Taylor Swift and I lead pretty different lives. She doesn’t host trivia or have a blog or drop her phone twelve times a day, at least as far as I know. She has a cat and way more followers on Instagram than I do. But today I discovered that T Swizzle and I actually do have something more in common than a sorted dating history.
If you haven’t yet seen the Comedy Central show “Drunk History” – get on that ASAP. The basic premise is ridiculously drunk people passionately telling stories of American history, which are then acted out by celebs, but always dubbed in the drunk person’s voice. It’s incredible in every way. This week’s episode took place in NYC and we got this little gem out of it about the Statue of Liberty, which I visited with my frousins on a lovely fall day a few years back.
Just like the modern classics of “Friends” and “Seinfeld” before it, “How I Met Your Mother” was filmed on a fake New York City set in LA. Even though the show is not filmed on our streets, New York still remains a main character along with our favorite human characters of Marshall, Robin, and Barney. Let’s face it, Lily and Ted, you’re kind of annoying sometimes.
I can’t help but think of my first NYC apartment, on 54th and 10th, whenever I hear it. Bruce is singing about the formation of his band on the streets of *his* 10th Avenue, but I always think of the formation of my New York City life on *my* 10th Avenue.
Too often on the streets of Manhattan you run into a stranger who you want to know more about. For example, the guy on the subway on New Year’s after midnight who jokingly asked me if I could tell him what day it was since I was carrying a calendar that I’d won at the party. Or the man at my old laundry place who was the best but because of the language barrier, we only said a few words to each other each time I picked up my stuff. Or the man I’ve seen walking around several times with his cat perched comfortably on top of his head.
New York has been getting a lot of heat lately and therefore, has also been getting a lot of hate, which is conveniently and obviously just the letters of heat, rearranged.
A friend just had me thinking about my favorite songs about New York, which works well for my new blog feature, Get More NYC. As I sent over my list, which in fact is mostly made up of music from a CD my sister, Katie, made for me when I moved to New York (seriously, how great is she?!), I also starred my favorites and I couldn’t help but star this next one 3 times.
The most frequent question I’ve gotten over the last two weeks has been “Are you going to do a 29 Things list?” The short answer is no, but the long answer is that I always have a few to-do lists running in my head anyway and I’d like to reduce the pressure I put on myself with time limits this upcoming year.
Last week, I decided to pick up another book to read, in addition to the five other books I’m in the middle of (I’m not joking and will list them out if you request it). This book has been on my mind for a really long time actually and I hadn’t read it since I was in elementary school.
If you haven’t read any of Christoph Niemann’s “Abstract Sunday” blogs for the NY Times, do yourself a huge favor here. You may have recently heard of Niemann because he sketched his way through the NY marathon in the fall, “26.2 Miles, 46 Sketches” (also read about MY watching of the NY marathon, here). But what I really wanted to share with you today is Niemann’s entry on building NYC with his sons’ Legos, entitled “I Lego N.Y.”
The New Yorker
March 29, 1976
Saul Steinberg
10 miles behind me 