Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘social life’ Category

Just wanted to do a quick update so that new visitors to this blog don’t think I’m obsessed with Justin Bieber or something.

It is finally sunnier and I don’t feel like I’m looking at everything through smoked glass anymore. The collective lifting of depression has caused an outbreak of parties, parties, parties, which has been really fun. There are lots of books coming out, lots of birthday parties, lots of general relief at not being water-logged.

And yet, I dunno. I don’t love Seattle but I don’t love anyplace else either.

Yesterday–our first over 70 degrees day in 271 days, but who’s counting–I was at Alki beach with a girlfriend.

Lying in the undiluted sunshine under kites like beautiful dragonflies, looking at the row of white-capped mountains and city skyscrapers across the sparkling water, I sat up and said “It’s so gorgeous here, but the beach itself sucks. It’s narrow with rocks and driftwood. But the view is staggering.”

“That’s Seattle,” my friend said. “Everything out there is stunning, but if you look at where you’re actually sitting, it’s falling apart. That’s why we’re moving to Florida.”

About half the people I’ve talked to recently are moving away after this past winter. It’s been nine months of cold wet slate grey. Not that I’m counting.

My problem is I want to live in more than one place:

Seattle, maybe sometimes, because you can get kickass writing done here and there are tons of people I love.

Los Angeles because it’s so magical and sunny and hip and noir (in retrospect).

And of course home in the Midwest. Because family is everything.

Some of my friends think it’s so doable for me to have three homes, but I feel like it’s challenging to maintain one.

Stay tuned, though.

Read Full Post »

As part of my “going out despite the weather this winter” project, I attended the first First Thursday artwalk of the year. Since none of the friends who had promised last month to come with me are adhering to the same “going out” project, they all bailed.

All I cared about was dinner. One of the women I was supposed to meet recommended Built Burger, which everyone is always talking about, but there’s no way I could have eaten what I was sure would be a half pound of beef with all the trimmings.

I walked around for what seemed like hours and eventually came upon a cheery, well-decorated place called Cafe Paloma. It was Mediterranean-ish and I was starving, so I took a seat near the picture window. There was lots of red and a tuba hanging from the ceiling. The crowd seemed to be drawn from the art walk–lots of black clothing and nice eyeglass frames.

I ordered “whatever is closest to chardonnay” off the wine list and the waitress told me they actually do have chardonnay as their house wine. Note: For the sake of my pride I should mention that if they had amazing Turkish wines, I would have blindly ordered one as I subscribe to the When in Rome doctrine. But they didn’t.

I chose the mucver (zucchini pancakes) after much deliberation and was eventually informed that the chef said they weren’t available. Also, my chardonnay hadn’t been chilled so I needed to select something else and would pinot grigio be okay? It would. I ordered a cup of the spinach and chicken soup.

I cast a glance at the couple next to me. The tables are really close there.
“If you could just not freak out, then everything would be okay,” an attractive young brunette woman was saying to an attractive young brunette man.
“The important thing in a relationship is just not to freak out.” He literally did not say a word. Not while she paid her share of the check, not while she excused herself to the ladies room. I soon figured out the likely reason he was speechless: he was in rapture from the flavor of the food.

My wine came and it was fine. My soup came with warm grilled pita and it was some of the best soup I’ve ever had in my life.

The art in the 619 building was standard. I tried on earrings I didn’t buy. I had chips and smokehouse almonds and mango salsa that I did buy for $1. I took the bus home and my seatmate felt that the movie he was watching on his phone was more important than me having a place to put my arm.

That soup, though. That spinach and chicken soup.

Read Full Post »

I swam to my friend Joe’s 29th birthday party on Saturday night during a record rainfall and it was worth it.

He and his wife have this Central District house circa the 1920s and it’s both cute and huge. It took me awhile to get there due to the rain and as I approached there was a cop flashing blue and red parked right outside. I was thinking ‘please don’t let the party be over already,’ but luckily it was just some s.o.l. sap getting pulled over and no relation to my evening. Bad luck for him with his knit cap and circumstantial contrition, because he wouldn’t be sampling any of my fabulous hors d’oeuvre.

I brought caramelized onion dip, which is becoming sort of my go-to thing to bring. I make it from whichever recipe comes up first when I Google, and that day it was Food Network’s Caramelized Onion Dip. Next time I make it I would probably double the amount of onions and cut the pepper to maybe half. It was still really delicious and very popular, as were the Ruffles potato chips, which I was embarrassed to bring, but apparently people love them.

I met some cool aspiring authors, one of whom told me that a woman he knows just got $500,000 for her debut novel. By that time I had had a delish homebrew that Joe had crafted and some chardonnay, but I’m pretty sure this now-rich author’s from Seattle and that her book is about either angles or devils. I will report back on this.

I also caught up with my friend Chris Burlingame who left his gig at Three Imaginary Girls and then met with spectacular success with his own Another Rainy Saturday, which after only six months has already been acknowledged by the Village Voice and the BBC.

I adore my writer friends old and new. Thrilling!

After all that I came home in soaked pants to a small lake in my living room. Isn’t that always the way.

Read Full Post »


[This is a stock photo, not taken at Damaged Goods]

On Friday night I went to poster artist Art Chantry’s show at Damaged Goods in Belltown. He’s a Seattle artist who was first known for designing posters for Nirvana and Pearl Jam, I think, and has been shown at the Louvre, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Smithsonian.

I love his distinctive style. My favorite piece was the big poster of Hollywood mugshots–Frank Sinatra, Jim Morrison, a surprisingly glamorous Jane Fonda…

I’m trying to get over my shyness with well-known people, so I made it a point to introduce myself and Mr. Chantry was cute–he shrugged and was bashful when I asked if he was the artist and then was even more so when I sort of non-sensically thanked him for his work.

I really like the Damaged Goods store. They have all this cool memorabilia–40s prints, vintage Playboys, band posters.

The hipsters were out in force with their wool caps, tiny black rectangular glasses and tinier black jeans, buying vinyl records and drinking beer from a can.

Damaged Goods also has a great collection of pulp fiction for $4.50 each. I don’t read them, but I’m so in love with the artwork of those old paperbacks. This is the one that the cover of my book DATING AMY was inspired by:

It was not based on this, as a former boyfriend guessed:

Read Full Post »

Even though I’m known for writing about my social life, my true nature is to be a shy homebody.

I mean I’m social and outgoing, but my heart’s desire would be to stay in every night. Especially when it gets dark at four o’clock, and very, very especially when it rains, which it does here in Seattle allfrickinwinterlong. I have to fight the staying-in urge because I’m already home writing all day and I really wouldn’t have a life if I gave into my cozylust.

I also think I get sort of an insidious low-grade depression when I isolate. So lately I’ve been prying myself out of the house and into the world. Not even the noble excuse of writing is keeping me in because I have a tiny purse-size laptop I can bring anywhere.

I even ordered business cards to give to people I meet at bars and parties so they don’t have to carefully write down “DatingAmy.com” after talking to me for a half hour. (Although, seriously? I picked that name because I thought it was, uh, memorable.)

The other night I went to 10 Mercer and had a glass of happy hour chardonnay (J. Lohr) and wrote a few pages of the California memoir. So this older couple sitting across from me asked what I was doing; I said I was writing a memoir about moving to Los Angeles with a back pack when I was in my 20s to become a singer (To which the older gentleman, by the way, said: “Was that in the 70s?” No offense to people who actually were born in the 40s and 50s, but I… wasn’t.) Anyway, the first question anyone asks about the Cali memoir is: Did you meet famous people? To which the answer is, of course, yes. Because in Los Angeles famous people walk among earthlings.

It’s funny, because to me the new book is about dreams and rock ‘n roll bad boys and reconciling the death of my father and music and sex and heartbreak and soaring romance.

But yes, there are a lot of famous people that I met in it.

You’d think with my years of marketing experience I’d know what’s important by now.

Read Full Post »

This past week is the first time I’ve had off from writing since basically Thanksgiving.

Writing is weird because if you’re doing it full time like I’ve been, you immerse yourself in this imaginary world, one that doesn’t include the practicalities of life as most people know it.

This was my week:

Brows waxed and gym.

Saw the movie Cyrus. I didn’t know anything about this film except that it has a great cast and got an 81% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It was about 95 degrees out and this was showing at the air-conditioned theater five minutes walk from my apartment, so I ran down alone.

What a great choice. I absolutely loved this story of a middle-aged guy (John C. Reilly) falling for a gorgeous, quirky mom (Marisa Tomei) whose son (Jonah Hill) isn’t going to leave home without a fight.

I did my taxes, finally. Refund!

Inception. Another 90-something-degree day. I’m the last person in the modern world to see this. I loved it. I was impatient at first but settled in and then locked in like a jet fighter pilot. My only concern: What happened?

A friend of mine (love you, man!) is a film critic for The Stranger, arguably the hippest weekly in the country. He told me that he could tell at the end of the film who in the audience got it and who didn’t. As the movie was coming to its final frames I was praying Pleaseletmeunderstandtheending, Pleasedontletmebeoneofthosepeople. Turns out I was one of those people, though. As I walked into rush-hour downtown in its 90-degree yellow heat, I texted my 19-year-old nephew who’s great at film theory and works at a vintage theater.

Me: Just saw Inception. What happened?
Him: I’ve seen it three times and I have no idea. There were a lot of things in that movie that really bothered me.

Fortified, I texted my film critic friend. He told me what he thought happened but it was (much to my relief) just a guess.

I got my Comcast bill lowered. Only slightly, but I’ve been meaning to do this for a year. Not sure what I will talk about to strangers at parties now.

Threw out all receipts I’ve been saving, got an all-clear on a breast-cancer check, and fasted for 24 hours, losing several pounds.

Today I straightened my hair completely. So far a barista and a Blockbuster rental guy have said it suits me.

Content.

Read Full Post »

I’m not gonna lie to you, I bought Everyday Italian by Giada De Laurentiis to round out an Amazon order so I could get free shipping. I don’t watch the Food Network and I don’t eat fattening food and I’m not a guy who fantasizes about a gorgeous woman who can bring home the spaghetti carbonara and fry it up in a pan. So, yeah, I basically have no use for Giada.

Italian is very useful for dinner parties, though, so I invited some people over for Giada’s Classic Italian Lasagna. It called for a lot of cheese and cream. The company was scintillating–one guy moved 15 times as a kid, another woman is a storyteller for The Moth–but the dish was bland, I am sorry to report.

The next morning everyone from my dinner party except for me headed off for a long weekend in the San Juan Islands. I stayed at home and wrote.

That’s the story of this summer, sadly. It seems like this is just my time to work on my craft. No vacations, no sailing. I haven’t even been to a beach or a barbeque yet.

I am spicing things up today, though. I am building on Giada’s recipe and making it my own. Not all that cream. Not four hours of prep. Spicier, leaner, I’m layering myself into this puppy and it’s going to be delicious.

Happy August.

Read Full Post »

I’m not even quite sure what “The Truth Shall Set You Free” means.

I do know I decided just this past week that I am not making assumptions anymore. Not with my career and, by extension, not with my social life.

I’m questioning everything, literally. Trying to suss out if certain people’s behavior is just their nature or if it’s Amy-specific.

Seattle can be a very passive-aggressive town.

This may take a lot of detective work on my part.

Read Full Post »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.