Met my dear friend and fellow comedian Susan Alexander for happy hour on Friday. She was taking me out for my birthday. I was supposed to meet her at Morton's at 5:30. I arrived at 5:32. Susan likes starchy business hangouts with dark leather and mahogany wood. I think she'd like to marry a suit. Susan chastised me for being two minutes late. I consider myself to be a very punctual person, to me two minutes either way is on time. Not to Susan. But she knows me and was prepared for my "tardiness" and had a glass of pinot grigio waiting for me and appetizers. There are two types of people in life: drivers and passengers. I am a driver. Susan is a driver. However when I am with Susan I am comfortable being her passenger. It's relaxing and freeing because I trust that she will not crash. She takes care of all the details and never lets even my water glass get anywhere close to empty. Corrects my posture. And orders my meat medium rare when I ask for medium. It's nice.
Susan brought along her best gal pal Suzanne. I've met Suzanne twice with Susan at various comedy shows. I've always been drawn to her. I love strong women. They are BFF's from college. Suzanne is a big real estate power success woman. The kind that gets all the good lines in the boardroom on primetime dramas. I'd love to see her in her natural environment sometime. I bet she's a tiger. She's also a Republican and married to a senator. I really wanted to hear Suzanne talk about her viewpoints on various issues, just to know what makes her tick. I'm smitten. Susan would not let us talk about politics and was kicking me under the table. So we started talking about dating.
Susan is one of my best friends. She loves hearing all of the dirty details of my sexploits and I do tell her everything. There's a genuine, from-the-soul smile that lights up her face when she calls me a "whore." She loves to celebrate sex. She always toasts me after she calls me a whore which. I would calculate that we toast every 5 minutes to "you whore! *cheers* I love it! *cheers* Such a whore! *cheers* dirty whore!"...Truth is I am really not. I don't think anyway. And I wasn't feeling like a whore that day. Susan was disgusted by this and called me a girl. She said she wanted her man friend back. The whore one that wears crotchy jeans and has chest hair and is confident. Suzanne agreed. Non-whore talk was not becoming of me apparently. Suzanne told me I need to live my life more. Maybe they're right. Maybe I should get involved in a naked makeout later.
Susan picked up the birthday tab and we put Suzanne in a car. She was leaving the city for the weekend. Susan and I had a Mr. Frosty and walked over from Midtown East to Midtown West to Ars Nova to see Mel & El's new show. Mel & El are dear friends of mine and they got a great development deal and run at one of the top Off Broadway venues in town. We were a bit early for the show so we ducked into a nearby watering hole called 'disiac. It had a great outdoor patio. There wasn't room so we sat at the bar where we noticed amazing looking frozen concoctions. We tried the frozen raspberry cosmo. I took a photo of them and uploaded to facebook. Susan loves "press." We then tried the frozen margaritas. Bingo. We felt them at first sip. Susan commented loudly for the whole bar to hear that we were drinking "Natalie Holloways!" - which got a huge laugh from everyone. And a few hisses. She then all but made me sign a non-disclosure agreement in blood acknowledging that drinking "Natalie Holloways" is her intellectual property and that I would not take that joke from her and use it onstage. I would never. But Susan is a fierce comedy business woman. She's told club owners she would "cut them like a cancer if they fucked with her money!" You need people like Susan in your life. This is why I let her drive.
At Mel & El we saw Ben Lerman and Jessica Delfino. They sat behind us and were dressed in nautical attire. Mel & El were incredible and received a well deserved standing ovation. I gave them hugs after. It's really exciting when your friends are doing something incredible. Go see them.
Susan and I stumbled back into 'disiac for more "Natalie Holloways" (courtesy: Susan Alexander). This time we got the patio. When I found myself on a first name basis with our waitress "Anabel" and involved in a deep conversation "en espanol" I knew I was toast. This happens when I drink tequila past a certain point. I get bilingual. And I am not bilingual. It must be my latin identity issues.
Susan and I split ways. We were drunk and dangerous. I got on the train back to Ass-toria. When I came up from underground I had two missed calls from Susan. And three texts. All of them said something along the lines of "such a slut" - "you whore" - "dangerous!" I had another text from a boy inviting me for a nightcap. Who has a nightcap these days? Maybe this would be my naked makeout. I remembered Jodi Wasserman lived in the area. I texted her. She told me to meet her at the diner. Then the potential naked makeout texted me his address. Then Jodi texted me the address to the diner. What do do. How do I want to comfort myself? With a naked makeout or with food and Jodi? Hmmmm. I asked God to make the decision for me.
The next day fellow comedian Jenny Rubin came over to my apartment. We were to co-host the red carpet for the Miss Fag Hag pageant (a benefit for The Hetrick Martin Institute) at Comix the next day. Jenny is hilarious and Jenny is a mess. She was two hours late because she dropped needle and thread on the floor of her apartment and couldn't find it and was worried her animals would die. I met her at the subway station and waited for her to come down the stairs. I felt like I was a housewife at the airport waiting for my husband to come back from Iraq. I love Jenny and I hadn't seen her in a long time. It was a great reunion. We fell into step immediately. We ordered Mexican takeout and got to work on googling the red carpet luminaries that we'd be interviewing. One of the show's producers, Shawn Hollenbach, who is also a great comedian, called to check in on us. We spoke to him on speakerphone from my blackberry. It felt like Charlie's Angels. Shawn sounded high strung and nervous. This was a big event and he was in the eye of the storm. Jenny seemed to calm him down. She has that affect. if I were to pick someone to be deserted on an island with it might be Jenny Rubin. She can really make me laugh and I don't think we run out of things to say to each other.
I was running late the next day and spent $100 on cabs to and from Ass-toria back and forth getting dry cleaning picked up and getting ready for the red carpet. I was fifteen minutes late due to traffic but still early. I had the best time with Jenny on the carpet. We talked to Broadway stars, models, TV and film stars, drag queens. So much fun. I fell in love with Jon Wolfe Nelson from "The L Word" on the carpet. Gentle, sweet, kind and stunning.
My ex-boyfriend / best friend Jeremy was on hand taking red carpet photos for Jenny and I. Many people don't know how to react when they see us together post-breakup. They can't comprehend that we could still be friends and that there were never dishes thrown. But we're the best of friends and always will be. Jeremy, Jenny and I took at seat in Comix to watch the show. Leah stopped by our booth and we shared an awkward open mouthed kiss. It was full of subtext. I didn't try to figure out the subtext. My inner Meryl Streep was off duty for the evening. The show was about to start. All I can say is wow. I can't remember the last time I had that much fun in the audience of a show! It was electric. I didn't want it to end. It was such a spectacular event and I was so proud of Shawn, Paul Case and Adolpho Blaire who conceived, organized, and produced this amazing evening from scratch. Not an easy feat and this was one of the best things I have ever seen in New York. Ever. I can't wait until next year.
I threw my red carpet suit onto the floor of my apartment and faceplanted into bed. I woke up at 1 AM with a text from a friend/fellow comic Sara. She said she had just broken up with her boyfriend and had moved out and needed help assembling IKEA furniture. I immediately sobered and texted her back to make sure she was okay. She was. I was prepared to jump into a cab to help her with whatever she needed, like an on-call wet nurse. Or something like that.
Monday I woke up thirty-onederful. I didn't want to get out of bed. My blackberry was buzzing with a steady stream of facebook updates from birthday well-wishers. It's nice to feel loved every five minutes on your birthday. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad day. I was in a funk. I didn't want to drink my face off and celebrate. I turned down drinks and this and that. I decided to meet Jeremy at his place, my old apartment, to pick up the camera so I could download the red carpet photos. I wanted to have a very oprah birthday this year. I wanted to be at home, in my room, writing out life plans and goals. Perhaps write some new material and blog and update my god-awful website that needs an overhaul. I'm out drinking pretty much most nights of the year. It comes with doing comedy. I wanted to do be alone in my own space and get some work done on my birthday. Jeremy surprised me with cake. He and my shih-tzu Cosmo sang happy birthday to me. We went for a drink down the street. I felt sad about us. It sneaks up on me sometimes and I didn't want to cry so I started an argument. I went to my friend Mara Herron's after. She's an amazing comedian and a new friend. It wouldn't be an oprah birthday after all. Mara bought me a dozen yellow roses for friendship. And had a bottle of white wine and hummus and cheese and grapes and it was yummy. We sat on her fire escape and drank the bottle and smoked cigarettes and I probably talked to much. We talked about weekend plans and I told her I was helping my friend Sara assemble IKEA furniture. Mara said "you don't have to go - that was a mass text - everyone got it." I felt like a douche. Here I thought I was the only one who got that text because she needed ME. And I was willing to hop into a cab at 1 AM to clean up the mess. Mara dropped her glass of wine and thankfully it didn't kill someone five stories below us. We hope. It was getting late so I headed back to Ass-toria. Jeremy sent me a text-pic of Cosmo. That's our way of saying sorry we got in a fight.
Tuesday my pal Kambri took me out for a birthday drink. We were supposed to have "just one." We never have "just one." And its because we always have the best time. I once thought that I was the definition of burning the candle at both ends - until I met Kambri. She is a very busy woman who literally works 24/7 so our get togethers are rare and time always flies by way too quickly. We laugh, share and laugh. I had sent Kambri my last blog entry on Jodi Wasserman a few days ago and told her to read it "when she had to take a long number two." As soon as I sat at our table she informed me that women never take a long number two. That that is a guy thing and women are in and out. We then moved on to discussing the tits that I had written about seeing on Jodi Wasserman. It was suddenly time for American Idol. Kambri is addicted to that show so we promptly left the quaint wine bar and bought a bottle of white from the nearby package store and picked up shrimp pad thai on the way to my apartment where we would watch the season finale. In the whirlwind of everything I had forgotten that my roommate and fellow comedian (and daughter!) Wendy Jo is gone for the whole summer on tour. She subletted her room to a sweet girl from Texas by way of China who I don't think speaks English. We haven't had enough dialogue for me to figure that one out. Kambri (who is a tall drink of blonde water at 6 feet tall) and I busted in on my poor foreigner roommate (who is all but 4 inches tall) and her "cousin" (who I suspected and then later Kambri also suspected, is not really her "cousin." Unless "cousin" is mandarin for fuckbuddy) Kambri and I didn't want to invade so we retreated to my room where we sat at the edge of the bed and ate shrimp pad thai, drank the $7 jumbo-bottle of pinot grigio over my ironing board / table and watched American Idol. Kambri loved me and Wendy/Soon Yi's apartment and thought it would be perfect for she and her husband.
When the coast was clear we went back to the living room where we finished off the wine and watched parts of "Glee" and "Real Housewives of NJ." We weren't really paying attention and were in a spirited debate about naked makeouts. Kambri is of the school of thought that a naked makeout is really sex. Jury is out. I walked Kambri back to her apartment because I was convinced she needed my protection on the streets of Ass-toria at 10 PM.
So there you have it. That's my birthday re-cap.
Susan brought along her best gal pal Suzanne. I've met Suzanne twice with Susan at various comedy shows. I've always been drawn to her. I love strong women. They are BFF's from college. Suzanne is a big real estate power success woman. The kind that gets all the good lines in the boardroom on primetime dramas. I'd love to see her in her natural environment sometime. I bet she's a tiger. She's also a Republican and married to a senator. I really wanted to hear Suzanne talk about her viewpoints on various issues, just to know what makes her tick. I'm smitten. Susan would not let us talk about politics and was kicking me under the table. So we started talking about dating.
Susan is one of my best friends. She loves hearing all of the dirty details of my sexploits and I do tell her everything. There's a genuine, from-the-soul smile that lights up her face when she calls me a "whore." She loves to celebrate sex. She always toasts me after she calls me a whore which. I would calculate that we toast every 5 minutes to "you whore! *cheers* I love it! *cheers* Such a whore! *cheers* dirty whore!"...Truth is I am really not. I don't think anyway. And I wasn't feeling like a whore that day. Susan was disgusted by this and called me a girl. She said she wanted her man friend back. The whore one that wears crotchy jeans and has chest hair and is confident. Suzanne agreed. Non-whore talk was not becoming of me apparently. Suzanne told me I need to live my life more. Maybe they're right. Maybe I should get involved in a naked makeout later.
Susan picked up the birthday tab and we put Suzanne in a car. She was leaving the city for the weekend. Susan and I had a Mr. Frosty and walked over from Midtown East to Midtown West to Ars Nova to see Mel & El's new show. Mel & El are dear friends of mine and they got a great development deal and run at one of the top Off Broadway venues in town. We were a bit early for the show so we ducked into a nearby watering hole called 'disiac. It had a great outdoor patio. There wasn't room so we sat at the bar where we noticed amazing looking frozen concoctions. We tried the frozen raspberry cosmo. I took a photo of them and uploaded to facebook. Susan loves "press." We then tried the frozen margaritas. Bingo. We felt them at first sip. Susan commented loudly for the whole bar to hear that we were drinking "Natalie Holloways!" - which got a huge laugh from everyone. And a few hisses. She then all but made me sign a non-disclosure agreement in blood acknowledging that drinking "Natalie Holloways" is her intellectual property and that I would not take that joke from her and use it onstage. I would never. But Susan is a fierce comedy business woman. She's told club owners she would "cut them like a cancer if they fucked with her money!" You need people like Susan in your life. This is why I let her drive.
At Mel & El we saw Ben Lerman and Jessica Delfino. They sat behind us and were dressed in nautical attire. Mel & El were incredible and received a well deserved standing ovation. I gave them hugs after. It's really exciting when your friends are doing something incredible. Go see them.
Susan and I stumbled back into 'disiac for more "Natalie Holloways" (courtesy: Susan Alexander). This time we got the patio. When I found myself on a first name basis with our waitress "Anabel" and involved in a deep conversation "en espanol" I knew I was toast. This happens when I drink tequila past a certain point. I get bilingual. And I am not bilingual. It must be my latin identity issues.
Susan and I split ways. We were drunk and dangerous. I got on the train back to Ass-toria. When I came up from underground I had two missed calls from Susan. And three texts. All of them said something along the lines of "such a slut" - "you whore" - "dangerous!" I had another text from a boy inviting me for a nightcap. Who has a nightcap these days? Maybe this would be my naked makeout. I remembered Jodi Wasserman lived in the area. I texted her. She told me to meet her at the diner. Then the potential naked makeout texted me his address. Then Jodi texted me the address to the diner. What do do. How do I want to comfort myself? With a naked makeout or with food and Jodi? Hmmmm. I asked God to make the decision for me.
The next day fellow comedian Jenny Rubin came over to my apartment. We were to co-host the red carpet for the Miss Fag Hag pageant (a benefit for The Hetrick Martin Institute) at Comix the next day. Jenny is hilarious and Jenny is a mess. She was two hours late because she dropped needle and thread on the floor of her apartment and couldn't find it and was worried her animals would die. I met her at the subway station and waited for her to come down the stairs. I felt like I was a housewife at the airport waiting for my husband to come back from Iraq. I love Jenny and I hadn't seen her in a long time. It was a great reunion. We fell into step immediately. We ordered Mexican takeout and got to work on googling the red carpet luminaries that we'd be interviewing. One of the show's producers, Shawn Hollenbach, who is also a great comedian, called to check in on us. We spoke to him on speakerphone from my blackberry. It felt like Charlie's Angels. Shawn sounded high strung and nervous. This was a big event and he was in the eye of the storm. Jenny seemed to calm him down. She has that affect. if I were to pick someone to be deserted on an island with it might be Jenny Rubin. She can really make me laugh and I don't think we run out of things to say to each other.
I was running late the next day and spent $100 on cabs to and from Ass-toria back and forth getting dry cleaning picked up and getting ready for the red carpet. I was fifteen minutes late due to traffic but still early. I had the best time with Jenny on the carpet. We talked to Broadway stars, models, TV and film stars, drag queens. So much fun. I fell in love with Jon Wolfe Nelson from "The L Word" on the carpet. Gentle, sweet, kind and stunning.
My ex-boyfriend / best friend Jeremy was on hand taking red carpet photos for Jenny and I. Many people don't know how to react when they see us together post-breakup. They can't comprehend that we could still be friends and that there were never dishes thrown. But we're the best of friends and always will be. Jeremy, Jenny and I took at seat in Comix to watch the show. Leah stopped by our booth and we shared an awkward open mouthed kiss. It was full of subtext. I didn't try to figure out the subtext. My inner Meryl Streep was off duty for the evening. The show was about to start. All I can say is wow. I can't remember the last time I had that much fun in the audience of a show! It was electric. I didn't want it to end. It was such a spectacular event and I was so proud of Shawn, Paul Case and Adolpho Blaire who conceived, organized, and produced this amazing evening from scratch. Not an easy feat and this was one of the best things I have ever seen in New York. Ever. I can't wait until next year.
I threw my red carpet suit onto the floor of my apartment and faceplanted into bed. I woke up at 1 AM with a text from a friend/fellow comic Sara. She said she had just broken up with her boyfriend and had moved out and needed help assembling IKEA furniture. I immediately sobered and texted her back to make sure she was okay. She was. I was prepared to jump into a cab to help her with whatever she needed, like an on-call wet nurse. Or something like that.
Monday I woke up thirty-onederful. I didn't want to get out of bed. My blackberry was buzzing with a steady stream of facebook updates from birthday well-wishers. It's nice to feel loved every five minutes on your birthday. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad day. I was in a funk. I didn't want to drink my face off and celebrate. I turned down drinks and this and that. I decided to meet Jeremy at his place, my old apartment, to pick up the camera so I could download the red carpet photos. I wanted to have a very oprah birthday this year. I wanted to be at home, in my room, writing out life plans and goals. Perhaps write some new material and blog and update my god-awful website that needs an overhaul. I'm out drinking pretty much most nights of the year. It comes with doing comedy. I wanted to do be alone in my own space and get some work done on my birthday. Jeremy surprised me with cake. He and my shih-tzu Cosmo sang happy birthday to me. We went for a drink down the street. I felt sad about us. It sneaks up on me sometimes and I didn't want to cry so I started an argument. I went to my friend Mara Herron's after. She's an amazing comedian and a new friend. It wouldn't be an oprah birthday after all. Mara bought me a dozen yellow roses for friendship. And had a bottle of white wine and hummus and cheese and grapes and it was yummy. We sat on her fire escape and drank the bottle and smoked cigarettes and I probably talked to much. We talked about weekend plans and I told her I was helping my friend Sara assemble IKEA furniture. Mara said "you don't have to go - that was a mass text - everyone got it." I felt like a douche. Here I thought I was the only one who got that text because she needed ME. And I was willing to hop into a cab at 1 AM to clean up the mess. Mara dropped her glass of wine and thankfully it didn't kill someone five stories below us. We hope. It was getting late so I headed back to Ass-toria. Jeremy sent me a text-pic of Cosmo. That's our way of saying sorry we got in a fight.
Tuesday my pal Kambri took me out for a birthday drink. We were supposed to have "just one." We never have "just one." And its because we always have the best time. I once thought that I was the definition of burning the candle at both ends - until I met Kambri. She is a very busy woman who literally works 24/7 so our get togethers are rare and time always flies by way too quickly. We laugh, share and laugh. I had sent Kambri my last blog entry on Jodi Wasserman a few days ago and told her to read it "when she had to take a long number two." As soon as I sat at our table she informed me that women never take a long number two. That that is a guy thing and women are in and out. We then moved on to discussing the tits that I had written about seeing on Jodi Wasserman. It was suddenly time for American Idol. Kambri is addicted to that show so we promptly left the quaint wine bar and bought a bottle of white from the nearby package store and picked up shrimp pad thai on the way to my apartment where we would watch the season finale. In the whirlwind of everything I had forgotten that my roommate and fellow comedian (and daughter!) Wendy Jo is gone for the whole summer on tour. She subletted her room to a sweet girl from Texas by way of China who I don't think speaks English. We haven't had enough dialogue for me to figure that one out. Kambri (who is a tall drink of blonde water at 6 feet tall) and I busted in on my poor foreigner roommate (who is all but 4 inches tall) and her "cousin" (who I suspected and then later Kambri also suspected, is not really her "cousin." Unless "cousin" is mandarin for fuckbuddy) Kambri and I didn't want to invade so we retreated to my room where we sat at the edge of the bed and ate shrimp pad thai, drank the $7 jumbo-bottle of pinot grigio over my ironing board / table and watched American Idol. Kambri loved me and Wendy/Soon Yi's apartment and thought it would be perfect for she and her husband.
When the coast was clear we went back to the living room where we finished off the wine and watched parts of "Glee" and "Real Housewives of NJ." We weren't really paying attention and were in a spirited debate about naked makeouts. Kambri is of the school of thought that a naked makeout is really sex. Jury is out. I walked Kambri back to her apartment because I was convinced she needed my protection on the streets of Ass-toria at 10 PM.
So there you have it. That's my birthday re-cap.
