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the odometer in my car stopped running. it could have been today but it seems unlikely that after not driving for several months, that I would have noticed the exact day it stopped turning over. so, my car will remain at 128K mi for eternity, which is good, when i finally sell it. naturally, i'll be honest about that.

in other news, i finally went to Tortilla Mexicana - Los Hermanos today - the tortilla factory at the top of the stairs at the Jefferston St. L stop that also has a kitchen in the front. it was never open, it seemed, when i actually was living here, so now that i've come to retrieve my things and get a dozen bagels, i jumped on one of their tacos vegetarianos. and can i say - amazing! delicious! fresh! the tortillas were def made this morning and the avacado was perfectly ripe. pinto beans, cilantro, lime, tomato, what else do you need?

picture-gifts

happy birthday mom! nice cake, L!

carrots from the lovejoy garden. we grew these! thanks earth! thanks dave for buying seeds!

Korean lunch at a place with a waterfall and white piano. glass noodle mushroom stirfry, tiny sides of two kinds of kimchee, spicy tofu, ambrosia salad, smoked shrimp-something yummy, fish cakes, pickled jalapenos... followed by a barbie pink 'strawberry' bubble tea. thanks amy!

awesome maker of a doclab film about origami sent me this today. anyone know what this kind of shape is called? it's 5 interlocked pyramids - a 20-point star? thanks vanessa!

celebs i have seen in my three months in new york

Parker Posey - just yesterday! skipping to the ladies room in my office.
Natalie Portman - at The Gate with friends in Park Slope
David Byrne - walking his bicycle in front of gallery openings in chelsea
Adam Goldberg - looking as thou he wants to be recognized? in front of the Antiques Garage
Keri Russell - at an IFP meeting
David Cross? - maybe smoking in front of The Cloisters

two to three lists on new york city

You have to admit that there is something about living in a city like New York that makes you think that you're some kind of loner/artist/writer/poet/ wanderer/freethinker/sociologist/ coffee/whisky-drinking / smoking/beatnik-hippie-punk that makes for endless diary writing awaiting tempura maki and hijiki salad (alone at a table for two, naturally), on the train to wherever you are going, or drinking vodka at a friends bar, there is something about cities like this that makes it happen.

althou, there isn't much of the privileged artsyness that goes with sushi and a comfortable solitude in Chinatown, where i sat writing yesterday at dusk, or in Bushwick where i type now (essentially alone, thou my roommate is plugged into whatever obsessive game hes been doing since i left the apartment on saturday).

Mostly, these places are filled with poverty, although Chinatown is also filled with seemingly endless stalls of strange dried things, questionable fish, even worse durian in yellow mesh bags, cheap vegetables (not organic & with a carbon footprint of >500mi), knock-off purses, watches, belts, dvds, &anything else that can be ripped off, and the holy home of vegetarian drumsicks (along with something called vegetarian fish ham, which, for the record, im not the slightest bit interested in eating).

in addition to trying not to open the bag of drumsticks and sort of wishing we had a deep fryer, here's a list of things i expect i will not be doing in my last four days here:

- visit the Whitney / Kara Walker solo exhibition
- visit the Met who were bold/moneyed enough to install Hirst's The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living which includes an updated shark from the original display in Saatchi's BMA "Sensation" show
- visit the Guggenheim, more for the art cred of having gone. the facade is under renovation/scaffold anyway
-see a film at BAMcinematek, Film Forum, or some other ultra indie or notedly cinephelic theater. In fact, the only film i saw that is likely not available in DC was Wristcutters: A Love Story, at Times fucking Square.
-visit all 5 boroughs. Sorry Bronx and Staten.
-burlesque, strip club, peep show, or something equally old-new-york seedy
-find the international spice market or that huge greenmarket you see on TV cooking shows where tv chefs buy their groceries
-close a bar at 4am.
-walk across brooklyn, williamsburg or manhattan bridge
-find a magically beautiful and cheap bicycle to coast around brooklyn
-make it big time as a Broadway dancer (the stagehands are on strike)

9 days

left in New York (for now?) and it's finally cold enough to see my breath outside. I've been spending this week in the West Village at a swank members hotel's dark and comfy 'cinema' for the IFP Doc Lab. The filmmakers are amazing, excited and engaged and with promising projects you doc programmers should look out for. i sort of feel like i just figured out how to live here and now i'm leaving. it'll be good to be home and sleep in my own bed and have space and trees and the cat around me, but i'll miss the constantly good people watching, vast options for restaurants and walking aimlessly.
so, I'm here another week and a half, what should I do? also, No Country For Old Men is out this week, who wants to go?