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 good out­line of the mag­a­zine: we envi­sioned it as an anti-lad’s mag, sort of the response to Maxim and the like (remem­ber, this was the late nineties), but the title was also a nod (or maybe a chin thrust, who knows?) to Dave Eggers’ Might. All of this, in the spirit of our proud lack of self-esteem, added up to a mag­a­zine that stood up for the lit­tle guy, with a healthy dose of intel­lec­tu­al­ism and the lit­er­ary spirit that had made Esquire and the like hot spots for fic­tion in the fifties and sixties.

We came up with slugs: the FOB would be So Low. There’d be a Cook­ing for One recipe. Sports cov­er­age would go under Los­ing Streak. Enter­tain­ment Cov­er­age? Entertainment–Weakly. We envi­sioned a crush page on some­one almost-attainable that we’d call Weak-Kneed. We actu­ally had too many great names for a porn roundup: Hand Solo? Talk to the Hand? Aloha, Mr. Hand? The back­page, we thought, should focus on good moments for the weak, ergo: The Weak Shall Inherit the Earth.

We had a run­ning list of “weak peo­ple” to inter­view, though look­ing over that list now, some of them are dis­qual­i­fied, like, um, Screech.

Any­way. I won­der if maybe we’d been just a few years younger, with blog­ging tem­plates made read­ily avail­able, would we have gone home that night and thrown our ideas up online instead of talk­ing about them? Or would Weak still exist as an imag­i­nary mag­a­zine, one com­plete with t-shirts and poten­tial writ­ers, never to take shape?

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 and zine stores: a hand­ful. In other words, to stay up on non-mainstream media, you could take a walk around lower Man­hat­tan for a few hours, have a cou­ple con­ver­sa­tions, flip through your pre­ferred pub­li­ca­tions and feel pretty secure in your aware­ness of what was hap­pen­ing via CD, seven inch, etc.

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 with a copy of the movie, bring the sludge to the people!

You know who is on the ‘Tube, though? Our new friend Gilad. I am a woman with­out a gym mem­ber­ship, in a land of snow and ice and lazi­ness, yet I have dis­cov­ered the world of tele­vised fit­ness shows and…I am a con­vert. I know it sounds ter­ri­bly dorky, but I totally got my Denise Austin on yes­ter­day and then Ryan came home for some Gilad action and I don’t know if we stuck it out because we enjoyed the work­out or because we liked how we bossed us around. He says “NICE” in his tough-stuff voice a lot, yet he remains very sup­port­ive. I think we’re in love.

Busty Exer­ciser on Fit TV’s “Gilad”

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 degrees of cook­ies. The ones in the back are nearly ined­i­ble now that they’ve cooled, while the mid­dle ones seem a tad under­done. The cook­ies in the fore­ground are a lit­tle too crunchy for my taste. None of them are just right, though, and for a baker who feels that choco­late and peanut but­ter are the build­ing blocks for, well, just about any­thing, this will not do!

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 a par­tic­u­lar color of vin­tage orna­ment. OK, there were no pho­tographs of crafty meno­rahs, but I could’ve worked some­thing out. So now I’m gaz­ing at other people’s totally cute Christ­mases and expe­ri­enc­ing a des­per­ate sense of longing.

I guess I can start mak­ing my pom-pom wreath for next year.

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 am no longer 21. Actu­ally, 21 seems very very near (Remem­ber that time we were walk­ing up Avenue A at 4am and we saw Mark Ibold and I decided we should fol­low him?) but awfully far away, like those were scenes from some­one else’s life. Or a movie. A slow-moving bio­graph­i­cal tale that fol­lows our hero­ine as she stum­bles through attempts at romance and career advance­ment while tak­ing advan­tage of par­ties with goodie bags and open bars. It’s not the most inter­est­ing movie, but there are some funny parts.

They’re lit­tle reminders: the fact that my stack of CDs at Love Gar­den is no longer an indi­ca­tor of release dates and hip­s­ter­dom (I’m a good six months behind on every­thing, not to men­tion I get really out­raged when I browse the used sec­tion and find per­fectly good things–the entire career out­put of Polvo–there. Who would sell Polvo? Who?). Or that I find myself start­ing sen­tences about how I don’t under­stand what the kids are into. I like going to bed early. Just some­one stop me if I pull out the mom jeans, OK?

Must. Get. Every­thing. Paid. For. By. Insurance.

Hence, what bet­ter time to have a pro­ce­dure where some­one else’s gums are grafted onto mine, since appar­ently I have the gums of an elderly per­son? You know how it’s annoy­ing when the den­tist is all, “So, been on any vaca­tions lately?” and you’re like, “Um, your hands are in my mouth, ass­hole, so I can’t really elab­o­rate on my tour of Peru?”

OK, the peri­odon­tist was doing the same thing–about books, no less–while half of my mouth was numb and my lips felt about twenty feet thick. Even if I’d wanted to talk, I couldn’t. I left the office with one side of my mouth all droopy and weird, with a giant piece of gauze stuck in for good mea­sure. The effect was very…ugly. Then Ryan and I spent last night look­ing at my mouth and get­ting grossed out by it.