Elyse takes you on a photographic adventure

I was looking through my phone and found a bunch of random pictures that I took with the intention of blogging about each, but, never did. So, I figured, I’d upload them all, slap them in a single post, and explore my exterior reasoning for creativity, which should be fun because my head is capable of doing things like forgetting how to spell the word “use,” having dreams about me eating my own cottage cheese thighs, and thinking this was a really clever idea for a post (sorry feminism). Anyway, let’s go on a photographic journey a la my rationale and I’ll make fun of myself for you:

Exhibit A: A blossoming tree

I took this picture because the view from my window is a muddy construction site. During the winter, the view didn’t really bother me much, but ever since the weather has been getting significantly less icky, when I open my window in the morning and see the construction site, all I can think is: “Ah! Springtime in Brooklyn!” Which is horribly cynical but I do admittedly live on the ugliest block in Carroll Gardens. Yet, the other day, while walking home, uncomfortably hauling a shitload of groceries, I saw this tree blossoming in front of my building and all I could think was, aw, shucks, tree, maybe my block aint that rundown after all.

Exhibit B: Homemade mayo

I hate mayo. But I made some from scratch for my very Midwestern roommate’s birthday. I was originally going to write a whole post about making mayo, but really, all you do is dump a cup of canola oil, 2 eggs, a squirt of lemon, and some mustard into a bowl and then blend that nasty concoction with an electric mixer until it’s white and giggly gross. For her next birthday I need to figure out how to make Mountain Dew from scratch, but I’m thinking a 2-liter plastic bottle filled with water from the Gowanus canal will suffice.

Exhibit C: This also happened on my roommate’s birthday

Exhibit D: One pimp ride

I spotted this slick Caddy on DeGraw Street the other day and wanted to lick it. Instead I took a picture.

Exhibit E: Hester’s new looks

Uh oh. Someone chewed the blueberry gum at Willy Wonka’s factory didn’t they?

Uh oh. Someone chewed Big Red gum at Willy Wonka’s Parisian factory didn’t they?

Uh oh. Someone chewed the weird blouse gum at Willy Wonka’s ugly factory didn’t they? 

Exhibit F: Rationing wine

Instead of doing what I usually do and buying four bottles of wine for weekday consumption, I decided that I would try to buy just one bottle of wine and drink a little of it throughout the week. This is how much I had left over after Monday night.

Exhibit G: My foot

It looks like Sloth from The Goonies

Exhibit H: My roommate’s tiny dog sunbathes in the bathroom

Exhibit I: I made my friend draw a Hasidic Jew on a grape.

Exhibit J: My mom texted me a picture of an old letter I wrote her.

From this letter I gather that I’m jealous of my sister, distrust the quality of meat produced in American slaughterhouses, and need to change banks.

Exhibit K: A masterpiece

I call this “The F train: 4 am”

Exhibit L: The reason why I quit the dating site Plenty of Fish

Elyse gets drunk after a long day at work that involved writing photo captions for a slideshow she made called ‘How to Incorporate LED Lights into your Bar Mitzvah” and complains about how she’s so fucking bored

What has happened to me? I am not funny anymore. I used to be. I can’t think of a funny tweet, can’t write a sample, funny 200-word review for a job I actually want that might get me out of this catatonic rut-of-blah I seem to be in, or write anything for work, or myself that isn’t silly. I feel like I’ve lost it.

My best friend gave me this really cool hand-painted leopard print chopping knife a year ago. When I first got it, it was sharp and as chopperific as an Amazon instant video stream when I’m trying to watch the season finale of The Walking Dead. And after a year of wasting its sharp blade on cucumbers and onions instead of on zombies’ nippy faces, it’s become dull. Just like everything I’ve written in this post up until now.

GALILTH! Now that’s a name that makes you want to dump a bowl of macaroni and Velveta cheese down your pants and squish it around your thighs, isn’t it? And that’s kind of exciting. And gross. Speaking of gross.

I wore a new blouse today I bought from a thrift shop. Although I washed it, it smelled like some other person’s BO and gave me a headache. It’s balled up under my desk at work now and I think I may keep it as a pet. Name it Steve. Feed it bananas. Kick it when it’s fresh.

So, this is a sample restaurant write-up I stated and quit up front, just like most of the guys I go out on dates with from OKCupid:

“Word association time. When we say ‘Red Hook’ you think: a) some place in Brooklyn, b) warehouses, c) a sunburnt, one-handed ginger whose hook is on fire from stabbing sample, lava-infused habanero peppers at a Fairway. And he’s pissed because they were organically grown by free-range dragons and he CARES about the environment and global warming but this hurts especially because his tears taste like Saracha.”

I didn’t even mention Ikea. Or the restaurant. I am a failure.

 Time to watch Bob’s Burgers and go to sleep.

Elyse has an email correspondence with her mother

Mother: I found a really cute dress that would look great on you. What’s your dress size?
Me: Size FAT.
Mother: Would that be a 10-14 or a 14-18?
Me: 10-14, I haven’t gotten that fat.
Mother: Ok, good.

Elyse watches ‘Bird on a Wire’

I just watched “Bird on a Wire” with Goldie Hawn and Mel Gibson like a virgin, for the very first time. Thoughts, in bullets, because there was a lot of shooting:

• It was totally gross to watch Kate Hudson make out with Mel Gibson. He’s like, her mother’s age.
• In 1990, playing air guitar was a cool character trait and floppy disks were high-tech devices used by the FBI. 
• How did Mel Gibson KNOW to have an overgrown mullet and the alias Billy Ray two years before “Achy-Breaky Heart” was released? This proves that Gibson has always had his finger on the pulse of culture, which totally explains why “The Beaver” was such a success. (Poor Jodie Foster). 
• It’s totally okay to kill police officers and FBI agents. And it’s totally okay to laugh and slap-flirt after doing so. 
• I’ve used the word “totally” five times already in the post. 
• They couldn’t have played Leonard Cohen’s version of “Bird on a Wire” at least once? 
•  If Mel Gibson was able to hotwire a motorcycle, why did he get all panicky when he thought Goldie Hawn lost the keys to her BMW? Inconsistencies! 
• Apparently you can drive a motorcycle with a bullet lodged in your butt.
• Vets are horny and totally sexy women, which is so unrealistic because who's ever heard of a female doctor?
• When you’re shown a skeleton of a piranha in a scene shot at a zoo not once, but twice, someone’s getting eaten alive by piranhas. And that someone’s going to be a real asshole. And that’s called foreshadowing. 
• Speaking of the zoo, the only animals they have in zoos are ones that eat you. 
• The only time you saw Asians in the film was when they were about to get hit in an alleyway during a car chase scene. Yet they never got hit. Instead, the rack of drying laundry they were toting got hit, or they kung fu-jumped upwards, out of the way, into a mass of hanging Chinese lanterns. And this happened twice. What does this mean? That Asians do a lot of laundry? Have ninja-like reflexes? Like tight spaces? Can’t drive and should be hit by cars? Next thing you’ll tell me is that they like rice. And everyone likes rice! 
• The film’s portrayal of gay people (poor Jodie Foster) is about as charming as Mel Gibson’s infamous rants about Jews (poor Goldie Hawn) and Russian Jacuzzi blow jobs. 
• Speaking of Russians, there was not ONE Russian in this film. Racist! 
• After Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn get into bed naked together and surprisingly have sex, Goldie Hawn talks about having a dream about just the two of them on a sail boat, away from everyone else. You’re telling me none of her teeth fell out, she didn’t fly, fart petunias, or eat the pancreatic cancer out of a Norwegian gnome named Wanda (gnomes can be woman too, misogynist) during this sail boat dream? Boring. 
• The final scene of the movie was Goldie Hawn and Mel Gibson on a sail boat at sunset making out. There were no repercussions from all the cops and FBI agents they killed, laughed, and slap-flirted about during the movie. The conclusion was totally shocking. 

Elyse makes a confession

To me, the whole concept of social networking is a platypus. It’s a strange animal. It seems one way, mammal-like or relatable, but it lays eggs, rendering it confusing.

Maybe I view it this way because I initially approached the concept in a very cynical, Wall-E type of way where I felt like communicating online prevented people from being social in a non-virtual way. It seemed edited, calculated, and I sincerely felt like it was having an adverse effect and making people more awkward in actual social situations. In fact, some people I know who are super charming on Twitter and Facebook have a hard time looking you in the eye when engaging in emoticon-free conversation. Plus, there’s nothing more obnoxious than someone at a party or bar staring at their phone, using it as a social crutch or wall.

But then again, I’ve found myself doing this sometimes now as well, especially since I moved to New York where you’re crammed into pretty intimate social situations with utter strangers on a daily basis. Like the subway.

When I first moved here, I found the subway to be the loneliest place in the world. I didn’t know a soul and was constantly craving human interaction. And whenever I got on a train, I was rubbing butts with one stranger and within not just kissing, but Eskimo-kissing distance, of another, and everyone was so far away. Headphones in ears and eyes on phones. But then, after living here for a year, I found myself relieved to have ear buds snuffing out the sound of an intrusive and money-hungry mariachi band that randomly ambushed my car or having an excuse not to pay attention to the crazy eating ribs from a plastic Rite-Aid bag and spitting the bones onto the floor while ranting angrily about Daisy Fuentes (what did she do?!). Plus, all the reading you can get done on a subway commute is incredible! I read all three of the Hunger Games books the first few months I was here – a great feat for a teenager! I am 31!

And after years of using Facebook, I have to admittedly admit that it’s successfully kept me in touch with a dear friend from college who moved to Japan months after graduation and made me kinda, sorta like a mean girl from high school who I used to regard as a total ninny (first time using that word and I have to admittedly admit it felt nifty!) Also, I have some weird, very esoteric issues with social media due to the fact that I’m legally blind (remind me to tell you more about that later) and keeping up with tech trends and social standards is tiring for my pretty blue but kind of useless seeing-face balls.

 But today, on the day of the Boston Marathon explosions, I read this on Twitter, written by a pop culture commentator and blogger that I very much admire, Linda Holmes:

Linda Holmes ‏@nprmonkeysee: 
“Thanks, too, to everyone who didn't RT what they didn't know, didn't spread things, took a breath and encouraged others to do the same.”

Eek! I was totally one of those people who re-tweeted and re-posted the news right away. I did it on both the social mediums I oversee for work. Reading the news and seeing pictures of blood-stained streets genuinely disturbed and sadden me, but, then again, I’m under constant pressure to make a brand successful and feel obliged to try and get as much attention as possible, which, instinctively is so not me. And I need to learn when to post something and when to leave it up to the folks who report and accurately break the news in order to let the general public sufficiently digest. Then proceed with comment, if I genuinely feel like I have a unique perspective to bring to the table.

So I guess I’m apologizing for being a ninny.

And while we’re on the subject of confessions, I really hate talking about myself in third-person in my post titles or web heads or whatever. And this may change. But if I’ve learned anything as an editor, consistency is important to an audience. Even if the audience is currently non-existent.