As usual, I bristled.  I know that for some people, this is considered a standard friendly way to greet a woman, but I’m used to it being used in one of two ways: catcalling and other verbal harassment, or to condescend, especially to a younger woman, in a “oh you can’t carry that heavy basket, honey.”

Now, I was fine managing my basket, but since he was an employee, I was also appreciative that he was attentive enough to offer help.  I wasn’t appreciative of the “honey” part of the statement.

I told him not to call me “honey.”

Now, usually, this is the part where a guy will put his hands up and say he was only trying to compliment you, or “whoa, back off,” as if you were the one getting in his business, or whatnot.  Some guys will get actively hostile.

He didn’t.  He said, “I’m really sorry.   Please don’t crucify me?  What would you like to be called?  Should I call you ma’am?”

I was a little annoyed by the ‘please don’t crucify me’ part, but sort of surprised that he apologized so sincerely.  I said, “I don’t mind what you call me, as long as it is not a diminutive or affectionate term.”

“I won’t use it again.  I really didn’t mean it that way,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said. “And I’m not trying to crucify you either.  It just really frustrates me.”

“I know,” he said.  “That was a bad choice of words on my part.”  It was pretty clear he was referring to the ‘crucify’ part, here.  “I’ve been helping elderly women all day, and they like being called ‘honey,’ so it was on the tip of my tongue.  I see you in the store a lot, and I  want you to feel comfortable here.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “I know you didn’t mean it to be offensive.  But a lot of guys it just to be condescending.”

“Yeah, I know that,” he said.  “I won’t say it again.”

“Thank you for apologizing,” I said.

“Thank you for understanding,” he said. “I hope we’ll see you again soon.  Have a good night.”

This is obviously not exactly verbatim, but it is as closely paraphrased as I can make it.  At no point did this man raise his voice, or act frustrated with me at all.  Even though I am not sure I buy the part about him only calling me ‘honey’ because he’d been helping old ladies, he seemed to understand exactly why it bothered me, once I said something about it.  And he expressed that he wanted to respect my boundaries.  Part of it, I’m sure, was because he was an employee and I was a customer, but I’ve had other interactions with store employees over similar complaints that did not go as well, so part of it is also the individual.

I’m writing this down because I talk a lot about negative interactions with men over gendered language, and I wanted to point out that there are men who get it, and as respectful of women who communicate their boundaries.  Even strange men, who aren’t our friends.  Thanks, guys, to all those of you who DO.

Of course, I walked out of the store and got followed down the block by a guy who shouted “hey, baby!” at me (he stopped when I turned around and shouted, “don’t do that!” back at him), but, you know.  Baby steps.

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On Saturday, Eugene (whose book you should read) and I were sitting in Madison Square, drinking tea lattes from Argo and chatting about lots of random stuff.

“That couple has been standing in the same place for twenty minutes,” Eugene said to me, pointing to a couple behind me. They were tall, well-dressed, with small overnight-bag-sized suitcases. They were hugging each other very tightly. And they looked sad.

Very sad.

They weren’t just standing in the same place: they were barely moving.

“Maybe something terrible happened. Maybe their dog just died,” I suggested.

We spiraled out into a world of potentials. Maybe they were trying for the World Record. I had been at Hershey Park the day that someone was trying for the World Record for kissing. Eugene had known someone who once held a world record for…something. I don’t remember what. Threads led to other threads, as conversations do.

But now we were watching them. Surreptitiously, in stolen glances. Our attention kept returning to them.

Five minutes later, they still hadn’t moved.

We noticed they were standing on a painted red X, the kind left by construction or road or sewer crews, to mark something.

I don’t remember which of us suggested it, but we started talking about the spot itself. Maybe it was a special spot. Maybe they had chosen that spot deliberately. Maybe something was supposed to happen if they hugged long enough. Maybe the spot had a powerful magnetic or gravitational force, and people walking by got stuck to it.

Maybe it drew people together. Maybe they were strangers before one of them stepped on the red X, and then the other was drawn in, too, and they fell in love, standing there on that patch of concrete. Maybe the only way to leave the red X was for them to energize the space by hugging until it let them go.

We kept talking. They kept standing. We talked about special places, places of power. I brought up a picture of the old Toynbee Tiles , we discussed graffitti that meant things.

And then, slowly, the couple disentangle themselves. They picked up their suitcases. They walked away.

Maybe, we said, they’d energized the X. Maybe they’d given it enough of themselves.

We saw another man, walking toward the X. We stopped, watching in silence, waiting for the moment his foot would hit the spot. There was one of those electrical frissons of fate in the air, the kind where the very expectation of something leaves a charge.

He walked right past it, untouched by the power of the X.

Maybe, we said, maybe it had been charged for now. Maybe it only took in two people a day. Maybe two people had to hit the X at the same time.

More people walked over it, by it, stepped on the cross-center of the X. Nothing happened.

But we kept looking.

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hogwarts_elite

I had fun working this blog post for work (about an exciting thing coming to our subscription service) along with Clare, who wrote the text for it, and who is awesome. (I took the photos and did the photoshopping).

I’ve had bad allergies this week, which means I’ve been drinking a lot of Coke, which I would prefer not to do, but helps immensely. I’ve also found that gin seems to help a lot, moreso than other liquors.

Right now, I’m drinking a cocktail from my great-grandfather’s book, circa 1935, called a “Boulevard.” It’s gin, red and white vermouth, a dash of grapefruit juice, and I added some bitters (Cocktail Kingdom Wormwood and Urban Moonshine Citrus). If you look a “Boulevard” up online, you’ll find many, many cocktails by this name, which is always interesting. For example, Difford’s and almost every other cocktail repository on the internet has a Manhattan-like whiskey drink, while Cocktail DB has a slightly similar gin and orange juice recipe. This is one of the things I love so much about using recipes from the 1930s.

I also made tarragon-lavender marshmallows last week that were absolutely stunning. I love making marshmallows and it’s so incredibly easy– it takes less than an hour. I really wonder how many people would make marshmallows if they knew how simple it was. Oddly, I keep hearing things about there being a “marshmallow craze” right now, but to be honest, I haven’t actually seen homemade marshmallows anywhere I go, so I’m a little perplexed. I’d love to try other people’s marshmallows, but I suspect this craze is more in theory than in practice.

I’ve been very busy, socially. I keep getting to a week and not having a single evening free. And sometimes I have to miss something or choose between things. I’m not used to this!!! I like it but sometimes I want to sit at home and just make myself a cocktail and watch TV. I’ve actually had to consciously cut back on my TV watching and choose shows not to watch for the first time in my life. I decided to put off watching Person of Interest. I enjoy it, but it’s not as engaging as several of the other new shows this year– Alcatraz, which I hear is getting cancelled (too bad), Touch, and Awake. It just seems like in spite of the science fiction aspect, it’s much more of a typical police procedural, and while I love Michael Emerson and want to watch everything he does, I’m just not as engaged as I am with the other shows. Plus, it sounds like PoI is getting picked up for another season, so I will wait and see if it fits in better next year after the new-show-culling…and some shows I already have on my docket will be gone next year, like House.

I’ve been writing a lot. A lot of my writing is in direct response to some discussions that I’ve read lately, where I’ve seen people talking about why X-story isn’t being told, or why stories with certain types of characters aren’t out there. And I was reading these things and thinking, wait, that’s one of my stories. And knowing that these are things people are looking for and not finding kind of inspired me to work harder on them. I need to just pick one and stick with it, though, since right now I have four novels in progress. Who does that. Well, I have one finished but it needs a lot of editing, and I had a major breakthrough in terms of storytelling and a character change that will fix the storytelling problem in a way that embarrasses me that I hadn’t thought of it before, because it seems so obvious.

I have one book that has a scene that so perfectly mirrors the fan response to Amandla Stenberg’s performance as Rue that it was very surreal for me. (It’s a fantasy novel about fandom, so.) But that book is the one that needs the most work in terms of revising the outline (it’s at that stage, yes). I’ve been working a lot on my fairytale adaptation story, which is coalescing nicely, but I have this other newer story that is kind of demanding it be told and I don’t know what to do with it.

I really really can’t wait for the chip in the brain that will transfer what I am thinking to paper.

Also! As of tomorrow, my cleaning system will have (mostly) worked for two months. I’m really proud of the fact that I have a clean apartment and it’s been that way for two months. I have a living space where I would not be embarrassed to ask a friend over on the spur of the moment! I know where things are, and nothing looks sloppy (except my kitchen, a little). I’m thrilled with myself.

Since last month, I bought myself new furniture, I’m trying to decide what to do to congratulate myself this month. I’m thinking about other things I can do that will both be gifts to myself but that will also improve my overall lifestyle. Wall art is one thing I’m thinking about. A carbonator thingy is another, as is a nice tea kettle. Any thoughts?

I think that is all for now. This is a sort of discombobulated post of thoughts, but sometimes that is okay.

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The two theater employees following me in at the end there were awesome! We chatted and took photos together and the guy was a huge Hunger Games fan; he introduced himself as “the Career Tribute from District 3″ and was teaching all his coworkers how to do the District 12 salute.

If you want to keep up to date on what’s going on with the documentary, go like Troubled Girl Films!!!

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When I talk about racial issues on my blog, it’s largely because I have friends and family members who are people of color, and that to me means:

1) I want you guys to know you are not speaking into empty space.

and

2) When you love people, you support them.

I know my perspective is tinged with privilege, and I probably mess up sometimes, and it’s okay if you tell me I’m messing up, or if you’d rather I not talk about it.

Today was a pretty gruesome day when you start talking about white attitudes toward black Americans. We had people trying to discredit and vilify a kid who was murdered, and we had people who decided a fictional child’s death didn’t matter because her skin was the wrong color.

And these two things are related, because SERIOUSLY. Both are people talking about the death of a black child. Both involve people trying to assign a value to a child’s life and finding ways to make that value less than the value of another child’s life. And that’s pretty sick.

I’m not a published author. I don’t know if I ever will be. But when I was a teenager, I had a play produced by an off-Broadway theater company. Of course, like every writer, I had images of the characters in my head. And like many white writers, I didn’t think to specify when I imagined a character was white, because to me, white was the default. I hope you will forgive me the fact that I was young and raised in a largely white community, and I’ve since learned differently. But I gave the theater a list of descriptions of the cast, where I thought it “mattered.”

They cast a Latina girl as the protagonist, which was exactly as I had imagined her. And they cast a black boy as her romantic interest, which was not. Because I’d imagined him white. And fourteen year old me reacted a little twitchily to the idea that this wasn’t the picture of my male lead I’d had in my head. I probably had some racist inhibitions about this casting at the time, I’ll admit. And I didn’t know about things like unpacking my privilege at that age. I was just sitting there thinking, “wait, that’s not what he was supposed to look like.”

The actor was phenomenal. The two leads were both phenomenal. Getting to see my play onstage was one of the highlights of my young life, but the boy who played that character understood him so perfectly that his performance was illuminating to me as the very young writer. And I will now never be able to see that character as anyone but the young actor who portrayed him when I was fourteen. And he’s the only character I feel that for, out of the twelve characters in the play.

Yeah, I know this reads a bit like one of those white people “AND THEN I WASN’T RACIST FOREVER” things. But I felt like in the light of all this bullshit where people are shocked and dismayed and suddenly don’t care about a character’s death when they discover that that character was black, even when the author described her as black, it was worth bringing up the one experience with that that I have as an author. I don’t know if it helps. I don’t know if it does anything. It’s just one white writer’s experience.

I am getting the less horrific issue out of the way. Because I want to talk about the more horrific issue.

Since yesterday, people and news sources have been trying to “discredit” a dead child. A DEAD CHILD. Because obviously, if the dead child smoked weed, he deserved to die. If the dead child punched a man who was STALKING HIM, he deserved to die. If the dead child tried to grab the gun of a man who STALKED HIM WITH A GUN, he deserved to die.

Let’s go over this.

–If any kid who has ever smoked pot deserves to get shot, most of the people I know would not have made it to adulthood.
–Furthermore, no one had proven that Trayvon Martin had any pot. I am willing to stake money that if his EMPTY PLASTIC BAG were tested for traces of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish Crackers, it would come back positive.
–WHICH DOESN’T MATTER BECAUSE SMOKING POT DOES NOT MEAN YOU DESERVE TO BE TERRORIZED AND MURDERED.
–Oh my god, Trayvon Martin may or may not have acted like a tough guy on the internet. Do you know how many teenaged boys do that? ALL THE ONES WHO HAVE ACCESS TO CAMERAS.
–APPARENTLY ALL THE BOYS WHO HAVE ACCESS TO CAMERAS DESERVE TO DIE.
–Trayvon Martin may or may not have punched, kicked, beaten up, bitten, pulled George Zimmerman’s hair and given him a wedgie. Let’s go over this again. Facts that HAVE been corroborated: George Zimmerman followed Trayvon Martin in his car. Then he called the cops. He was told NOT TO FOLLOW THE KID. He got out of his car and followed him anyway. Let’s say you’re a teenager, and a man who is much bigger than you starts following you, first in a car and then on foot. Would you not be terrified? If you were physically strong enough that you thought punching him might help, WOULD YOU NOT PUNCH HIM? I know I would. I’ve never been big enough or strong enough, but there have been creepy dudes following me whom I totally would have punched if I thought it would help matters.
–Trayvon Martin may have tried to grab George Zimmerman’s gun. Look at this sentence. There is something very obvious implied in this sentence. What is that thing? OH YEAH. THAT THING IS THAT GEORGE ZIMMERMAN HAD HIS GUN OUT WHERE THIS KID COULD SEE IT. So you’re walking home and some strange man who is much bigger that you is following you…WITH A GUN. What the heck would you do? Would it not be utterly reasonable to try to get the gun away?

I remember that I was nine years old when Tawana Brawley was raped. I remember seeing the photos of the pretty young woman who was not that much older than me, but at nine, she seemed like the kind of poised, sophisticated teenager I hoped to be. I didn’t really understand what rape was. I understood she had been attacked. And at first, people were supporting her, but in my mostly-white community, people started saying awful, horrible things about her. As if she deserved what happened to her. As if she would lie about what happened. As if she had a reason to lie. I remember not understanding; I remember asking why she would do that. And I remember growing up and seeing more and more young women discredited when they said they had been raped or sexually assaulted, shamed into believing it was their fault, shamed into retracting accusations, and then being turned into a pariah, told that they were the reason “innocent” women were raped, they were the reason “innocent” women were afraid to come forward.

It was my first real experience in seeing how racism could vilify a child. And yesterday and today, every time I see another article trying to discredit a dead boy who was murdered, and whose murderer has yet to be arrested, I feel the same thing I did then. I have more understanding now than I did at nine, but the chill in my bones is the same one.

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This was in the days before everyone had a cellphone. The friend I was with had luckily done EMT training and was able to do some preliminary care for me, get information like my blood type, etc, in case I passed out, before trying to flag down a car for help.

When the ambulance came, they were accompanied by a state trooper. The trooper was very kind to me, and assured me that he knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, and that he would testify to that end in court, but unfortunately, since I had technically committed a misdemeanor, I had to be arrested. He was as nice as humanly possible about it, and did the paperwork at the hospital, so that I didn’t have to go to the police station, but when I was twenty years old, I was arrested for accidentally trespassing on public property.

I think about this every single time I hear that George Zimmerman still has not been arrested for murdering a child.

You kill another person, you get arrested. If you’re innocent, or defending yourself, (neither of which I believe about Zimmerman) you prove that in court. That is what court is for. I went to court, I explained to the judge what had happened, the judge kind of laughed at me, asked how my arm was, made me promise not to sue the state, and dismissed the charges.

I unwittingly trespassed on public property, got severely injured, and was arrested.

The guy who sent a non-specific threatening email to the Sanford police chief, Bill Lee, has been arrested.

The guy who murdered an unarmed teenager has not been arrested.

This is hideously wrong.

I’ve been trying to figure out for a while now what to say about this. I’ve been saying a lot about it in person, but not a lot on the internet. Sometimes I don’t want to add more noise to drown out the signal, especially when I see white people co-opting the death of a young boy to further their own messages, and I don’t want to be part of that. I want to listen to what the people who are really being affected by this have to say. But I feel compelled to say something. In some ways I feel like waiting to say something until I could figure out what to say is problematic in itself, because we all need to speak out when horrors are committed. And I feel like a cad when horrible things are happening and I’m posting cute photos of myself going to movies.

Other people have spoken about this a bit, but I’m frustrated and angry when I see other white people pulling the “I am Trayvon Martin” thing, because it’s so dismissive of the real issue, which is that we’re not Trayvon Martin. None of us ever will be. We’re George Zimmerman. Even if we don’t go out and shoot kids for fun, when we allow the images in the media to perpetuate the idea that young black men are violent, when our own speech (I don’t want to talk about the conversation I had to have at lunch today) perpetuates an idea of black Americans as criminals, especially young black American men, we are accessories to murder. We are creating people like George Zimmerman. That’s on us. And it doesn’t matter if we have black friends, or black relatives, or black ancestors– that doesn’t absolve us. In fact, it’s worse when we do, and say nothing, because it’s our loved ones who are suffering and we’re not doing anything to ease that.

In the end, I think that’s why I keep thinking about the time I was arrested. Because I don’t have a right to compare myself to a kid whose life was in danger simply because he dared to buy some Skittles and go for a walk. I can compare myself to the man who took his life. The difference being that the only criminal act I’ve ever committed harmed no one but myself, and of the two of us, I’m the one who’s been arrested. I’m not trying to make this about me– It’s not. I’m using myself as an example because I know the details of the story, and I know what happened. I’m not angry that I was arrested. I get what I did wrong, and that that’s the way it’s supposed to go.I’m angry that apparently murdering a young boy isn’t as serious an offense as walking onto a bridge when the pedestrian walkway is closed, if the boy in question is black.

For those of you who thought this was a lone case of crazy, or who are trying to deal with people who claim that:
22 year old Rekia Boyd died on Thursday after being shot by an off-duty cop.
18 year old Ramarley Graham was murdered by a New York City cop in a “drug bust” (though they had no warrant to enter the home, and I’ve heard conflicting stories about whether there were any drugs present at all) just a couple of weeks before Trayvon Martin.

Love to all of you.

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So! Hunger Games!!!

Hansi, who is making the fanfiction documentary I have mentioned taking part in a couple times before, actually came to my apartment to film me and Jess getting ready. She wanted to do it cinema verite style, which basically means filming us doing what we normally do.

I’m used to being on camera for interviews, and I’m used to acting on camera, but trying to just do what you normally do when you’re aware you’re on camera is a really weird experience, because it makes you very conscious of things like the fact that conversational speech is nothing like anything sensical, especially when it’s people like me and Jess, who know each other so well that we talk in a lot of common assumptions. But it was still fun and I hope it’s useful for the film. We went out to the theater together, and Hansi filmed us in Times Square for a bit. She wanted to film inside the theater, but was worried she’d get kicked out with the camera, so I offered to go inside and ask someone.

I walk in, and I immediately get completely gushed over by three of the AMC theater team, who were like “OMG EFFIE.” One of them was like “HI I AM A CAREER TRIBUTE FROM DISTRICT THREE!!!” And they asked me for a photo, so I asked if we could come in and film. One of them was a manager and he was only too happy to let us in to film, as long as we didn’t get AMC logos on anything. Plus, I told them Katniss was there, too, and grabbed Jess for their photo as well. So that was great. While we were in there, a girl making a documentary for her NYU student project also asked to interview us, so we did that.

We also got asked for a bunch of photos from other people, which was super fun!

We had been told they were going to let people start lining up around ten, so that had been the plan to meet up, and since we had to do the stuff with Hansi, we had figured we’d go get some food, and then get on line, but just as we finished the interviews with the NYU project, we heard they had decided to let people line up early, so we got on the line. Jess was starving so she went back out to get some food, and then I needed to stretch my legs from sitting on the floor, so I went out just to walk around a little. I went outside and immediately more people wanted photos! So I did a bunch of photos, and then went back into the theater– when Jess texted that they had decided to let people hang out in the theater.

So we got in, got settled with pretty excellent seats, and then I went out and got us large refillable soda. I don’t normally do that because $5 for a soda, but I shared mine with Kate and we refilled it and stuff, because, two hours waiting in the theater? TOTALLY. Kate got there pretty soon after, and then Darryl did, and Darryl was kind enough to go out with us to take some photos of our costumes.

Which meant more people asked us for photos. I seriously don’t think I’ve done so many photos in my life. Plus, pretty much everyone kept squealing at me and saying “Happy Hunger Games!” and stuff, so it was kind of adorable. There were a lot of people dressed as Katniss, and a couple people in Capitol wear, and a couple people dressed as Peeta, but no one else dressed as Effie, so that worked out nicely. One of the Peetas actually had a loaf of bread he was running around with which was kind of adorable since he seemed to be a very energetic young man and was kind of all over the theater with the bread before the movie started.

Then was the movie!!! I was mostly pleased with it. There was one pretty major character moment that I wasn’t crazy about how they interpreted it, but other than that, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It wasn’t the best movie ever, but it was pretty solid as far as I’m concerned. Without doing anything that is really a spoiler (although I suspect there will be spoilers in the comments), I have to say that the single most impressive major change to me was how they portrayed Seneca Crane, who is an extraordinarily minor character in the books, and Wes Bentley just did a phenomenal job expanding him.

After the movie, we immediately got stopped by a guy from some website who wanted to interview me. It was three in the morning, dude. I was like, “sorry, but I need to get up in the morning, so I need to go home.” I guess people who do interviews like this are so used to people being excited about being on camera that it didn’t register that I was saying no, because he kept trying to explain what he wanted me to do. Finally I was like, “look, lots of people talked to me before the movie, and I would have been happy to talk to you then but now I need to go home and sleep.” He still seemed kinda incredulous.

The movie theater, who had done an AMAZING job with crowd control and managing lines for the wait to get in, utterly FAILED on getting people out. They clearly didn’t think about the fact that they had people for nine screenings all arriving over a three hour period, and then all leaving at THE EXACT SAME MOMENT. The escalator landing got so crowded people were running back up the down escalator. We decided not to risk it and instead waited ten minutes for an elevator. I felt a little bad for that interview guy, cause I could have done his interview, but I also would rather not appear in anything that involves people gawking at people who dress up in costumes, and you never know someone’s angle.

Anyway, we got outside, and more people wanted pictures, while we hailed a cab, and then took a cab just a few blocks across town to Kate’s car, as she was kind and lovely enough to drive us home, which also gave us time to discuss the movie.

Then I went ZZZZZZ and today was another day with less makeup!!!!

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zia_narratora: (1:54:06 PM) HAPPY HUNGER GAMES
alephz: (1:54:11 PM) YYYYYYYYYY
alephz: (1:54:30 PM) TOO OLD TO GET SELECTED!
alephz: (1:54:35 PM) SUCK IT, THE YOUTH.

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_samalander

The visit began with a conversation the night before. We exchanged phone numbers. I said “In case there are a lot of big-haired ladies, I will be wearing a pink raincoat with a Mockingjay pin. Also I have a halo and am followed everywhere by a heavenly choir.” I think that helps people pick me out in a crowd.

Anyway, we found each other okay, if a little belatedly, at the bus station, and went back to my apartment in Queens. I had planned a little get-together than night, and had a bunch of friends coming by.

I have a very bad track record with parties. In elementary school, I was not only the bottom of the social ladder, but my birthday was in the summer, so I think I had a few parties where I actually had guest attendance in the negatives. I don’t know what that means, maybe that I had to go to their houses or something? I don’t know. When I turned 21, 20 people RSVPed yes to my party. Five people showed up. My parents had spent a ton of money on food and drinks, and I ended up calling my brother’s friends to round out the party. I kind of felt horrible about the whole thing. Anyway, I have a little bit of a complex about parties. So, I was sort of shocked when this one was extremely well-attended, and I assume that is because everyone heard Lauren was going to be there.

Anyway, it was a freaking awesome time. I made some awesome foods, including friend wontons full of PBJ as well as friend wontons full of nutella and bitter orange, and those were kind of the star of the party, even though I think the edamame spread I made was the best thing there. I made lots of drinks, and let my friends attempt to make me drinks, which ended in hilarity. There were also a whole bunch of H_E people there, which was kind of awesome: all four houses represented!!!

Anyway, party was a blast. The next morning we slept in pretty late (we being me, Lauren, and Jess), and then we went downtown to Jim Hanley’s Universe, and then to The Strand, where Lauren acquired a copy of Diary of My Secret Life, Volumes I-VI. This was quite exciting. When a clerk asked if she needed help, Lauren turned around, and said, “No, thank you, I’ve already found the best book.”

WARNING: This book is extremely graphic and uses a lot of HILARIOUS SEXY WORDS LIKE “DOODLE” AND “GAMAHUCHE.” IT IS VERY DIFFICULT TO TAKE EROTICA SERIOUSLY WHISLT READING THE WORD “DOODLE” ALOUD.

We also went to the costume shop, where we found Dobby:

And shoes for pikacharma

And a Clawbot:

Then we headed back uptown and dropped into Dutch Kills, a bar in Queens, for a drink, before making our way out to Flushing for Korean food, and bubble tea.

Then we went home and ate the ice cream sandwiches that Jess had given us when we had gotten in on Friday:

After we ice cream sandwiched, I taught Jess and Lauren how to make a sazerac, and then we did dramatic readings from the aforementioned “best book,” and finally went to bed.

The next day, we got up and went down to Katz’s Deli for lunch

And then, walking around, we found a place that had a sign about hibernating Puffs:

Oh, yeah, and Jess bought an amazing purple hat.

And we got some cream puffs at the Hibernating Puffs place:

Lauren did some science:

And then we went to the giant Toys R Us in Times Square, because it is apparently tradition for visiting H_E members.

Jess played DDR:

Lauren was Iron Man instead of Batman for like ten seconds:

and communed with Her People:

And I’m not sure what she did to the Candyland King

Or to me, for that matter:

Then it was time to send the Lauren home, and Jess came back to Queens with me for a little while before she departed as well.

So, all in all, pretty awesome time.

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As some of you may know, Hansi Oppenheimer is creating a documentary about fanfiction, and largely looking at the benefits of creative fandom– which is something that is definitely needed. She interviewed me a couple of weeks ago, and here’s a clip from that interview which I am very excited to share with all of you.

If any of you are in the NYC area or close to New York and would like to be part of this, or know someone who might, or if you would like to know more, please contact Hansi by email. She was a pleasure to work with and I’m excited to be part of this project!!!

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