Some­one linked to this arti­cle some­where about South­ern Indian cui­sine and read­ing it took me back imme­di­ately to morn­ings spent drink­ing Dixie cups of per­fect sweet cof­fee and evenings eat­ing off of banana leaves. I think I need to start scan­ning my India photos.

Tell peo­ple your only mar­ketable skill is writ­ing, they tell you to write a book. No. You tell one of those insane peo­ple who sug­gests you write a book that the only book you’re going to write is going to be about not writ­ing. He says, “I’d read that.” Oth­ers agree. You think back over your non-illustrious career, […]

Back in the day, I had a lot of flashes of bril­liance for mag­a­zines that I could start. One night, per­haps aided by a case of beer or well vodka, Boris and I founded Weak magazine–for the neb­bish and mal­nour­ished. Because I’m crazy and take notes even in altered states, I still have a pretty […]

Mike Mills’ new book Travel back with me, friends, to New York in the early ‘90s. The inter­net was used for email­ing and alt.something news­groups. (OK, maybe not for you, Al Gore, you were blog­ging or cre­at­ing Ama­zon. Me, I was post­ing to the Pave­ment fan list and email­ing. That’s all.) Record and comic book […]

I made this split pea and parsnip soup last night that was so vile-looking. Luck­ily, Ryan thought the same thing I did and when I said, “You know what this reminds me of?” he said, “The sludge in Bet­ter Off Dead?” I thought for sure that had to be on YouTube but no dice. YouTubers […]

Inspired by this post at Shel­ter­rific, I just baked four dozen cook­ies. But mine are really weird! In the top photo you’ll notice that my cook­ies look par­tially raw. Which is what the recipe says might hap­pen. Still, it goes against all my bak­ing intu­ition. In the sec­ond photo, note that I have three different […]

What’s some­thing you bought, know­ing it was a total waste of money? I have owned some remark­ably adorable-but-impractical shoes. The most egre­gious exam­ples have been sold on ebay, but only after hav­ing been worn a hand­ful of times–and get­ting tons of compliments.

Soon it will be Christ­mas Day and I’m jonesing for win­dow dec­o­ra­tions — just like the ones I used to know. Thank­fully, Fred Flare comes through with this awe­some slideshow of city spirit. How genius are the Bar­neys win­dows? I salute you, Simon Doo­nan, as always.

I find a way to not do a lot of things. Like this week it dawned on me that I like to dec­o­rate for the holidays–and after pur­chas­ing this, I am now kick­ing myself for not mak­ing Our Own Very Spe­cial Hand­made Chris­mukkah com­plete with pom-pom yarn wreaths and the cute trees, and not collecting […]

Thirty-one came and went with­out too much trauma–in fact, it was kind of nice. Kelly Sue and I were ladies who lunched, Ryan and I had a quiet night since we’re hav­ing our offi­cial birth­day din­ner Mon­day and my fam­ily cel­e­brates tonight. But I am sud­denly aware, maybe even hyper–aware, of the fact that I […]