My book is out today, now available everywhere. I am officially a real-live author. Terrific.

But, much like I have counted on you in the past for assistance (mostly related to make-outs, music recommendations, and fantasy baseball tips), I call upon you once more, my friends, as the battle is only half won. Yes, having a book actually in the stores and available from online retailers is a big, big step. A vital step, really. But as many of you know, my ultimate goal is nothing short of fame, fortune, a few (incredibly awkward) orgies, and a drug dealer with whom I have a “regular.”

(Wait, I kinda already have that last one. Although I think he’s dead or in jail or something because I haven’t heard from him in weeks.)

In order to help achieve this goal, I humbly ask for your help. There are two ways that you can make all of our dreams come true.

Buy a copy.
Seriously. This would help.

If you have the means, I would even suggest buying two, as the book makes a great gift for any person in your life who likes reading but not reading really hard stuff and enjoys seeing some pictures and maybe even laughing a little bit. Also, reasonably educated stoners. I bet they would like the book, too. And people who have “crazy” families.

So basically people who like to read but not read, like to laugh, like to look at pictures, possibly are stoners, and may or may not have a crazy family. It’s a wide demographic, really.

You pimp the shit of that book.
Few things need more help to succeed and “pimping” than a little old book. There are no TV commercials for books. No huge billboards on the side of the road. No sports sponsorships (“The 15th Annual Everything Is Wrong With Me Match Play Championship in Tucson, AZ”). Nothing. A book success depends almost entirely on those who read it and recommend it to others.

So if you:

- Have a blog

- Have a Facebook, Twitter or MySpace (other social network stuff that I don’t even know about) account

- Are in a book club

- Are an active member of an online community that uses messageboards

- Have a family, co-workers or friends

I ask that you consider recommending the book.

You can think of it in terms of a geometric progression (says the guy who scored so low in the math portion of his first PSAT that he didn’t get a number but rather the word “RETARDED”). Let’s say you recommend the book via email to ten friends. Of those ten, let’s say five completely ignore the email. Two read the email, but don’t buy the book, as they have severe drug problems and can’t afford it, even though it’s incredibly reasonably priced. And three actually buy the book.

Let’s say further that two of those three really enjoy the book (but let’s be honest, it’s going to be three of three). Those two then recommend the book to ten each of their friends. Then, the cycle repeats. Maybe one person who likes it uses it for his/her book club. Maybe another tweets it to his/her followers. Maybe another writes a review and includes the cover of the book in his/her blog. More geometric progression. More people. More success and thus more potential for orgies with, like, a ton of smoking hot ethnic chicks.

So I ask you, friends, to pimp the shit out of my book. Put it on your blog and your Facebook, Twitter and MySpace pages. Suggest it for your book club. Write about it in your messageboards. Write a quick email to your friends, family or co-workers (or, if you got one from me today, forward it on). These are small, easy steps that you can take that can have a profound effect.

I know that it may sound corny or fairytale-ish, but this is really how this stuff happens. To wit, two weeks into its existence I emailed this here blog to a dozen or so buddies. Six years and about 200 million hits later, here we are. So you gotta trust me when I say that word of mouth is the igniter of revolutions, the launching pad for careers, and the starting point for the aforementioned orgy parties.

(One thing that’s important, if you so choose to pimp: please be sure to include the link to order the book, which is here: http://tinyurl.com/eiwwme. The goal is to make the book as easy to purchase as possible, and you can’t make it much easier than including a link that takes you right to the Amazon page.)

And what, you might ask, is in it for you? As of now, I can only offer you two things. The first is my thanks and heartfelt gratitude. Not great, I know, but it’s all I have right now. I’m working on other stuff, but you live so far away.

The other thing I can offer you is a promise. A promise that, if I should get any real fame or celebrity out of this, I will be the best effing famous person I could possibly be. I have all key elements to make it work: self-destructive, mildly socially anxious, very fertile (extremely fertile, actually), occasional displays of sociopathic behavior, dangerously low self-esteem – yet while still being (dare I say) humble and (some would say) a nice guy. The one tiny thing that’s lacking is, you know, the fame part. But we’re working on that.

So, friends, godspeed. Together, we are unstoppable; we always have been, and we will continue to be. Now let’s start pimping the shit out of this book and start putting together a solid orgy playlist. (I’m not sure if it’s more of a Sigur Ros thing or an Andrew WK thing. Suggestions welcome.)

From the “I’m a temporarily a publicity whore/Have I mentioned my book comes out March 2?” file, here’s an interview that I did with the New York Press that covers the book, Lent, celebrity sightings, cocaine and Rosario’s. So, some things I like, some things I really like, and some things…meh.

(And hey, if I’m going to keep pimping myself and the book here, give me credit for at least trying to make it as interesting as possible, right?)

(Right?)

(Forget it.)

Let’s just get into some music on this Friday, eh?

Six Songs

“Free Energy” Free Energy
Holy shitballs.

Seriously, holy shitballs.

It’s only February, but I’m almost ok with declaring this my 2010 theme song. Balls out party rock at its finest (and they’re from Philly! – though I don’t know them). They have a three-song EP on iTunes right now. I suggest you buy it, then email me immediately to say it’s the best $2.49 you’ve spent in years, and possibly ever. Because if this stuff doesn’t get you out of your seat, clapping your hands and pumping your fists (though not at the same time – that would be impossible), you, my friend, are dead. Both to me and probably literally.

“Don’t Forget Me” Neko Case
I’m a little biased, because I love Neko Case. But dang, this song, a Harry Nilsson cover, is just so purdy. I don’t know many lyricists or singers who can drop “cancer” in a line and pull it off, making you feel all warm and happy and love love love.

“Secret Heart” Ron Sexsmith
I knew this song, and was vaguely aware of this guy, but never really got into him until recently – and early returns are very good. Sensitive, slightly effeminate, and Canadian – all things that I love or aspire to be.

(And yes, I just watched the “Elvis Costello: Spectacle” episode featuring, among others, Neko Case and Ron Sexsmith.)

(Also, what’s the origin of the name “Sexsmith”? For example, I think that a “smith” in someone who works in or with something, kinda like a goldsmith works in gold or a silversmith works with silver. So does a sexsmith work in sex? Or, better, a blacksmith work in blacks? Inquiring minds…)

“I Can Drink Any Woman Pretty” Todd Snider
Because I live in what is more or less a hotel room, all of my guitars are stored at my dad’s house in Philly. However, this humorous country ditty (whose title is pretty much self-explanatory) makes me want to go back there and get one so I can play this song to my friends when we’re sitting around someone’s apartment fucked up. Favorite lines: “Now I admit at first I didn’t even want that woman near me/Hell, she looked like she’d been beaten up with a rake/But as I gulped down another round, I said, hey woman hang around/You’re getting’ better looking with every drink I take.”

“Long Hot Summer Night” Jimi Hendrix
Speaking of guitar, there were three things that I would have given ten years of my life to be able to do back when I was in high school. They are:

1) Have sex with any one of the approximately 4600 girls that I fell deeply in love with between 1993-1997.

2) Play the guitar fill that starts 1:45 into this song, right after Jimi sings, “And the telephone keeps on screaming!”

3) Seriously, even if I could have just kissed one of those 4600 girls that I fell in love with in high school, or got a good five minutes during which I could smell the hair of any one of them, I would have lopped at least four years off the end of my life, no doubt.

Alas, #1 and #3 never came to pass (the hair smelling in #3 came close, but I’m still not ready to talk about that particular sleepover party). And neither did #2, but I was closer to that – by far – than the other two.

“Little Secret” Passion Pit
Another fun anthem that’s becoming my go-to song when it’s the weekend and about 9pm and I’m in the shower, washing up and guzzling a vodka red bull (have I mentioned that I’m 30?). Looking forward to doing this very thing in just a few hours.

[Have a good weekend.]

My dad was a longshoreman and a mechanic. That’s what he did for a living before getting hurt at work and put on permanent disability (which now causes him to maintain a steady diet of pain pills; I’ve written it before, but you haven’t lived until you’re driving across the country with your dad in a giant Lincoln Town Car, he’s doing 85 on some desolate stretch in New Mexico, and he asks you to hand him an Oxycontin and Percocet, which he pops like Tic Tacs while he’s driving). My earliest memories of my dad are of him fixing cars, using tools, smoking cigarettes, answering knocks at the door from neighbors and friends having car troubles, smoking cigarettes, fixing more cars, repeat. His entire adult life (and I would guess, much of his life, period) has been dedicating to fixing things: taking them apart, learning how they work, and putting them back together – and getting his hands dirty in the process.

I, on the other hand, have never displayed any type of mechanical proclivities at all. I recently found a pre-K report card of mine, and it said I was bad at tying my shows, but good at expressing myself and during music time. To this day, I still tie my shoes with two loops (the “bunny ears” method) and don’t know the one loop standard method. About four weeks ago, I tried to learn how to tie a double-windsor knot. After an hour of finding instructions via Google and pouring over them, viewing countless YouTube clips, and an extremely frustrating ten minute phone conversation with a buddy (not to mention about 1500 expletives, most of them hybrids involving “cock” and “fuck-ass”), I failed, and got myself so enraged in the process that I don’t think my blood pressure has yet quite recovered. And though my hands are not quite feminine, due to my long, creepy fingers, they are always immaculately clean.

…read more…

First, thanks to all the kind words about the new site design. The consensus seems to be that, well, it’s lovely. And I agree. Like I said, there are some kinks that we’ll work out, but again, all thanks and praise to Site Guy Brendan and Kyle. They really brought it.

As for the book, here’s my lame attempt to answer some of the most common questions that I’ve gotten about it so far:

- Canada (etc): This has been a popular topic, as the book is listed on the Amazon.ca site, but without an official release date (as of this writing). However, I can confirm that the book will be out in Canada on March 2, just like in the US, so our neighbors to the north can feel free to pre-order as they so desire.

(For those of you who asked about it in the UK, I’m still looking into this, though it’s listed on the Amazon.co.uk site without a release date, as well. To be continued…)

- Kindle: A Kindle edition is “in the works,” but that’s all I know. If you check out the Amazon.com page for the book, below the picture of the cover there’s a link to click to tell the publisher you want to read the book on Kindle. So if you want to read it on Kindle, click there. Power to the people, baby.

…read more…

I’m headed to LA this afternoon, having moved by flight up seven hours to try to beat this snow. I’ll be there for a week, trying to press our interests there and eating a lot of Taco Bell (it’s really a shame that there aren’t more Taco Bells in NYC, and quite puzzling).

I’m rushing out of work now, but for a little light reading on this lovely Friday, go to TheRumpus.net to check out this interview I did with my former writing teacher (yes, I had a writing teacher) and excellent writer, Steve Almond, who, much to his surprise, ended up providing a lovely blurb for my book. See? It pays to not burn bridges with your old teachers, even if that tell you that, if they could have, they would have given you a nice C-.

[Have a good weekend.]

Dear Neighbor,

I know that we have not yet met, so allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jason Mulgrew, and I, too, am a resident of Ludlow Street. As a matter of fact, I live in the building right next to yours, and we share the same air shaft, that two foot space between buildings that gives some NYC apartments their distinct “view” (read: a brick wall that one can reach out of his or her window and touch).

And though we have yet to actually meet, we know each other. Or at least, we know of each other’s presence. I know you as the girl who sings at the top of her lungs several nights a week, at any time between 7pm and midnight, and really belts it out – very, very poorly. And you know me as the guy who opens his window, several nights a week, at any time between 7pm and midnight, and screams, “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” at you when you’re doing your singing (or what you believe is singing but what most people would call “making noises with your mouth and throat and lungs that sound really fucking awful and annoying”).

…read more…

Guys, I need a favor.

(Please don’t roll your eyes when I haven’t even asked yet, especially when it’s very simple.)

Friends of mine in Philly, Rose and Carl, are in the running for a free $90,000 wedding. Actually, to say they are in the running is not total complete; they are among the top ten finalists. And to win the grand prize, they need as many votes as they can get.

I know, I know – it’s unbecoming to beg. I normally wouldn’t ask, but there are a few things that make this situation unique:

1) There were 400-something couples that started in this process. There are now, as I said, ten left. So they have a real shot to actually win this thing.

…read more…

So, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I have a book coming out.

Yep, it’s there, over there on the right. And yes, that’s me on the cover. I know, I know – I had really great hair. And much better taste in clothes than I do now. So much promise, so very, very long ago.

(It should be noted that as I write this, I’m sitting on my couch in my boxers, staring at the wrapper of a carrot cake cupcake, having just recently beat off to a clip from RedTube entitled, “Sarah becoming mistress of fuck-fighting.” So there’s that. Poor kid.)

(And if you think I’m lying about any of this, come over my apartment right now and check. I’m not going anywhere.)

(And I’m realizing now that my editor’s going to be pissed. When I told him that I was about to introduce the book on the site, he said, “That’s great, Jason. But promise me you won’t use the phrase ‘fuck-fighting’ anywhere in the introduction.” Whoops.) …read more…

When I moved back to NYC, I was looking at all sorts of areas in which to live. Because I like to walk to work and because I mostly go out around there (and because I’m a snob who likes to look down on people based on where they live), I wanted something downtown-ish, which, like most New Yorkers, I considered anything below 14th Street. But as for which specific neighborhood, I didn’t really care. First, I had my sights set on Chinatown, because you can get a lot of space for your money there. However, of course, you’re surrounded by Chinese people, ranging in age from 0 to 186, all of whom love to walk slowly, spit in public and eat things that look like little monsters and smell like genitals (of either sex) after a long workout followed by a six hour shift at the grill at Chili’s followed by a bath in recently puked up French onion soup. So that made me less interested in Chinatown.

After being downtown, my second criterion for an apartment was one that I live in one that was owned or operated by a responsive landlord or building manager. You may remember that when I lived in my Little Italy apartment, the apartment I lived in for three years before moving to LA, on eight separate occasions I either awoke in the morning or returned from vacation to find that my toilet had overflowed and there was shit and shit water and used toilet paper covering 20% of my apartment. I mentioned this to my landlord each time, and each time he “cleaned it up” (read: removed the water, but left bits of dried toilet paper and what I hoped was lettuce on much of the floor).

(It was not lettuce.)

(And worse, it was not even my lettuce – it was the entire building’s septic system’s.)

The coup de grace came on that eighth and final shit-spew. I was so used to the toilet overflowing when I went away for any stretch of time that I called my landlord, a real wop asshole, from LAX after being out in SoCal for a week:

Me: “Hi Vince, it’s Jason. Listen, I’ve been out of town for a week, and I’m assuming that the toilet has overflowed.”
Vince: [in real wop asshole voice] “Yeah, it’s my understanding that it did.”
Me: [sighing] “That’s fine. Can you just make sure it’s cleaned up – like, really cleaned up – this time? I have a six hour flight and don’t land until after midnight, so I’d rather not deal with that when I get home.”
Vince: [in real wop asshole voice, but trying to be conciliatory] “Oh yeah, yeah, Jay – no problem.”

When I returned home that night at around 1am, I saw that the landlord had done the standard cleaning job – bits of dried toilet paper and “lettuce” and brown streaks everywhere – but I also found poo/poo water on my $120 electric toothbrush and (wait, it gets better) saw that my two bath mats, which were thoroughly soaked in the poo water and covered in lettuce, were picked up off the bathroom floor and placed in my kitchen sink.

By 5pm the next day, I had sent a letter out via registered mail, initiating the process of suing him.

Ultimately, I didn’t (it turns out that suing someone is a lot of work). But I did get 100% of my security deposit back. Friends, lawyer friends among them, insisted that I push for more for all the damages, but I was moving cross-country and didn’t want to deal with it. (See also: laziness.)

So for my new apartment, I didn’t want an absentee landlord. This didn’t mean I needed to live in a white glove doorman luxury building with a fleet of supers on the premise, but, c’mon – if shit spews on my floor and I didn’t cause it, I want someone to show up promptly, clean it up thoroughly, and apologize to me profusely. I don’t think this a ton to ask in a city where most security deposits could represent a significant down payment on a house in 99.1% of the rest of the country.

The other not-really-apartment-but-apartment-related criteria I had was a simple one: no brokers. In NYC, your standard broker’s fee ranges from one month’s rent to 15% of the annual rent. I knew that this was a renter’s market, due to the depressed economy, so there was no way I was going to tack on a few extra grand just because some jerkoff had a lot of keys on his keychain.

Fortunately, this wasn’t that big of a deal. First, because there are a number of websites that list no-fee apartments. And second, because many brokers (and their fees) were being paid by landlords. So, not an issue.

Ultimately – and not to repeat myself (because I’ve written about this before) – I found, through a no-fee broker, a one bedroom apartment on Ludlow Street, just two blocks north of where I lived when I first moved into Manhattan in 2002 (after spending a year in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn). As I’ve said, I did not seek out the street on which I lived some of my favorite and funnest years, but rather was shown the apartment, was impressed and ultimately decided to take it.

(To clarify, it is in no way, shape or form sad that I’m back on the same street as a 30 year old that I lived on when I was 22. No, sir. Not sad at all. Just a total coincidence.)

Now just about two months into living there, the apartment and I have had something of an interesting relationship – not quite tumultuous, not quite peaceful, not even something in between, really. Just…interesting.

(Boy, that was a horrible paragraph.)

The obvious is that this is the nicest and most conveniently located apartment I’ve lived in. I’m the first to live there, as the entire building was recently gut renovated and fitted with nice and shiny appliances and such, and it has digitally controlled heat like in a hotel room (no small amenity in NYC, where in two of my previous apartments I ran the air conditioner in my bedroom in the winter, as the heat had two levels: “Off” and “Fuck yeah, it’s hot in here”). It’s also, as I said, on Ludlow Street, smack in the middle of the LES, which still has retained some of its charms despite the influx of, you know, phonies. And it’s around the corner from Rosario’s, where I’ve already developed a regular order (more on this another time).

But in addition to being the nicest and most conveniently located apartment I’ve ever lived in, it’s also the smallest and most expensive. Just as it has digitally controlled heat like a hotel room, well, it’s just a bit larger than a hotel room. And after living in LA, where I paid 2/3 the price and had 2x the space, man, it’s hard to write that rent check every month.

(Let’s just move on.)

But there are other issues. For starters, I am (likely clinically) addicted to showering, and spend upwards to two hours a day in the shower. What I do in there is (surprisingly) not related to the manipulation of my genitals to the point of ejaculation, but rather something more akin to meditating or, at the very least, relaxing. Mostly this means that I sit in the shower and read, doing so by pointing the showerhead down at my feet and allowing the tub to drain so that everything above my knees stays perfectly dry, thus allowing me to hold and enjoy a book or magazine. I also sometimes play poker on my iPhone or otherwise just veg out. But one thing I never, ever do is jerk off. The shower is my happy place, a clean, sterile environment where I can relax, not a place to sully up spraying semen everywhere (and then it doesn’t go down the drain properly, so you have to scoop it out with a wad of toilet paper – I mean, who wants that?). I figure that I have so many masturbation zones in my apartment (the couch, the bed, the floor while doing a one-armed push-up to simulate missionary position sex, etc) that I can leave the shower alone.

(However, the shower is not a sex-free zone. If the opportunity to make love presents itself – or the opportunity presents itself for me to do what I consider “making love,” which most other people would consider “some sort of thrusting, then there’s, like, this shrieking noise that starts off quiet but gets louder, and then there’s a wail and it’s still for about three-four minutes, then the whole process repeats itself and finally ends with what sounds like what you’d imagine an elk or a buffalo sounds like right before it dies” – then I have to take advantage of that opportunity, no matter where I am.)

In order to properly enjoy this shower experience – which my college roommates long ago dubbed “fantasy showering,” or “fanting” for short – I need me some hot water, since the goal is to relax and not give myself hypothermia. And – surprise – there’s not enough hot water for me to pull off fantasy showering in the new apartment. This hasn’t precluded me from trying – I’d estimate that three times a week I completely drain the whole building of hot water, usually around 20-25 pages into whatever I’m reading – but it has prevented me from enjoying it. So, strike one.

Another thing that’s not really a problem but something strange is the issue of safety. Now, I always feel safe in NYC, since there are usually about 1500 people within screaming distance no matter where you are. But a month ago a friend of a friend (a girl), who lives very close to me, was home alone, drunk, at 4am, when she heard the doorknob to her apartment start jiggling. It was someone – or someones – trying to break into her place. She screamed like a banshee and fended them off. When the police arrived, they told her that there was a gang of bad people going around breaking into apartments ALONG MY STREET.

Well.

I consider myself a fairly bad mother fucker. Not totally bad, but bad enough that I’m confident in handling myself, breaking up fights, doing one-armed push-ups while masturbating, etc. And so if one dude broke into my apartment, I could probably take him. But if it’s a bunch of dudes, well, that’s another story. So during the second week of living in my apartment, I slept with the following “weapons” by my bedside: a bottle of Miller Lite, a half a bottle of Johnny Walker (red, so it’s ok), a plastic fork (I had no real utensils yet, and figured a fork in the eye, even if it’s plastic, might do some damage), and a phone cord, perhaps to use as a strangulation device a la Dexter. This only lasted about a week, until I realized that if I ever did bring back a woman to my apartment and she saw beer, whiskey, a plastic fork and a phone cord sitting neatly next to my bed, I could be charged on the spot with attempted R. So while not strike two, certainly a fun development.

And finally, we have the most interesting issue of all. Several nights a week, I have been and continue to be awoken by noises in the apartment. Noise in an NYC apartment, especially one in the LES (though mine faces the back, thankfully), is nothing new: one has to deal with the clicking-clacking of high-heeled shoes, the conversations of neighbors, the sirens of squad cars, and myriad other nuisance noises. But the noises that kept waking me up were unlike those normal nuisance noises – it sounded like things were falling, things falling actually in my living room, when I knew that couldn’t be the case (I still own hardly anything, something that will not change for the foreseeable future, I think).

I mostly ignored them, rolled over, and went back to sleep. But last week it went from slightly annoying to full-on obnoxious. Monday’s noise was loud, Tuesday’s noise was louder, and finally, in the middle of the night on Wednesday, there was a noise from my living room that not only woke me up but caused me to jump out of bed – it sounded like the thwack of a moderately-thick glossy-covered book falling on a finished wooden floor. I had long ago returned my weapons to their rightful places, so had to go at it alone. Still in a daze, I half-expected to see someone in my apartment when I opened by bedroom door, quickly turned on the light, and…nothing. No one. No book on the floor. Nothing at all.

But at that moment, I got this sudden insight, clear as day, so obvious that I couldn’t believe I didn’t think of it before: my apartment is haunted.

I know, I know, it sounds crazy. Though my ancestors come from Ireland, I enjoy imbibing the water of life, and I am lyrical, sensitive, and (at times) beautifully poetic, even I think it’s crazy. But this is a century-old building that was once a tenement, housing each of the waves of immigrants to the New World, holding within its confines their lives, their stories, their loves, their losses. And this building, with all its history, was gutted, cleaned out, stripped of its charm, and fitted with stainless steel appliances and granite countertops, marble bathrooms and polished floors, all so that yuppies like me can overpay rent in order to get drunk at the “cool” bars on the street below. So I submit: if you watched the room where your lived most of your life, where you loved your wife and raised your children, completely torn out and remade for the sake of charging as much rent as possible, and then you watched this room occupied by a 30 year old fat man with a beard who sits in the shower for hours and hours and, well, masturbates on your floor, wouldn’t you haunt this place and this son of a bitch?

That next evening, I was hanging out with my friend Meredith, who had only seen my apartment the first day I moved in. Meredith is very intuitive (except when it comes to men – zing!) and before I even told her the story about my epiphany, she asked, “How’s your apartment? By the way, I kinda got a funny feeling about it, but…it’s nice, so that’s good.” And with that, the case was officially closed: I am living in a haunted apartment.

************

The noises still continue. Two nights ago, there was another huge thwack that woke me up. However, I was heavily under the influence of Xanax at the time, so there was no jumping out of bed and preparing for a fight. Instead, half-asleep, I yelled in the direction of the living room, “Dude, we’re gonna have to make this work!” And I went back to sleep.

Am I happy living in my apartment? Sure. Do I really believe it’s haunted? Maybe not totally, but it’s sort of looking that way. But I can live with it (I’ve already stopped jerking off on the floor, though I can’t promise that I won’t do that ever again). Life, like the apartment, is not perfect. But at least I’m around the corner from Rosario’s.

I like being outside. I understand that this might sound strange, coming as it does from someone who reads a book and a half a week because he spends two-plus hours a day reading in the shower. So this statement does come with a qualification; namely, I like being outside without doing much of anything, including but not limited to running, hiking, jumping, and generally moving at any speed more than 3 miles per hour (and with frequent breaks for resting and/or ice cream).

Believe it or not, being outside was part of what I missed about NYC when I lived in LA. Yes, LA has far better weather, but I enjoyed walking to and from work each day in NYC, passing about 10,000 people on each thirty-minute walk, taking in the sights and sounds. Once a weekend I’d put on my iPod, head out of my apartment, and just walk – from my place in Little Italy to the (way) West Village or up to Central Park or through Alphabet City and up the east side, stopping along the way to have a beer in a random bar or grab a bite to eat. It was wonderful – I could walk in NYC every day for 20 years and on each walk, find or see or experience something totally new.

(I’m sorry – did I just slip into my Carrie Bradshaw voice there? Further: do you think less of me because I made a Carrie Bradshaw reference? You should. I am ashamed.)

Of course, LA offers a number of things to do outdoors, but, as alluded to above, they were not my speed. That is, they were too fast for me. In LA, you can drive to a place to go hiking, or you can drive and run along the ocean, or you can drive and, I don’t know, find some other outdoorsy things to do, but you can’t put on your goddamned headphones and go for a nice (yet exciting) walk.

So when I moved back in NYC, in addition to eating and drinking at a number of different places and seeing and hanging (and potentially making) out with a number of different people, I was greatly looking forward to my walks. Hell, when looking for an apartment, I limited myself to downtown, so that I could walk to work each day. I was going to walk all over this damn town. Walk, walk, walk.

And after moving here just after Thanksgiving, I did. Sure, it was cold – but I love the cold! I hadn’t had real, lasting cold in eighteen months! So bring it on! After all, I have certain genetic and physical advantages over most normal human beings that allow me to thrive in the cold (beard, layer of body hair, layer of body hair under that layer of body hair, etc), so I did not shy away. Though the temperatures never really dipped below 40 or so, I still trudged to and from work each day, 1.9 miles and 40 minutes each way. Love it.

But then, just before the holidays, the wind shifted. Literally. Long gone were the reasonably cold winter days, replaced with a string of bitterly cold days and nights, complete with snow and wind. A passing phase, I thought, as I prepared for Christmas and splitting my time between NYC and Philly then NYC and Philly then NYC again. The cold spell would break in no time, and we’d be rewarded with a nice stretch of 50 degree days in there somewhere.

But that was each ago. And – guess what? – it’s still really fucking cold out.

And it’s definitely getting to me. I feel like I spend my days going from my apartment to the subway (two blocks away) to the subway to my office (two blocks away). The other day, I tried to walk to and from the East Village to get my Sea Thai, but I had to take a cab back, as it was too cold. Tonight, I wanted to hit the grocery store after work, which is about nine blocks/just about a mile away (actual shopping list from the “Notes” app on my iPhone: Pam, yogurt, cake(s), bread, funnel, plunger). Instead, I came home and ate a burrito. So I guess I made out ok there. But you know what I mean.

(I can see the emails now: “Hey, nancy, I live in Canada. Do you know what the fuck temperature it is here right now? -132. Yeah, -132. So why don’t you take your positive wind chills and barely-freezing air temperatures and bring them into the tub with your candles, vibrator and US Weekly, and just make a little party out of it, ok?” That’s fair. But there’s this: I don’t care. I don’t live in Canada, and I’m cold. So, shut up.)

And the cold is just generally making me feel down. It’s a strange thing, because I love my place, love my job, love being back in the city, and had an enjoyable holiday, but…meh. I’m tired. I’m cranky. And I’m realizing that I’ve seen just about every single fucking episode of The Office, Family Guy, Dateline and 48 Hours: Hard Evidence, so I probably shouldn’t even bother DVRing them anymore.

But still, though I feel almost as though I’m in prison in my little LES apartment, I remain hopeful. I realize that full-on warmer weather is still several (several) weeks away, but I don’t care about that – I don’t need 72 and sunny to make me happy, or else I would have stayed in LA. Instead, I have much more modest goals. For example, maybe a 48 degree day in the near future? Maybe even two in a row? Maybe even something a little colder thank 48 but that allows me just to walk home from work once or walk to and from the grocery store without feeling the need to take a steam afterwards? Maybe?

(Saturday’s forecast: Sunny, with a high of 25 and a low of 14.)

(I guess I’ll have to wait a little longer.)