Garry would love my VenusZine

even though the target demo seems to be women in their early 20s.  It's the total anti-Cosmo.  Not a single article on boys or silly sex moves.  It's all music, DIY, alterna-fashion, art, current issues.

When I receive a new magazine issue in the mail every month, my usual ritual is to go through the entire thing and rip out all the ads I can (I get really annoyed when they alternate ads with content).  I usually end up with a little over half of the original paper weight.  With VenusZine though, even the ads are interesting, and the rest is really content-rich.  It's for chicks (and sympathetic dudes) with brains.  How refreshing!

For the record, titles that get me through the month include: Domino, Bon Appetit, and VenusZine. If I wanted to get a fourth it would be Harper's Bazaar.  I asked Garry for a subscription to The Economist but didn't like how much it editorialized...Fortune and BusinessWeek have pretty good content (except I don't see why a business mag needs to have a regular feature on wine) but let's face it--they bore me.  =D

Bad at keeping up.

I didn't read my Posterous subscriptions for a little over a week and guess what--it was 35 pages of entries before I had covered it all.  Sheesh, you guys are prolific!

I randomly visited my old boss's blog.  I had no idea she had moved to Rome, and in April, at that!  Almost six months ago!  I'm glad she's pursuing her dream of writing and living "under the Tuscan sun."  I'm so glad for her.  Maybe now's a good time to consider a trip back to Europe, after 9 years!

Someone asked me the other day why I left the Biz...

...I found my answer while digging through my old blog.  Reblogging now:
______________________________________

June 19, 2005

Holy BALONEY. I graduated from college TWO YEARS AGO. I have been in this godforsaken business for ALMOST TWO YEARS. Yea, I'm FREAKING OUT. I BARELY have enough saved up to buy a car, though I did manage to pay off my student loans. ALL MY FRIENDS ARE GETTING ENGAGED (by all, I mean two. But several are well on their way, and everyone from high school is getting married. And by everyone, I mean like ten). I have no way of knowing WHEN IN THE HELL I'm going to get promoted. and even IF I get promoted in the next few months, I'll still BE WORKING 12-Hour days and reading PILES of SCRIPTS at 1 AM on a Sunday, not going to church, eating out every night and GETTING FAT, all while making less money PER ANNUM than a general manager at HOME DEPOT (which my parents loooooooooove to remind me). And I'll be NOWHERE NEAR making the kind of movies I actually, really want to make. MY FRIENDS ARE STARTING TO TRY TO SET ME UP WITH BORING TAIWANESE GUYS WHO GRADUATED FROM STANFORD AND WORK AT YAHOO, under the guise of "group dinner" at hipster Japenese fusion places (all well intentioned of course). 

I'm considering a career change. Scratch that, I'm considering a LIFE CHANGE. Because I'm making a living doing something "FUN" I find I have no time to do anything I really actually want to do, like take walks, curl up on my couch with homemade brownies and milk and watch reruns of Sex and the City, reading from CITY OF QUARTZ and writing my caldecott award-winning picture book, paint my walls, buy shoes and furniture, get haircuts on a regular basis, having long talks with people I completely trust, being creative, keep my bathroom spic and span, vacuum, iron, cook eggs for myself, have people over, do double-headers at the movies, run around, throw pots, volunteer, surf the internet for hours, go to the beach, reorganize everything, teach, learn, laugh.

On the plus side: I bought four pairs of shoes today. Last week I got my first pedicure EVER and went to the Rose Bowl Flea market with Amelia, and came home with an old metal vanity chair that is THE perfect project: I get to sand it down and repaint it, and reupholster the seat cushion with a staple gun. I am surrounded by people almost all the time. 

I have in the backseat of my car, as part of the spoils of "company stuff" that was being stored at Disney, an original finger painting by Adam Sandler that he gave to my boss-man. It's a mess of blue with an ugly face surrounded by the words, "LIVE FEAR FUCK DIE." Those tortured comics. I bet it would sell for a lot on eBay. I also have a pile of stunt wigs that they used for that movie, CORKY ROMANO, if anyone wants to buy those off me.

And tomorrow I'll be rubbing elboys with the new Face of Bulimia herself, Ms. Lindsay Lohan at the HERBIE: FULLY LOADED premiere. Fun times.
______________________________________________

It's funny... I read the above underlined paragraph now... and I have spent pretty much the last 2.5 years doing many of those things... and yet am still not satisfied.  Should I be re-evaluating my life or should I be re-evaluating my expectations?

Ok, if you are reading this, you need to download Chrome. NOW!

Google's new web browser is in Beta!  Visit the Chrome site to download it.

I'm using it right now, and it is so amazingly, lightning fast I hardly know what to do with myself, except weep--half in joy, at all the time I will save from now on, and half in sorrow, at all the minutes spent waiting for stupid IE or Firefox to load web pages.

Good lord, it's a new day!

Foodie Tuesdays: Curry Goat

Rewind to the summer of 2002.  I was in the midst of my first truly independent summer, interning for Dutton Children's Books (a subsidiary of Penguin Putnam) on Hudson and Houston in New York City for two glorious months.  Come lunchtime, though, it was a bit of a struggle to find something decent to eat for a decent price.  I wasted much stomach space on mediocre snack-cart knishes and (ew) salads. 

Until one day, I was poking around looking for Peanut Butter & Co. after seeing it featured on the Food Network.  Having found it, though, I found myself inexplicably drawn to the hole-in-the-wall takeout counter nestled adjacent to it.  I eyed it for at least a couple weeks before finally deciding to take the plunge.  I can't remember, but I think it was my first encounter with Jamaican food.  I think I'd heard about jerk chicken, but something else on the menu caught my eye--the curry goat. 

Now, I love curry, and I love lamb.  For me, goat did not seem like much of a leap.  I ordered up some for maybe like $6, took the steaming parcel to a bench in the middle of West 4th, sat down and dug in.

Oh, heaven.

The curry was remarkably strong, complex, savory.  Little pleasure receptors in my brain were tingling.  I savored every morsel of tender meat, and when I got down to them, I even sucked the saucy marrow out of the beautifully thick, white bones.  It half occurred to me that these made the perfect kind of bones you'd want to give your dog to chew on.  But I couldn't be bothered with that, because I was enjoying myself too much =)

The take-out counter, Jamaican Flavors, has since closed.  I was so disappointed and broken-hearted when I discovered this in May 2008.  But it looks like this new place, blogged about on www.midtownlunch.com, might be a good runner-up to try next time I'm in the Big Apple.  Photo borrowed without permission.

Scharffen Berger Factory Tour

I remember the tour to Hershey, PA almost 20 years ago to have more of a wow factor, mostly because we could see the machines going, and the machine I remember most vividly was the one that made Hershey Kisses--I was mesmerized by the way it touched its tips to the conveyer belt.

Today, the tour at Scharffen Berger's factory in Berkeley was like an upscale version of that... we started with a very strange and theatrical tour guide who walked us through the history of chocolate, how it was made, the history of Scharffen Berger, etc.  In the course of all that we got to taste all kinds of chocolate: 71% dark, 62% dark, 41% extra rich milk.  Dee-lish.  I ended up buying a "limited edition" special blend called Finisterra (or the End of the Earth).  Delicious notes of berry and wine.  I'm glad I finally got a chance to do this.