New York I love you but I don’t love the G train

I moved to New York! At least for the summer, and maybe for longer. So far, everything has worked out perfectly, and I am living in a nice apartment I found on Craigslist (where you can find everything nice, and also serial killers!). People keep hating on my living sitch, though, for two reasons:

1) It is near the worst train ever, the G train. This is the main way I have made friends so far. People talk about trains all the time here (I don’t know why… I overheard a couple arguing for so long about the relative merits of uptown routes that I thought they were going to BREAK UP and then MURDER EACH OTHER and then GO UPTOWN ON THE 1 AND 2 RESPECTIVELY but as ghosts) and so when I meet someone new I try to weave into the conversation that I take the G to work. You think no one in New York has maternal impulses, because they are coldhearted city slickers, but that is just because YOU commute on the A. I have never gotten more pity. It’s pretty deserved, though–the G is always getting rerouted so that like, instead of a bunch of stops, there is just one stop. And the one stop is like,  jail. Automatic 20-life sentence! Do not pass go! Do not collect $200! Thanks for taking the G train!

2) My immediate neighborhood is very nice. There are a lot of bodegas, where you can buy many, many different kinds of meat. In bulk! Marcy Houses is in my less immediate neighborhood, though, which makes some of my friends think I am going to die immediately. On the other hand, it makes my dad very happy. He called me after he Googled my neighborhood, and he said it looked a littttttle shady.

“Then again,” he said, “it can’t be that bad. Jay-Z is from right around there!”

This comment raises a lot of questions, the main one being: How does my dad know where Jay-Z grew up? Is he secretly young? Does he have a Twitter account that he keeps on the DL? Does he know what FUPA means? You should ask him, because I don’t want to…

Brooklyn (+ cheap bed!)

I just read an article I loved so much that I e-mailed it to basically everyone I know. It’s by Tao Lin, a guy who, I discovered after extensive Googling, is weird. BUT, more importantly, Tao Lin is from Brooklyn and doesn’t really know anything about Seattle. I am from Seattle, and have literally never been to Brooklyn. And yet I am moving there! Soon! So soon, and I have to get rid of my bed. Do you need a bed?

Anyway, here is what I know about Brooklyn, based on people I know who are from there. It’s like I’m plagiarizing Tao Lin… BUT BACKWARDS. And worse. And shorter.

1) People in Brooklyn make/listen to music that does not have a tune. It is just metal scraping against metal, and birds cheeping. The birds cheep during the chorus. The metal scraping is the verses. No one in Brooklyn listens to Justin Bieber, knows who Justin Bieber is, or will enjoy listening to me talk about Justin Bieber for hours. Sorry in advance, Brooklyn!

2) People in Brooklyn (my list is already contradicting itself) like Jay-Z. One of them IS Jay-Z. However, as a stat minor, I know you can’t take Jay-Z as a representative sample of a borough. He is too special!

3) People in Brooklyn eat a lot of bagels. Their bagels are better than the bagels in our campus Einstein Bros., my friend from Brooklyn always tells me while wearing a large plaid shirt.

4) There is a movie called Crooklyn. It is about Brooklyn. This is not based on my friends from Brooklyn–it is based on me trying to rent it like a year ago and then the video store not having it and then me not seeing it but wondering what it is about sometimes. It is directed by Spike Lee!

5) The train I am living closest to in Brooklyn–the G train–is the stupidest of all the trains. It comes like, every two hours. My friend says the only way the G train is fun is if you buy a 40 and drink it while you wait. I don’t know if I will do that, though, because I don’t want to get arrested for vagrancy.

6) You need a “thing” to survive in Brooklyn. My friend told me not to worry though– I have the “thing.” I asked some questions about it, but it remained unspecified. I think the thing might be that, because I used to be a bagger, I am used to strangers cussing me out and do not cry when it happens.

Thought of the Day + Related Activity

THOUGHT

Today I was listening to this Childish Gambino song where he says, among other things, that girls chase him like they think his dick is Justin Bieber.

Is it bad that if Donald Glover’s dick was actually Justin Bieber, I would be really into that?

ACTIVITY

In other Childish Gambino news, I accidentally found a website that “explains” rap lyrics. Here is the entry for “Do Ya Like.” (Click on a line and an explanation pops up in a little cloud.) Excerpt from a literally amazing interactive experience:

LYRIC: Girls in the lobby, tryin’ to meet me.

RAPGENIUS CLOUD EXPLANATION: There are always girls in the lobby trying to meet him.

For years, I have waited for someone to explain what “tryin’” means to me. Apparently it means “trying”!!!!

Step Up 4Eva

I am sure that a movie with the exact title of this post will be made at some point, and I will marry it. But until the fourth Step Up movie comes out I am tiding myself over with the most triumphant/joyful video I have seen in my life.

I know that outside of this video Chris Brown has problems with beating people and breaking shit, but inside this video Chris Brown is THE GREATEST HUMAN TO EVER DO BACKFLIPS WITH ALL OF HIS FRIENDS. This makes the you make-a my dreams come true scene in 500 Days of Summer look like a bashful infant. Seriously, check it. I am checking it… on repeat… 4eva…

If I were into impulsive tattoos, I would get one of those gothic letter-y ones and it would say “Get my bottles! Bring them to me!” Pure poetry. What a jam.

Revelation

I just realized that two of my favorite people–Smoove B and Ginuwine–are actually the same person!

Have you ever been at a Ginuwine concert and thought, why is Smoove B not here? Now you know why. He is the Hannah to Ginuwine’s Montana.

And I am the Sherlock Holmes to Sherlock Holmes’ Watson!

A PHONEBRUSH WITH GREATNESS

You know Donald Glover? He’s Troy on Community? He is so hot that sometimes, when I’m bored, I pretend he’s my boyfriend? He looks like this in his jaunty jaunty Gap ad?

Well, I did a phone interview with him on Thursday. That’s right, bitchezzz. Donald Glover’s voice came out of my phone!!!

Read the interview here.

Also, watch his favorite Troy and Abed clip here.

Good music

So I’ve been noticing lately that some people get really excited about “bands.” Like, this band is good, or this band is bad, or Justin Bieber is a demon from hell/Canada, or whatever. But the thing is, whether or not a song is good has nothing to do with the band making it. Or maybe it has something to do with it, but the defining features of good songs (I believe) are:

1. Songs where the beat doesn’t drop for a while and then IT DOES (see also the lesser known friend: songs where the beat stops in the middle, like for emphasis… and then IT STARTS UP AGAIN. I could actually talk about this forever…).

2. Songs with choirs singing on the chorus/in the background (weirdly though, straight up choral music sucks).

3. Songs with children’s choirs singing on the chorus/in the background. (See also: Songs involving children in any way, including weird ways, a la the Chicken ‘N’ Beer intro where at the end that child says “We’re gonna to let our nuts hang!” I find it cute but dude, Ludacris, is that even legal?)

4. Songs with clapping (or snapping).

5. Songs with whistling.

6. Songs with melodic inarticulate groaning (this is my favorite – sounds super creepy written down, but listen to my three-song Convincing You About Inarticulate Groaning Playlist and the creep factor will decrease:  Transatlanticism, Death Cab; Wake Up, Arcade Fire; West Coast, Coconut Records. Yeah - I’m right!)

7. Songs with Pharrell. I’m like six years behind the times but it’s great because I don’t care!

Sorry Britt…

So because I am a Young Person, a couple of weeks ago I went to a music festival. One of the bands I saw was Spoon.  It was nice, partially because Spoon is good and partially because Britt Daniel (the main dude) is FINE.  He looks kind of grumpy and sleepy, and apparently that combination really does something for me. Or maybe I am selling my taste short, because he was also wearing all white.  So maybe I’m into grumpy/sleepy/bridal. In any event – damn.

After the festival ended, my friend and I were walking through downtown, trying to find a train stop, and we’re both really tired from standing and screaming all day, and I’m tiredly drinking a Slushee (so I’m not looking MY BEST) and then we see this dude is walking next to us. And he is wearing all white. And he looks a little grumpy and a little sleepy because HE IS BRITT DANIEL.

What would you do? Maybe you would say hi and ask for an autograph or a photo. Well, WE took a different approach, partially because we didn’t remember his name and we didn’t want to go up and be like, “Hi, spoon!”  What we did is: My friend got out her camera, and we fell back a little bit, and then she took a video of Britt walking. From behind.

It is the worst (and maybe the creepiest) celebrity-sighting memento ever. You can’t see his face, and we don’t even say anything insightful to like, supplement the visual. I don’t have the tape, but I’m pretty sure the transcript is something like:

BOTH OF US: Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. [That's us breathing really loudly.] Hhhhhhhhhhh.

FRIEND: Oh my god, it’s the guy from Spoon!  He’s walking!

ME: He has a backpack!

THE END.

I have some regrets…

DEAD?!

Okay let’s clear some THINGS UP.  Some of my friends think I am obsessed with Justin Bieber. They send me a lot of links to sarcastic news articles about him, that say things like, “Justin Bieber remains young! Justin Bieber has a Twitter!  Justin Bieber recently engaged in some behavior!”  Because of these friends, I am very up-to-date on Justin Bieber news and gossip. HOWEVER, I never actually like, get on the internet or the newspaper (don’t pretend you don’t sometimes get on your newspaper) seeking information about Justin Bieber.

So I have some thoughts to share right now, but  I did not start thinking these thoughts on my own!  I have been force-fed screenshots of Justin Bieber’s twitter account!  The internet is a dangerous place. ESPECIALLY when you have friends.

Okay but anyway, what I want to say is that of all the false Justin Bieber rumors (and true Justin Bieber rumors – sometimes those are better. He’s from CANADA! And his hair really looks like that!) my favorite by far is the rumor – and this was a real rumor, not just some dude saying some shit to his friend this one time – that Justin Bieber is DEAD.

That’s right, baby. DEAD. RIP JB. The rumor did not even include a cause of death. It was literally just “Justin Bieber used to be alive, and now he is not.” Like everyone else in the universe, I have seen Inception, and this is basically the perfect rumor by Inception’s standards. It’s so simple! And therefore so easy to incept (whatever, I don’t need to know how to change nouns into verbs to be happy)!  Sadly, in the middle of the inceiving (???) of this rumor, Justin Bieber TWEETED something like “Still alive! Your world is my world!” (At some point in every Justin Bieber song, he tells someone that their world is his world.)

So then they knew he was alive and my favorite rumor ever was put to rest.  I wish JB had let it go on a little longer, though. Nothing is better publicity than getting resurrected. Has Justin learned nothing from Jesus?

Sorry dad!

My dad is a pretty chill dude, but one of the few things that stresses him out is my texting habits.  I don’t have unlimited texting (because apparently I have a cell phone plan from 1412 BC – I only have enough texts to like, let my immediate family know I found a mastodon for dinner).  So I am constantly going over my limit, and then my dad complains about my cell phone bill and says, “What are you even texting people about?”

This is a great question that I wonder about sometimes too.  What AM I texting people about? And recently I had a moment of epiphany where I was like, THIS.

Here’s what happened.  I was walking to Starbucks (not that I ever buy coffee there – I just like to walk there, for my health) and I saw this bunny. And it was rubbing its nose, and it was just so cute.  So I sent my friend a text message that said, “I JUST SAW A BUNNY RUBBING IT’S NOSE!!!!!”

And then she sent me back a text that said, “In real life?!”

And then I sent her a text that said, “In real life!”

And then I think she might have even texted me back and said, “Wow!!”

So that was four text messages right there (I get charged when I receive text messages on my plan, as well as when I send them.  My plan was invented by like, Stalin). (But it is also from 1412 BC.)  (I am like a walking PSA about what happens when you don’t have a good grasp on world history.)

Anyway, it explains a lot. It’s not even my fault I text so much!  It’s the bunnies.  My dad should make THEM pay my phone bill. By rubbing their noses. For money. That could totally be a business… or maybe like a pay-per-view webcam… I don’t know when this became incredibly creepy but I wish I could go back to that time and change the course of events.