Some of my postings on The Huffington Post
… can be found here.
All Grown Up. Now What?
Aspiring journalist/writer/firefighter/princess/other ______
When Self-Obsession Becomes the Bon-Ton, How Much Is Too Much?
Since this is first and foremost a place for me to showcase my clips, the following is my capstone piece for school (my final thesis-like 3,000 word article of magazine quality.) Enjoy.
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“I loved you from the moment I met you. I loved the way you spoke and the interesting and off beat things that you spoke of. I loved that you were slightly off and that it made you very intriguing. I loved that you spoke with passion and with excitement. I loved you for everything you were, until I didn’t.” After four years of being hopelessly in love with her best friend, Courtney Arzu had enough. It was just another day at work for the 26-year-old and just another G-chat, but that one made her snap. “This new guy came into the picture for me, and my best friend was giving me crap about it,“ she says. “I’m always there for him, and he isn’t. That’s when I knew I will always love him more than he loves me.” With tears in her eyes, she turned to her Tumblr, Every Day is an Adventure. 15 minutes later, “I Loved you, Until I Didn’t” was up. It set her free.
Hyper personal? Probably. Locket diary material? Perhaps. But Arzu’s rule of thumb, the one she set for herself when she started Every Day a little over a year ago, is to never name names. Aside from that, all is fair in blog and war.
The second decade of the 21st century, still in its infancy, may well go down in history as that of the self-obsessed, over-sharing twentysomethings. Though the word “autobiography” was first cited in the Oxford English Dictionary as far back as 1797, and every few decades a memoir boom erupts taking the literary world by storm, this current era of mass over-exposure is like no other. With “publish” no longer a profession but a name of a button, there’s ample room for everyone under the canopy of the World Wide Web. Where former gatekeepers had to approve personal tales before unleashing them onto the world, the proliferation of available platforms has made it immensely easy for tech-savvy youngsters to get their innermost thoughts out. Where extremely special circumstances of struggle and triumph warranted a book deal, nowadays voicing one’s thoughts on one’s cat, one’s boyfriend, and one’s parents spawns not only books, but TV shows. Millennials don’t want to be in awe. They want to relate.
גזרו ושמרו: בקריסטמס הזה תאכלו רוקפור
נכון, לא חסרים מדריכים ולא חסרות המלצות קולינריות לעיר כמו ניו יורק. ובכל זאת, אחרי שנה פלוס בנכר גם אני גיבשתי לעצמי רשימה מנצחת שלא תבייש את הניו יורק מאג. מדובר בהמלצות שהוכיחו את עצמן שוב ושוב, אליהן אני מפנה כל אורח וכל מבקרת ותמיד זוכה לתשואות משל הקפצתי את השרימפס בעצמי על האש.
מתכננים נסיעה בעונת החגים הבאה עלינו לטובה ורוצים ללכת על בטוח? בבקשה. קבלו את המדריך הזריז לתייר שמעיז (או שמא, המדריך הערב לתייר הרעב?):
האיטלקיה: Osteria Morini
השף מייקל וואיט מ-Ai Fiori היוקרתית יצר אופציה נפלאה לצהריים. בלב נוליטה וכפסע מהרחוב הכי סואן של סוהו נמצאת אוסטריה המקסימה, מסעדה שכמו נלקחה מבית קטן באיזושהיא ערבה קצת יותר מודרנית, עם כלים אקלקטיים ולגמרי לא מתפנפנים ואוכל טעים ולא מתאמץ. ממליצה בחום להתחיל עם צלחת בשרים וגבינות (תנו למלצר להרכיב לכם, החבר’ה האלה מכירים את התפריט כמו שאף זב חוטם אחרי צבא לא יכיר), אבל גם הפסטות נפלאות והסלטים רעננים. ליפים ולאמיצים כדאי להגיע בסוף השבוע לבראנצ’, אז תזכו להתנסות בוורסיה כה מוצלחת של אגס בנדיקט שאחותי (שתחייה) לא נרגעה ממנה יומיים.
המלצה על גבי המלצה: תדלגו על הקינוח ותחצו את הכביש. ממש מעבר לרחוב מחכה לכם עוגת הגבינה הטעימה ביותר שתצא לכם לאכול, בחנות הקטנטנה והמשפחתית של איילין (Eileen’s Special Cheesecake) שעומדת איתנה כבר כמה עשורים ומציעה מגוון עוגות גבינה עם מגוון סוגי פירות (וגם בלי, לשמרנים).
Osteria Morini 218 Lafayette St (Between Spring and Kenmare);
Eileen’s Special Cheesecake 17 Cleveland Place
ההמבורגר: The Spotted Pig
ההמבורגר המושלם בחזיר המנוקד
Chaos Cooking
Mike Lee wants to know what snow on the beach tastes like. More specifically, he wants to know what flavors the snowy beach scene in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind evokes. Once he cracks it, dinner will be served. Because what makes Mike tick is food, and order, and complete control, and when you exert complete control over food in a certain order you get Mike: a culinary tour guide.
Mike, 32, a digital ad director by day, is the guy you really, really want to have over for dinner by night. Five years ago he started his own supper club, Studiofeast, now a drop in the flood of supper clubs that have taken over New York. Though supper clubs were and still are illegal (they’re not authorized by the Health Department), Studiofeast combines all that Mike is and all that he knows. Despite zero professional training or proper education, his immaculate precision and finely tuned palette created the perfect storm. Today, Studiofeast is not only known as of one the first super clubs, but one of the very best. It is also extremely exclusive: Mike cooks only five to ten dinners a year.
Mike (left) doing what he does best
Likes and dislikes, in a nutshell
The assignment was to write micro-reviews of one thing I love and one thing I loathe, but can nonetheless understand (and explain) why others may like it.
Let’s start with the latter, shall we?
I would rather catch pneumonia in pitch darkness (thanks, Sandy) than watch five minutes of what they call Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. Though I hate to admit it, I know that this reality show is on TLC and that it details the life of one six-year-old, Honey Boo Boo (real name Alana), a former contestant on another horribly sad show Toddlers and Tiaras, and her morbidly obese family. I also know (thanks, Twitter) that the recent addition to her family was born with three toes. I am not surprised. I think this little girl will grow up with so much pent-up self-loathing that all of her hard-earned cash will go to therapy or to her pimp. Read more…
There, there..
I’ll be back real soon with a new profile/feature I wrote about the great Mike Lee of Studiofeast.
In the meantime, you can join his noble effort (and eat a superbly delicious meal, I’m sure) to help the victims of Hurricane Sandy. The very storm that pushed everything back and made all the work pile up, hence my inconsistent posting.
Anyhoo.. Yea. BRB, as the kids say.
