Saturday, December 27, 2008

New Jersey

Dear Emi:

At this point in life, I pretty much consider myself a die-hard New Yorker. I live here, I love it here and while I am willing to believe that there may be a wild pack of horses that have the power to drag me out of this place, I hope to live within the boundaries of the five boroughs for the entirety of my life. Like most NYC transplants, I rep here shamelessly. And, for validation, I definitely hold onto the fact that my father was born in Queens, my grandmother in Brooklyn, my birth certificate definitively says New York City on it and for a time my family (with me in tow) lived at 12th and 4th. That said, I spent a solid 16 years of prime developmental time in New Jersey.

Turns out that no matter how hard one tries--When you are from New Jersey, December 26 is the day when you instantly shed all your adopted New York-ness with wild abandon, go back to New Jersey, to the mall specifically, and shop like you fucking mean it. Like a homing pigeon on a mission, you get in your car or on a bus and cross that bridge or tunnel because you have been CALLED HOME.

You enter the mall and your eyes pop... no sales tax! 60% off! mom's buying! You no longer give a holiday shit about cool, hip, trendy or handmade. You lick your plate clean at California Pizza Kitchen and actually remember to order the same things you used to order when you were 15. You delight in being given a purple plastic pager and told that your turn to nosh will come in 20-30 minutes. Lunch comes and it tastes like high school dates. You fight with your mother over BBQ chicken pizza and Arnold Palmer's like its 1995.

On December 27th, you will want boutiques and assymetrical clothing once more. On 12/27 you will return to free range and grass fed, surely. But one short day before that? You want chain stores, deep discounts, mass produced food and coupons. On December 26th, you are the most American ever. You heart parking lots and big cars and highways and all the new shopping opportunities being built on Route 3 or 4 (depending on which side of the family you are shopping with that day). You heart Cinnabon, not Magnolia. You are Fuck the Subway. You are Double Cheeseburger Please. You are Wait That's Only $35? I'll Take That Too Then. You are Yes I'll Take a Plastic Bag. You are Gap Old Navy Lord and Taylor Cheesecake Factory Nordstroms Modells Best Buy Brookstone. You are Can We Go To IKEA too?

For girls like me, the day after Christmas you become the infinite end consumer, as you might say. Whether one likes it or not.

//Lisa

PS. This was imported/slightly modified from a post on the other blog, as I thought you might like to read it even if it wasn't initially intended as a letter for you.

Pro/Con

Dear Emi:

I love/hate Christmas.

Who doesn't love tacky christmas lights and fat plastic christmas santas lining the block. Perhaps you have to be from Jersey (or apparently my block in Brooklyn) to understand, but overboard Christmas houses never fail to make me happy. And the eggnog and the classic holiday movies and the giving presents and the getting presents. And the food! All good things.

The problem with Christmas is that it seems that people save up all the crazy they have inside of them and then for one day in December (two or three if you are lucky)--let it ALL HANG OUT. And people appear to be accruing interest on their crazy. Which means that its crazy x [enter going interest rate on savings accounts here]. Lisa does not like.

In these days of economic woes, I submit that people should be saving up their money, not their crazy, for Christmas. I think we would all have a lot more fun.

xo,
Lisa

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Hello out there?

Dear Emi:

Although these letters are to you, they are also to everybody.

Readers who are not Emi-- go 'head and chime in!

xo,
Lisa

Dead ends.

Dear Emi:

I hate/detest/despise/loathe getting my hair done.

But now it is short and easy to love! And I didn't even have to leave my kitchen!

xo,
Lisa

Lobstah!

Dear Emi:

Are lobsters incredibly cheap in Sweden too? Here they are TOTALLY CHEAP because everyone is so poor that they have stopped buying luxury items and now there are too many lobsters on the market. The end result is that they are, at least for the moment, no longer a luxury item! SCORE.


Some people seem to have a problem with putting them in the pot, because, well, that's the part where you have to kill them. But not me! Turns out that I am a fearless lobster killer. Death comes with a bad hair day, sweatpants and the below pot.


Delicious makes me mean.


Sorry you had to die, lobster, but you were extremely tasty.

xo,
Lisa

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

A word of warning

Dear Emi:

Do not under any circumstances watch Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father as your heart will instantly break and you will never be okay again.


The only people who should watch it are:

1. People who want to suffer. (Akin to listening to Elliot Smith on the night of getting dumped by someone you love dearly.)
2. People who can turn their souls off on command.
3. People who aren't worried about their figures and feel okay about comfort eating entire containers of pomegranate chocolate chip ice cream at 12:45 since the world is broken, cannot be fixed and ice cream is the closest thing that approximates the now-gone-feeling-of-okay that was there before you had watched this movie.
4. People who need an I'm-dating-a-crazy-person-and-need-to-be-stopped-because-that-shit-is-real interventions.

Permanently-scarred-by-Dear-Zachary,
Lisa

Idiotic

Dear Emi:

I bought a fancy new digital camera on Black Friday. Of course, I ripped it out of the box and started taking pictures immediately--many of them to show to you! I photographed my new short hair and the lobster boiling incident and my mother trying to reclaim her youth at Forever 21!

Unfortunately, at the same time that I discovered my AMAZING and HILARIOUS photo taking skills (and newfound PHOTOGENIC-NESS!!!)... I lost the camera cord to my fancy new device.

This makes me: amazing, hilarious and photogenic, which is all nullified by the fact that I am an ASSHOLE.

Sigh,
Lisa

Friday, December 12, 2008

Reason #45691 that Lisa is lame.

Dear Emi:

I am the worst letter writer ever.

Winter ate me up!
The dog stole my will to blog!
Netflix Instant takes up all my time!
The new velour is too comfortable and I fall right to sleep!
I'm reading a mystery novel and I can't put it down!

Well, maybe not all that. But I'm back! More to come.

xo,
Lisa