the smack factor

Just went to CVS, returned with the following:

• mint assure, from the makers of breath assure.  breath assure nowhere to be found
• tampons, multipack woot!
• glucosamine (with codroitin!)
• green spiral notebook

dissect.

you took the bait.

haw haw haw.

well it is. A little hint of my mini vac with the Reyes posse to Swansea, Ma.

click it if you like it big.

I am sitting at Cafe Brama, my old unemployment haunt, sort of sweating in my jeans. I chose jeans because I was expecting typical NYC over-air conditioned ness, but discovered that they’ve blown the doors open and, while it’s hot out, there is a lovely breeze blowing up, either from the passing cars or the actual wind itself. I’d be so comfy in my dress (that Factor said he’s going to start calling my muumuu because I wear it every day), but i’ll power through. I am happy because I don’t have an event to go to tonight, work is still really good (except for a view minor deals, which are still funny in their own way), the weather is hot but delightful, and I get to work on my own photos for once AND write in the smackfactor!! See, I am so happy. I can’t help it, I’m nerdy, and I miss you guys. So what’s going on? doyou really want to know?

I’ve been all over this town, from 135th to Orchard and Grand. Let’s give you some bullets — do you miss my bullets? I miss my bullets!

• I found a new waxer! I used to go to Eve, but I’m not so much into the conversation, just get me back to my 12 year old crotchy self. So I saw an ad for Valley on the Lower East Side. I wandered there one day after work - before heading to Redbank in anticipation of vacation nook nook - and it was the best walk. I had to wade through the sideroads of China town, which also means I got to see all those crazy fishes on display. I walked right into a green milky road puddle and my toe was submerged in what could only be fish innards mixed with rat barf and toddler honk. Am I right? Probably. Have you ever had your eyebrows threaded? Yeah, it’s weird. It’s weirder when your waxer says “wow, you have very stubborn hair, I will use the thread.” I actually became blind and sweaty with anger pain and swatted her away and said “I THINK WE’RE DONE WITH THAT!” She’s amazing, and sweet, and I will be back for more pain. Also, I waxed my entire face - and if any of you are shy about your stupid fuzz - to the point of being too shy to even ask the lady to get rid of it — just do it, I’m sooooo much more confident of keeping my head up and knowing no one is looking at my fuzzies.
• Technology is a funny thing. Small companies are funny things. I caught myself saying today that “If this happened at IBM, the shit would hit the fan” and “this would never fly at IBM”. I mean, i used to work in a small group. We had a website. We hosted other internal facing projects on the site. We were NOT customer facing. NO ONE outside IBM saw the site - but if it went down for even 20 minutes it was like someone caught us clubbing a bag of babies. we would get our asses handed to us and our dedication to the team, to the org, to LIFE AS HUMANS would be called into question. Where I work now, we had a major outage yesterday and like 20 minutes today… and I lost my shit. I went IBM all over the place. How could they let this… a revenue generating site… columns that go out to people who actually use the word “love” when they describe the site and company… how is this acceptable. I lost my shit. It was so dumb. And then now, as I sit here typing this, I realize how overdramatic the OTHER place was — and how I totally reverted to that panic today. It was a really weird day and way for me to be overall.
• The other day Factor and I ate at Kampuchea, and it was delicious. I said to him, “All I want is for one day for you and I to be eating outside and have someone come up to me and say ‘aren’t you [chauncey mckracken] who writes [The McKracken Chronicles]?”. The next day I got an email that said “hey, I don’t mean to sound like a stalker, but were you eating at Kampuchea last night?” Yeah. Life is really fucking weird right now.

Anyway — thanks to my buddy over at Penis in a rowboat, Factor and I went to Redbank, NJ. Which deserves its own post. And PIAR - do NOT feel guilty at all for anything that happened while we were there.

Curious now?

back to normal stupid crap life.

You know, every day I get smackfactor fan mail asking why I don’t post anymore. Not really. I don’t get any, and that’s fine. I come home from work, sometimes at 1AM, sometimes 11PM, but never at 6PM to stay.  And I look at the computer and think about writing… and then I think about the 5-600 words I have to write the next day, not including clever captions (it’s hard to be even remotely clever on a daily basis), and even more clever captions in a flickr set. Then I think “oh, I’ll edit those Ohio photos!” and then I think about the sometimes hundreds of photos I need to sift through, edit out, and then edit and caption in a less than 24 hour turn around time period.

And then I don’t complain. I just don’t post. I don’t edit photos for pleasure. But I have my dream job.

I don’t really have much to say anyway without sounding like some pretentious buttass blathering about this terrace and that rooftop and this mag party and that site relaunch. I could post about that funny thing that Factor said or did if I actually got to spend quality time with him that doesn’t include me

• reminding him to pick up garbage
• asking him to move shit around
• asking for compliments
• arguing about nothing much
• being drunk and stupid

Yeah. This is the good life.

Here I am, 3:47AM EST and I’m up.  I woke up because my brain is too loud.   Seriously.  I got home from a work thing a bit before 10:00PM and went straight to bed (after the customary minor snipe fest with Factor).   Suddenly, my eyes popped open.  I have this Daft Punk song in my head that won’t go away.  and headlines.  And variations on head lines.   And captions, and variations on captions.  And things I want to remember from today (yesterday) so I can write about them tomorrow (today).  And how I’m going to survive this week.  And trying not to forget my nephews birthday.  And follow up notes I need to write to people I’ve met at events.  And vacation in Red Bank.  It’s all just a sick loud mess in my brain and it’s keeping me from falling back to sleep.

I closed my eyes and tried, I really did, but it felt like I was falling backwards through a tunnel with the walls flying past either side of my head.  I got dizzy and all I could hear was this damn Daft Punk tune.

I WISH I was going out of my head.  Then it would be quiet.

Ah yes, always reporting the story, not becoming the story. well cross your fingers that no one in rows 12 and 14 had their video cameras or camera phones on, or any possible recording device as I made my way home from Vegas to NYC, rounding out 36 hours of hardcore free as a bird partying. I was so proud of myself as I woke up Saturday morning without a hangover for drinking only water the last hour or so of my evening. wow, such control. Such responsibility. Sigh. I was so proud that, before I left for the big party at Bare, I had scheduled a wake up call, packed, and consolidated my stuff back into one bag. I headed out to Bare feeling pretty sassy in satin “King Richard” poofy short sleeve tangerine/burnt sun shorty shorty dress. Of course, I dropped my lip gloss near my hooha so it looked like something might be trying to escape, but whatever.

The setting was glam, the people were self important, the hosts were fantastic, the food was deplorable. The afterparty was a who’s who of douchetown and the mayor had the clipboard. But let’s talk about the flight home, because that’s where it gets good. I got to the airport two hours before boarding so i could write, have a bloody mary, and just get close to “away from Vegas” as possible. I think it’s a crap town. I hate it to be honest. It’s depressing, it’s trying to be something it’s not (like, um, if you want to stay in a hotel that looks like the buildings of New York, hows about spend your hard earned money on a trip to the REAL city instead of a depressing poor man’s version?) I think that’s really the theme of Vegas: low class aiming for a self imposed importance… that fails. It’s all about loss and how willful a marketing pawn you are. Sometimes I hate being older - it’s too much awareness.

Anyway. Bloody Mary in full effect, I wandered over to the gate and saw all the poor hungover schmucks from the night before. I assumed it would be a quiet flight. I figured no one would be talking, just a lot of napping. I assumed wrong. Free vodka and beer AGAIN, and new seat partners for me because I switched at check in for a window. Turns out my seatmates were fans of ordering a bloody mary and Dos Equis at the same time. We had 4 rounds of each within a 3-4 hour time window. just in time to hit gut flopping turbulence. just enough time to really really regret my choice as we were forced to land in Rochester in order to refuel and wait out the violence. And Rochester? just enough time for me to fill four barfbags full of honk - to be relayed to the main garbage and back by my saintly seatmates (two gruff and funny guys from “the Suffolk). just enough time to have an annoucement made … certainly not beacuse of me, noooo,

“If anyone is feeling ill, which we’ve had reports of, please move to the front or back of the plane so you can reach the bathroom more quickly” - this was after major turbulence, but yeah, that’s not why I honked.

I arrived in New York, slipping out of the Broadway/Lafeyette stop, at 2:00am. Home just before 2:30, showered, and in bed. Today all I could think of was how that honking situation could have been so much worse. Those guys could have been horrible assholes. They rallied all the seats around us and got every single barfbag in a 12 seat radius. They saved me.

so yeah. I guess time will tell if anyone kept a record of that. I made it through Vegas without barfing, just in time to hork in Rochester, NY.