State of the Union

Get it? I'm so broke its painful. All I wanted to do was work one day this week before going away and no one will hire me. I've put myself out there in every capacity and there's just nothing for me to do. So I thought I'd give a little Adria's State of the Union address to catch up on what's been accomplished since I started this blog.

• I successful quit my restaurant job, burning no bridges and having very few regrets.
• Since leaving I've become better friends with some of the other waitresses
• They let me come back and work a couple of shifts here and there
• I have a lifetime discount/can get a free salad if I come in alone anytime.
• I ran the half-marathon in 2 hours and 7 minutes and I can still run
• I haven't run more than 4 miles since I completed the race.
• I have been involved in two unpaid theatre productions 

• Not a single agent or manager has come to see said productions
• I made a slew of hopefully helpful contacts through these theatres
• I finally did stand-up, I didn't suck at it, and I'm doing it again twice in July!
• I've taken vacations. Real vacations! I went to Portsmouth, NH (where I ate the best lobster roll ever-->) 

• Rockport, MA-->
• And I'm going to Atlanta/Florida!

• I have managed to scrape by on making less money by things like:
• Getting my security deposit back on my old apartment
• Getting a part in The Smurfs
• Prostitution
• Oh, I'm kidding, get over yourselves.
• I nagged my way into getting a line in a movie.
• I did not whore myself into it.
• I'd like to think I did a good job.
• The director was incredibly nice to me.
• Who cares, they paid me.
• I had fun, too.
• I just spelled paid wrong 3 times (payd, payed, paiyd)...I'm a moron.
• I got:
• A raincoat
• An umbrella
• Rain boots
• Luggage
• Inducted in the "I might be an adult now" hall of fame
• We finished "Seeking", the play
• AND had a reading!
• I moved to midtown, and I don't like it. And that's okay. Because I love my apartment, I love my roommate and I don't hate the neighborhood.
• I'm "moving" to LA...in August.

So yeah, that's where we are right now, folks. That and I saw myself in the trailer for The Sorcerer's Apprentice last night before Toy Story 3...it's kind of lame, but it's definitely the first trailer I've been in. And it was a Principal role, so what if we didn't talk! Here's the screen shot:

I'm in the cardigan with the glasses on behind the gorgeous blonde, and R is to my left, your right...behind the gorgeous blonde. Sigh.

Okay, off to bed in hopes of not staying up until 3:30 am tonight and starting my new book, Just Kids by Patti Smith. 

A

PS: I just watched Being John Malkovich for the first time (I know, 11 years late, I know. I know) and umm, wow. Charlie Kaufman–just too good.

To Infinity...and Neil Young

I'm on a Neil Young kick, it just won't stop. He's kind of a scary looking dude to put a picture of on the blog, but I'm not going for aesthetics here, if I were I'd figure out html or something, so I give you, Neil Young:

It might have something to do with this lyric that hit me the other day

Old man look at my life,

Twenty four

and there's so much more

I'm into poignant-age/lyrics related to recent birthdays. For example, on my twentieth birthday I spent half the night crying because the last verse of The Circle Game is  So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty. It just ends there, like that's the oldest he can be. Great, thanks Joni. I've been thinking lately about getting Circle Game lyrics tattooed on my person. The current idea is we can't return/we can only look behind from where we came , but that might be too depressing to have tattooed on one's rib cage, so the royal we is still in negotiations here.

Anyway, I'm blogging at 3:30 am because I just got back from seeing Toy Story 3. Which was...fucking bomb. Like da bomb, not a bomb. Like awesome. 

I didn't even know that I missed Buzz Lightyear and Woody, but apparently I did. Oh, and it totally made me cry. Pixar are a bunch of assholes, that's all I have to say. How do they keep making movies rated "G" that make every adult I know cry? They're like made out of fairy dust and hired puppeteers to tug at our heartstrings (what in the name of Christ/Allah/Moses/L. Ron Hubbard am I talking about? "puppeteers to tug at our heartstrings"? It must be 3 am because that was purely nightmarish writing.)

Birthday weekend was a huge success! I had really low expectations and as a result, had a really great time. I made so much food yesterday that I didn't know I could ever pull off, so for that I am proud. The zucchini tarts were fucking magnificent. I'm serious, if there were any left I'd be lying here with them all over my chest, pie crust in my belly button. It's too hot for human contact, but I'd take contact with a pie crust tart. I'm not going to lie to you people, I'd take it.

In other news, the race between myself and The South is still pending, tied 1-1. There was a close call today where I pronounced cottage cheese COT-age cheese, and there was discussion of it sounding Southern, but I wasn't sure if that meant that I was winning, or The South was, so we called it a draw and I had a spoonful of 1% with pineapple. Unless something dramatic happens between now and Thursday night I'm pretty sure that the competition will remain tied until I actually arrive in The South, when we can resume the tally. Not sure if I'll be blogging from down there, mostly because my boyfriend makes fun of me when I talk about my blog. He's just jealous that 14 people like me on the internet. 

I think its bedtime, the Neil Young playlist is about to end and I've got very few words left in me that don't pertain to the baubles of sweat forming under my knees and dripping down my legs right now. With that image, I bid you adieu.

A

Keeping Score

The South-1, Adria-1


My new luggage order came the other day, to my parents' house (NJ taxes=way less than NYC taxes). As someone who generally travels by loading up her old gymnastics team duffel (circa 1995, this is NOT a joke) and throwing the rest of the stuff in some sort of large purse, or for a short time rocked an awesome vintage leather duffel bag (courtesy of the "Across The Universe" props department), until and following the point when the leather straps broke, were then tied back on, and then duct taped back on. There was also the time when I went to London for a semester and brought two huge rolling suitcases and upon arrival at Heathrow realized that the metal rolling handle was about to...OH SHIT IT BROKE! Yeah, that was fun. You'd think I'd have repaired it, but no, I just waited until it was time to fly home, took a cab to the airport and then paid for a dolley to carry it. Totally would have been cheaper to buy a new suitcase and take the Tube. Dumbass. So yeah, on this note, I am kicking The South's ass by having actual luggage!

Sure, it's small, but it's a carry-on and sure beats my ratty old Herve Chapillier shoulder bag. And plus, it was $75 and is DVF, so suck on that, label whores. It's not quite as cool as the vintage leather, but it's also probably not stained, broken, and full of hippie-background actor pubes.

Tales of Yore

Today, while I have another hour and twenty minutes of temping ahead of me I'm going to tell you another story from the vault. Before I do that, however, I just want you all to know what I'm doing right now, just so you can adequately appreciate the ridiculousness that is our current society: I am taking an insurance reduction driving safety course online. I literally just have to have the window open for the alloted time period and answer questions about driving like someone who is not walking through life with a hole in their brain. And pay $35. And then my insurance goes down. Because I have a disgusting number of points on my license. Because I was speeding like I have a hole in my brain. Just kidding, it was over the course of a few years and about 10 too many road trips.Whatever, when I go to LA I need auto insurance and since I don't have any right now (did you seriously think that my parents would keep me on their plan when it was going to cost them an extra $1 trillion because their dumbass daughter is one point shy of losing her license? When she lives in Manhattan? Yeah. No.) I need to reduce that cost. So I'm keeping that window open until my 6 hour driving course is complete. Baller. No more speeding, by the way. Duh. So, anyway, back to days past...

My birthday is on Sunday, which I've mentioned, and in preparation for the 24th anniversary of that 17 hour labor I'm going to present you with a slideshow (except I don't know how to do that, haHA!) of photos from my birthdays throughout the years. Enjoy.

 

3rd Birthday (R+C always there)

 

6th Birthday? (Flanked By R+C)

 

9th Birthday (Stonewashed much?)

 

21st Birthday

Early-22nd Birthday (college edition)

 

22nd Birthday (NYC edition)

And finally, 23rd birthday. Oh, that's not me. That's a visual depiction of what I felt like the next morning, with me played by Really Bear. Whom you have all heard tales of, and now you get to see him. He was hurting that morning. But at least he had his Blackberry.

On my 21st birthday I kicked over a homeless man's change can and ran away laughing. He almost beat up my friends. On my 22nd birthday I called my dad at 4 am while sitting on the curb somewhere in the city (still no idea where) saying "I don't know where I am", and when he almost called the police, my friend found me and was then able to get on the phone and assure him, "Richard, I am with Adria, she is fine, we're taking her back to the apartment now." And then she tried to get us a cab but no one would let me into their vehicle. Last year was pretty tame though, unless you count the thunderstorm that ruined my whole "east river park picnic" motif, and my dress (although, not really because I'm actually wearing that dress today). Here's knowing (not hoping) that this year will be tamer, healthier and less drama-ridden. (Because this year, for the first time in far too long, I finally can't spend the second half of my birthday crying about the guy I like not showing up...actually, scratch that, I could, but he'd be introducing his bruised face to his family next week instead of me if he pulled a stunt like that. Especially since I spent his birthday making him dinner and then trudging around in the snow to a bar.) Here's to growing up! Gross-but kind of necessary, considering those stories, yes?

This weekend is jam-packed so I'm going to tell you about it. After I get out of this office (which seems pretty gosh dern empty already) I'm headed to the bar on a boat (Frying Pan) for some outdoor drinking, then tomorrow I've got to treat myself to my yearly manicure-pedicure (okay so I get more than one a year...but not that many more...usually like, 3, a year. Gross, I know. I need to budget this into my life before my toes fall off and I get angry), and then I'm forcing labor upon others to mount our flat screen into the brick in the living room so we can stop using a night table as a tv stand. Then Saturday night I've got my last performance of the show I'm in, followed directly by the wrap party for the movie that I was in, at The Bowery Hotel. Then, on Sunday I'm having birthday brunch with my mom (because my dad has once again opted out in favor of my brother's baseball games...Dear Freud...) hopefully at a venue that overlooks the gay pride parade, but more likely, here because it's closer to my apartment and way closer to my parents' place in NJ. AND THEN, I get to go home and start cooking for my dinner party. I'm making this and this and some variation of this, so my oven better work. Just kidding. No, seriously though I've yet to use my oven. I'm totally fucked if its broken. I'm also totally fucked if any of you are stalkers because you know where to find me this weekend. Except that the frying pan will be full of roughly 700 people who look just like me, the wrap party is going to be seriously bounced (like, security, ya hear?), and there's a good chance I'll end up getting brunch somewhere else. So basically, you can just have food envy.

I'm curious what your favorite birthday stories are...share in the comments!

A

You Probably Think This Song Is About You

I'm just going to metaphorically masturbate this whole post. I'm just going to be so unapologetically vain that if you can't deal with it, you can leave. I don't care. It's also gonna be a long one...so brace yo'self. I'm temping today and I'm just very bored.

I feel like Tina Fey. We had our first public reading of "Seeking", the play that I've been writing with Rosie, last night, and it went great! I only say "I feel like Tina Fey" because people laughed. People laughed at things I wrote, when I said them. This is a fairly (although, not really) new concept for me and damn does it feel good! I feel like when you spend 9 months working on something you don't really know what they hell its going to look like anymore and you just need other peoples' feedback at that point (no, I'm not having a baby, people, just a play). There were so many lines that I just completely forgot were funny because I've read them and said them and edited them umpteen and a half times, but when people laughed it was like, well, it was like my head had been under water for months and I finally got to the surface and could take a breath. It felt awesome.

In other news, I'm temping today at an office building in Long Island City, in Queens. The morning started off more like being waterboarded than taking a breath of fresh air. Want to hear about it? Of course you do! Hopstop said to take the R to 36th st...so I get in the subway and the W comes (which is being discontinued on Sunday, so I figured, hmm, one last ride?) , I look on the electronic map quickly and see that it stops at 36th so I get on. I get off at 36th with 5 minutes to spare to get to the office. Awesome. Then I realize that the stop I got off at was 36th Avenue, not 36th street. Fuck you Queens. Thank GOD for Mapquest on my Blackberry, because I quickly pulled up a map of the area and realized that I could walk (very quickly) to my actual destination. So I did. And then when I got there I could not for the LIFE of me find the address. Why not just have normal numbers instead of 36-02, 36-20, 37-10, 37-18?! I was 20 minutes late and as soon as I walked in the building my temp agency contact called me to see where I was. Great. I fixed things, told her I was here and that all was well. It was not. I was dripping with sweat. I don't know if you've ever hustled your ass around in 98% humidity on a 90 degree day in this city, but it does not bode well for heavy sweaters (like people who sweat, not the winter articles of clothing, although that too, but you'd be fucking insane to be wearing a sweater today). My contact here tells me my duties, "sit at this desk, smile at people when they walk in, if they look nice be nice, if not, don't. If the phone rings answer it and take a message. The electronic directory is across the wall, just tell people to look at that. Shut the loading dock door with the open/close button. There's coffee and breakfast upstairs on the 3rd floor. There's a garden on the roof. Bye!" Ummmmmmmm, take a message on what? For whom? Where is the button? Why a garden!? Huh?Where's the BATHROOM!? AHHH he ran away so fast. So I go upstairs to get coffee and water, because I'm half asleep and my mouth feels like the Mojave from all the running in circles. I take the stairs...I walk halfway down EVERY hallway on the 3rd floor until I find the cafeteria, which costs money and my wallet is downstairs. Deep breath. I get on the elevator to head back down, but its going up. No big deal. I ride it up to the 6th floor with 2 other guys who are getting off there, and then I press the button to go back down to "1"...a little too soon. The doors shut before the guys can get out and now we're headed back down. They are pissssed. So what did I do? I started to cry. Yup. Cry. Again, more proof that my 24th birthday need not happen yet.

Everything is fine now, though. Some guy brought me a coffee and a water bottle and I'm settled and hitting up Google Maps big time in anticipation of my trip to the South next week. I mean, I'm going to Atlanta, it's not that crazy, BUT my knowledge of The South (yes, capitalized) is restricted to the following:

• Middle school class trip to Williamsburg, VA, one stop in Busch Gardens
• Family vacation to North Carolina at the ripe age of 3
• One trip, driving, with my mother to North Carolina to look at a college. Pretty sure I slept the whole way.
• Washington, DC (that absolutely cannot count, right?)
• Disney World
• And three trips to Miami.

 Therefore, I'm psyched and going to instate a new game to play over the course of the next two weeks (I'll be gone July1-7 in Atlanta then Destin, Florida-because I'm singlehandedly trying to bring tourism back to the gulf by swimming with tar balls) called Adria vs. The South. Right now we're at, The South-1, Adria-0, because in my forays into googlemapland (more specifically the Florida Panhandle) I realized that Florida borders Alabama. I'm no dummy, and I used to think I new my geography (can we write a new song, like a Weird-Al cover of 2Gether's "Calculus" called "Geography"?-"I know my geography, it says Alabama and Florida touuuccch..." No? Okay. Leave that one alone) but apparently I'm a big failure at knowing where things are in that particular area of our country. Oh fiiiiine, anywhere but the Northeast and the greater Chicago area.

Look for blog post segments in the coming weeks with possible titles such as "The Confederate Flag Highway Counting Game", "Going To An Oil Slick Beach With A Southern Belle and Her Husband", "America, Fuck Yeah-The Coca-Cola Factory", "Mullets and Fake Tits-A Panhandle Tale", and "What did y'all just say?-Trying to Understand My Boyfriend's Family".

I think that's enough of a marathon of a post. Tune in next time for more fun, games, and southern accents, y'all!

A

PS: This might be the coolest temp job in awhile. The guy not only talked to me for about twenty minutes about his music career and how he used to live in LA and blah blah blah, BUT he took me up to the roof where there is a legit FARM! Like a farm. Like a for profit FARM, where they grow carrots and beets and bibb lettuce and have an irrigation system and views of the Manhattan skyline. I shit. you. not. If I can get up there before the end of the day again I'll take a picture and put it up here later. xA

NAKED POST

Let me just clear this up right off the bat. I'm not naked now, this is just a post about being naked that I thought of when I was in the steam room this afternoon at my gym. (I mean, I am half naked, but that's besides the point, it's hot, wearing a bra while typing is totally acceptable). Let's get started, it's Tuesday and I don't want to waste any time.

I've never been one for being naked, but I've always been one for partial clothing. There I said it. I'm awkward about being in my birthday suit (side note: my birthday is this weekend, feel free to send red velvet cupcakes and diamond rings in the mail...I won't be upset about the calories or heavy finger weight), I've never enjoyed walking around naked or taking my clothes off in front of people. I will walk around in my underwear, short shorts, bathing suit, bra, you name it, in front of just about anyone, but anything more than that has just always made me super uncomfortable. Until recently. I made a conscious decision a few years ago to become okay with being naked, if only around myself. At the time I was studying abroad in London and living in a flat in the center (centre, if you will) of the city with 5 other girls. At the very end of the trip I found myself at home alone in the flat, whose large living room windows faced a law firm across the street. I had just come out of the shower and I decided to take a walk through the living room, sans towel, and face the windows. The street was not wide and those stuffy English barristers had an interesting view that afternoon. I like to imagine Colin Firth (circa: Bridget Jones' Diary) sitting at his desk preparing a brief and looking out the window to see an awkward naked, American girl grapevining across her living room. He wouldn't know I was American, of course, but whatever.

I digress, the point is...I realized in the steam room today that I have successfully become much more comfortable with myself. I had no problem just lying topless in the humidity, not knowing if another woman was going to walk in or not. Granted, most of the women who use my gym in the middle of the day are old (not like 55, but like OLD, like pruny, getting-senior-discounts-since-the-80s old) and also tend to be fat. At first I had a really hard time not scrunching up my face and looking at them, exclaiming, "HOLY SHIT WHY DO YOU LOOK LIKE THAT?!", but eventually I've started to appreciate my non-wrinkly skin more. It's both a little compliment to myself, and also a sad reminder that it's all downhill from here, and that I should probably try and be as skinny and hot as I'm ever going to be now, because someday some stupid kid born in like 2035 is going to be all googly eyed looking at me the locker room and say, "hey, lady, can you pull your tits up off the floor, they're trying to mop in here".

Gross.

A

TGIF. Summer Edition.

Good Friday, all. I'm on a ridiculous temp assignment today, filling a spot in an office to make it look less empty on this summer Friday. Silly. Foolish. Fine by me. Except I'm tired and hungover from my foray into Brooklyn last night. I'm so pathetic lately, I drink a glass of wine before dinner and I'm drunk as a skunk by the time dessert rolls around. Drunk enough to order it at least.

Anyway, I wanted to share a favorite little summer romance story with you all today, since its so beautiful out and I'm feeling...well, not shitty. Don't worry, it's not about now, let's not be gross. It's about when I was 16...[cue fade to black and white]

The summer before senior year of HIGH SCHOOL (am I on crack? how did I write this wrong and just realize it now?6/23) I went away for two weeks to a dance intensive program in Philadelphia. At the time I acknowledged that I made the wrong choice and should have gone to the theatre intensive, but I was big on making the wrong decisions then (something I've been trying to remedy by choosing the things that I really AM pursuing instead of the things that I just wish I was pursuing). So I rolled up in July with a room full of what I thought was cool (ie: Sublime poster, All American Rejects Poster, photos of me and my friends jumping around on a bed, my little gold Nokia, a bottle of red hair dye, and enough dance clothes to outfit the rockettes, just waaaay different sizes). I thought I was really finding my groove that summer. I met my roommate, a girl named Chrysta from Scranton, PA. She was a normal sized girl, and I was thrilled when I noticed this and went so far as to say, "Oh thank GOD! I was so scared I'd get some crazy eating-disorder-ridden roommate!" and she responded perfectly with, "HAHA! Well, I am bulimic." Awesome. Thanks. Great. Mom? Dad? COME BACK?! I'm going to be murdered in my sleep.

I wasn't though. Chrysta and I got along really well. She even did strip teases for me in front of our large Blizzard fan, I still have pictures actually. I'm sure she's in a mental institution by now, which is sad to say, but she was a real nutter-as the Brits say.

Anyway, romance. I met a guy named Zach who was in the jazz music intensive program. He had long, stringy, bleach blonde hair, carried around an upright bass, had to have weighed less than me, had HUGE blue eyes, and wore big aviators. He was soo cool. He introduced me to Weezer and played "The Sweater Song" on the guitar for me and I just about fell in love. We went to Cosi once with a bunch of his punk-y friends and he put a breadstick up his nose and then folded the paper napkin ring into the shape of a heart for me. We used to make out in the stairwell. At the end of the two weeks we promised that we'd keep in touch. In late August he came to visit me at my parents' house in Northern, NJ with a friend of his. As soon as I saw that stringy, dyed hair, skater sneakers, and frayed jean shorts walking up my front lawn I knew it was over. He was 100% South Jersey and I was 100% North Jersey.

And if you know anything about New Jersey, you know that South and North don't mix. Korea, I get it.

A

PS: This post was not intended, in any way, to harm or punish any persons from Southern New Jersey. Apologies, in advance in case offenses have been made.