local business displaying a campaign sign for his challenger, then made the businesses give a donation to his campaign, went around town and in plain sight defied a federal order and took down 250 billboards in one day, at any political gathering would plainly disrupt the event, attempted tampering with voting machines, using the police to detain members of his challengers campaign by saying they were terrorists (clearly these men were just journalists), using his body guards to physically break any journalists equipment who wrote unflattering things about the mayor, busing in people from Philly as paid volunteers and saying they were from Newark and unpaid. And the list goes on and on.

I was in shock. These things are actually on film, no here say or rumors. Actually on tape. People always said this happened but I never believed it really could happen and yet HE was still elected for another term. This man who was destroying their city in front of their very eyes. The city is a crap hole, people call it the war zone. The mayor just keeps the cycle of poverty going and they elected him again. Apparently this is what they call they Marion Barry syndrome (the DC mayor who got caught smoking crack and was still re-elected.

I will never buy another over rated apple anything again. I totally got sucked into the posh I'm a new yorker I must consume apple products. Apparently my computer is a big fire hazzard and I had no ide. I used to leave it on all the time. They are sending me the parts to fix it. Also I have a mere 3000 songs on my laptop and my f'in hard drive is full. Now I have to drop $150 to buy more memory otherwise my ipod wont work its this whole issue. PLus I have to pay some one to install it. This issue plagued my afternoon yesterday. F apple!

Yes it does appear that at times my life is more fab than yours. However you seem to forget how I lived at Stony Brook for 4 1/2 years. Those 4 1/2 years were very unfab. For example:

Living in a dorm room with 3 girls. I slept on the futon. The came to fix our window in the middle of winter and accidentally screwed it open (meaning we could not close it and I slept right beneath it) in Nov. and never fixed it.

Making the choice between quarter drafts and doing laundry. Laundry never won that.

Having no money on my meal card so I'd either: buy 12 ramen noodle packs for a dollar and eat only those, or steal saltines and jelly from the cafeteria to make mini saltine sandwiches. This was interspersed by attending any event no matter how retarded it was to get the free pizza they served (I am not jewish and I was at a few of those events, also the lgba events, and various frat parties)

Not being able to afford groceries even when I had a job, so I'd go home and go grocery shopping in mom's fridge.

Living in New York/Stony Brook for the summer and being so broke that me and my friends would scope out places that kept the toilet paper and new bottles of hand soap under the sinks in the bathrooms and then stealing it.

Drinking 40s (well ok I still do that but at the time it was not by choice)

So as you can see I have had to pay my dues just like everyone else. Some day you'll have a c-list celeb studded life too...

I have to make this short and sweet because it is way past my bed time and my work out has taken the best out of me. However I had a c list celeb sighting- I saw the personal trainer they made over on queer eye. He was really dark tan and had more highlights than me. I guess thats what happens when you let gay new yorkers make you over (no offense pmt). Im counting it as a legit sighting and I am still on track for my 1.5 sightings a week.

Do I have a problem?

PS my foodie obsession lover (Jeffrey Chodrow works in my building I found out today, sigh we breathe (sp?) the same air every day).

I joined NetFlix due to my lack of cable. It's not really that I can't have cable it is just insanely expensive. With my last roommate we had a $200 a month cable bill. I just can not see how that is necessary in any way shape or form. So for $15 a month I can rent as many movies as I'd like. I think T-Dog used to belong to this?! I'll let everyone know if it's really worth it...

PS Today is my first day of training. Ugh. I so don't want to work out, but I guess my extra 50 pounds just is not going to go away by itself. I hope this is all worth it...

Ok I love Dave Matthews and they are playing in August at Red Rocks in Colorado. I really really want to go. Anyone interested in joining me? I don't know anyone who likes DMB enough to shell out the cash to go there to see them, but this is going to be an amazing show. Ugh- any takers? Seriously if you know anyone who would be interested this is going to be a show of a lifetime...