Big Words and Small Words

Blogs seem to be the “in” thing these days. The New York Times has blogs, the Wall Street Journal has blogs, Perez Hilton has a blog… My favorite college professor, Gina Barreca, blogs for the Chronicle of Higher Education, so they can’t be that bad, right? I’ve been recently introduced to Chuckblog (the person and the blog), and I’ll admit that my day isn’t complete until I’ve had my daily dose of Gina and Chuckblog. There are times that I fully expect the IT guys to pick me up and carry me out of the building when I click on Chuckblog, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.

I started a blog when I moved to New York thinking I’d record all of my adventures for when my friends back home ask what I’ve been up to. I wrote one entry on my first night in my apartment. Turns out I was too busy adventuring or recovering from adventuring to sit down and blog. But people keep telling me to blog. “Neever, why don’t you blog? You live in New York now – blog!” they say. I don’t blog because I don’t want this to end up being a place where I rant and rave about life and love in New York City. I save that for my diary – I can easily burn that to destroy evidence. That and the fact that a recent article in the NYTimes showed that the women who do blog (the 2008 versions of Carrie Bradshaw), have a harder time dating, because what guy wants his faults, no matter how small, all over the information super-highway? And do I really want my recent hook-ups, or lack-there of, in a space my mom can read about it? Chuckblog’s mom reads his blog, so maybe it’s not so bad.

The next question people usually ask me after finding out I’ve moved to New York is if I’ve been on any ‘real New York’ dates yet. When I figure out what a real New York date is, I’ll tell you. I’ve been on a couple, yes, and it’s nothing to write home about. NB: Mom knows when I’m on the dates because I tell her a head of time, and she texts me saying ‘Hope you’re having fun on your date!’ The last time this happened, I was in Barnes and Noble with a 31yr old divorcee having a post-dinner walk around the bookstore (of course I thought this was great). But it was in this moment I knew I’d never go on another date with him again. I wasn’t really annoyed by the fact that he was 31. It’s within range. When mom asked how old he was later, I told her, “He’s around Danny’s age.” Danny isn’t 30 yet, so I was going for a low estimate. But since my mom loves my friend Danny, this was a good answer to give. Just mentioning Danny launched her onto a tangent and we talked about that time she saw him running on TV and “it was just so cool!” The fact that he was divorced didn’t annoy me as much after he explained the whole story. I could even look past his firm decision never to drink. It would prove slightly awkward when meeting my friends, but I figured we could handle it. What really got me was the categories into which he divided books: Books with big words and books with small words. His ‘middle ground,’ if you will, was books with small words on a difficult subject, like Buddhism. He also said my name at the beginning of almost every sentence in which he addressed me, and in texts, he’d write ‘Hey you!’ and we weren’t even close to being on a ‘hey you’ level. Or an ‘I’m thinking about you during the day’ level. So I called him and told him I”d be swamped with work between now and the end of time and wouldn’t be able to see him again.

After all that fun, I’ve taken a bit of a break from just giving out my phone number to guys at bars. Most women worry if they’ll ever call, while I worry that they actually will.

The other question I get is if I’ve seen any famous people. I’ve seen Julia Stiles’ back. My friend saw Molly Shannon. My boss saw Cameron Diaz one weekend while shopping. But I haven’t yet had the pleasure of being in the personal space of the rich or famous. I did get into a club one night by name-dropping, though. The bouncer wouldn’t let us in, so I walked to the front of the line and said, “I know the owner, Tommy. He said we could go in tonight.” The guy asked me who I was, and I told him, and he said, “Oh. Tommy said you’d be coming tonight. Go ahead.”

So I’ve covered dating and famous people in this one. Tomorrow I’m off to Yankee Stadium. I’m taking Dad to his first Yankees game, and we picked a good one: Yankees vs. Red Sox. That should make for a good post on all things baseball and the Bronx.