if its snowing (suzy)
just got an email from a photographer…
> “I like the project called: If it snows I am going to meet Suzy Lanza
How about you?”
me (A)
I have only moments to say hello. I can’t believe just getting a full time job entirely flips life upside down. Now I have to use my breaks to make calls to schedule, say, and eye exam. And I have to schedule it for the only free day I have this week. Somehow all this is stresses me out, but it is just the adjustment to this way of life – the way that nearly all Americans experience. But all in all, the café is great – I can stop buying groceries and worrying about eating for a while, that’s for sure. That’s a perk. I wil start riding my bike there soon, once I get all the proper rain gear. I get off around 4 and have to use the rest of my free time studying for the GRE test which is a month from today. Yesterday we SHOULD have been all working at the café, however, all of Portland downtown was in a fucked up situation, as half of the city was told that the the water supply tested positive for e coli. So boil your water. Well how do you run a café with that kind of ordeal? Being new and all, they closed to make it easy. Tomorrow I have off of the café, but got a day job doing background work (fancy way of saying “extra”) on the Gus Van Sant film shooting in Portland right now. Don’t know any details, but its Gus and he’s famous enough now from Good Will Hunting and MILK that I’m sure it’s big budget and exciting. It might make me feel weird to be back on a film set, but its fun and more than anything, I’ll be reminded how awful the life of an “extra” is. But hey, its money and a day on set in Portland.
I’m studying down the street from home tonight. And the hipster barista chick is playing a greta live ben folds album from late 90s!
a million dollars of booze in the nile river (s from a suburban nj coffeeshop)
hope everyone had a very good holiday!
i am still at home, escaping weird family antics (ie, mom and dad arguing about if they should have lobster for dinner. sounds weird but is truly just SO WEIRD to have to be a part of.)
left the house to have some coffeeeeees and meet a friend for dinner soon (KATE!) and am doing some work for a freelance project about hotels im working on.
found this funny article:
PARTY FOUL, MAN: the owner of the Grand Hyatt Cairo recently decided to ban liquor from his hotel. Citing religious reasons, the Saudi owner showed everyone he was totally serious by reportedly pouring over one million dollars-worth of beer, wine and whisky into the Nile River….
something about islam, religion, blah blah…. but man oh man, a million dollars! ??
lots of drunk fish.
: )
honest = interesting. love = joy. (in response and in addition – from alexander)
your last blog! YES! ha… everyone who is honest is interesting. never thought of such ideas. honest=real=notfake/fairly secure=interesting, on the same page. did you read this book you linked to on amazon?!
well, i must proudly admit to the world – i just completed my first day at a “real job”, in over a year. (meaning getting paid for being somewhere most of your day. cause i had some jobs say, at burning man, and say, modeling… however….).
i say, “over a year”, cause i cant bring myself to admit the actual length of time that it has been that i didn’t have a day job – i guess some random things here and there have occurred, but mainly i guess my real last job-job was still in the tv biz. not the julia louis dreyfus show, but after that were some strange pilot shows, showing me all the reason more that industry sucked my balls. HOWEVER, in all that free time. i managed to move to portland, set up life, get a nice house, nice friends, nice bars, spent many a days with family and friends out of town and on the road. i got to spent 2 months of winter in virginia city with my dad. i managed a few road trips. san fran. saw the world. i enjoyed a handful of various out of town guests, including yourself, my mother, others, cooked, gardened…. even my cat has stuck it through – so, i do have much to show for myself – just not a pay stub (yet).
so yes. LOVEJOY BAKERS. my new lovejoy… love it when they hire your on the spot. joyful when the place is actually amazing, too.
anyway. check it out. great space. modern, interesting, HONEST. morning and lunch crowd – good coffees, breads. bakery. smoked salmon! all good things. back to my barista days. and i get to learn all about bread. what’s funny is the also (and mostly new cause the place is new) employees all mentioned the phrase “like riding a bike” regarding using the fancy espresso machine – because, we all basically did it at some point. then, went out in the world, day jobs, office jobs, cubicles, and somehow/someway are BACK – to pulling shots and steaming milk. even the vocabulary came right back to me. WHAT, CLEAN THIS WAND?
so i’m happy. and you’re happy and tomorrow is some holiday i don’t usually think of more than grade school aged brown construction paper with some orange and red turkey type things. this time last year, i was HERE in portland, getting drunk with family/friends. every single year before that, with family/family. and THIS YEAR – well, i started work at 5am today.. worked until 4pm. and am back friday morning. tomorrows my DAY OFF. watch dvds and drink this case of fat tire i just bought with my tip money.
more to come. love u all lots.
ps. just saw something in national news – did you know oregon is leader of sustainable winery trend. love it here.
honest/interesting (suzy is maybe both or none of them…)
just read this on a blog. how good is this sentence/thought?
Stefan Sagmeister, detail of ‘Things I have learned in my life so far’ cover set to ‘Everybody who is honest is interesting’ mode.
love it. its going to change my night out tonight and also my next few days or years
xoxoxoox have fun with family and food. get fat be happy
She’s just a mirror who has been stealing Your light and music for centuries. (s)
Venus Just Asked Me
Perhaps
For just one minute out of the day,
It may be of value to torture yourself
With thoughts like,
“I should be doing
A hell of a lot more with my life than I am -
Cause I’m so damn talented.”
But remember,
For just one minute out of the day.
With all the rest of your time,
It would be best
To try
Looking upon your self more as God does.
For He knows
Your true royal nature.
God is never confused
And can see Only Himself in you.
My dear,
Venus just leaned down and asked me
To tell you a secret, to confess
She’s just a mirror who has been stealing
Your light and music for centuries.
She knows as does Hafiz,
You are the sole heir to
The King.
—- and alex yay for LOVEJOY
i already love lovejoy
i cant wait to be there<3
notes. -alexander
hi hi. i haven’t said so much lately. i like what you have to say, about nesting, changing, being healthy every day. at least aiming for all this, anyhow.
it looks like i have myself a little job in portland. finally. at a great cafe downtown called LOVEJOY i
- i know, right?
andwelovejoy
i will rant about details/food/atmosphere/happiness soon soon, just want to get the ball rolling a few days and have something to say. and do you not stop with the office job yourself very shortly?
i made fabulous salmon chowder tonight… its healthy, mostly organic, but yet – loaded with dairy and fish from a can!
ALSO, i just found out a restaurant/bar joint right up me street, not has a palm reader during monday’s happy hour! way!
—
this new yorker page made me laugh. now you laugh. i feel this way often…
SHOUTS & MURMURS
LIVE YOUR LIFE
by Dave CowenNOVEMBER 9, 2009
I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book’s autograph. I am a proud non-reader of books. I like to get information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and living real life.
—Kanye West, promoting his book “Thank You and You’re Welcome.”
Whoever said life is an open book probably didn’t have any friends. Sure, he probably liked the people in his book. But did they like him? No. Why? Because they aren’t real.
My friends are real. They actually talk to me. Like just the other day my friend Bill said, “I’m not reading your e-mail for you anymore. You need to learn how to read.” And I said, “Bill, if you don’t read me my e-mail, I won’t sign an autograph for your son.” And Bill was, like, “Well, go fuck yourself. I’m going back to the hospital.” Bill’s son, Bill, Jr., or Billy Bob, was in the children’s unit there. He didn’t read the label on the box of his Sticky Stones™, and when he swallowed three of the iron-ore magnets they fused into a chain along the wall of his esophagus. Bill, Sr., felt extra bad because he hadn’t read that a consumer safety group had placed the Sticky Stones™ on its annual list of the ten worst toys. I told Bill that’s life. That stuff happens when you are doing stuff. In life. Real life. If I had told you that what had happened to Billy Bob had happened in a book, you would have said no way, that would never happen, that’s fiction. But it did. Because I told you it did.
Now, don’t get me wrong. There are a few books that I am a fan of. Matchbooks are good. A lot of people are under the impression that books burn only at a specific temperature. But it’s just not true. I can burn most books at or below 451 degrees Fahrenheit. Sometimes below 300, if I soak the jacket in lighter fluid.
I also like MacBooks. You can really do stuff on them, you know. Like see how many followers you have on Twitter, or take pictures of yourself with Photo Booth, or play Second Life, or check if Bill has checked your e-mail. I miss Bill. He set up my Facebook account on my MacBook. I’ve got my own page on there. I have more than a million fans. Do you know how many fans Books have? Twenty-five thousand seven hundred and sixty-four. That’s it. So I’m not alone here. You know what else has more fans than Books? The Olive Garden. One hundred and eighty-five thousand nine hundred and eighty-six. What else? Sleep: over three hundred thousand. More people would rather be unconscious than read a book. Now, I’m not condoning sleep. I’m about doing stuff. Living life. But it just goes to show that I’m in the majority.
Right now you’re probably wondering, Hey, why is this guy, a proud non-reader of books, writing this? Isn’t this a Catch-22? And I say no, it’s not. It’s a Catch-23. What’s a Catch-23? It’s like a Catch-22, except there is no catch. I don’t want you to read this. In fact, you should stop reading right now. Seriously. Stop reading this. Start doing stuff. What kind of stuff, you ask? I don’t know. Why don’t you go to the Olive Garden? But just watch out. They give you the never-ending salad before the never-ending pasta bowl. You wouldn’t think so, but the salad fills you right up. The lettuce is mostly iceberg. All water. And the waiter really makes you feel like shit when you don’t make it to the fettucine Alfredo.
Sometimes when I don’t know what to do I imagine other people doing stuff. But like people in a different time. Or like people in a different place. And I think how cool would it be to be that person for awhile. Like to know how other people I don’t know talk or do stuff. How they really live, you know? But that’s when I’m not doing stuff of my own. Which is all the time anyway. ♦
a course in miracles, a miracle in due time (suzy)
life is still frantic and i dont see this changing soon, but, i do know i dont want to continue feeling out of time and out of breath. with all the upcoming HOLIDAY BS, i can only imagine this will get worse… so i have made a strict rule of yoga, good foods, and some sort of spiritual teaching each day. i have meaning to read A Course in Miracles for a long time, and have finally googled it and lo and BE hold it is ON line. here you go loves
a lesson a day. from your iphone or laptop. oh, life. in almost 2010.
besides that, not too much is new. i have had a really weird desire to start nesting, like, in a very real way. i think it is bc i just moved to a new apt. i am sick of shoving my stuff in mostly one room in a small-ish floor of a house in brooklyn. i want to build a beautiful space. isnt that weird? but, i really really want to. ryan had the idea to start collecting ideas from architectual magazines over the next few years, and keep all the ideas i like in a scrapbook. between that and traveling to big cities and small towns to figure out what i love best, i think i will have a fun thing to do in 3-5 years: build a perfect, very cool house in the most perfect, very cool area i can find.
(i still think it will be near hot springs. and will almost certainly be in the united states. when parents are not living (whoa morbid i know…but…its true) i can have alternative plans. but for now im stateside. and its fine.)
and speaking of xmas/etc, i do like having a reason to make some things for loved ones. i have had some ideas for making some cool pillowcases for sometime… and these inspired me today, when i was looking for lingerie online… 
FLU you (suz)
bill maher’s great article on flu vaccination.
i agree with this pretty much all the way.
plus, hes funny— “
But no, I don’t think the A.M.A. and Big Pharma and Aetna and Dr. Frist’s hospital chain all meet in a board room and cackle about keeping us sick. They meet on the golf course. (Just kidding.)
“
sandwich # 11 (suzy and her love)
i eat this whenever i work in midtown east:
#11 VEGETARIAN SPECIAL
$6.99
Romaine lettuce, tomato, carrot, cucumber, avocado, alfalfa sprout, shredded red cabbage and sweet pepper on 7-grain whole wheat with honey dijon mustard
it is from an amazing shop called lenny’s.
it was just like this for me with silk city’s black russian sandwich w the avocados (which doesnt exist anymore bc of new owners)– i never make this sandwich for myself. i just love it and buy it weekly or biweekly.
maybe you will like it for yourself, and make it for you. and, for me? may, be,
FL (s)
hi im back! back to working a million hours a week it feels like, already, but, eh, thats ok:)
flordia was nice. somewhat devoid of culture, but, good to get away.
we drove from orlando to miami.
miami was weird and showy, but, also had a few cool things like the art deco and design districts.
and here is the answer to the burning question, are there hipsters in miami? ha. this question is phrased soooo weirdly on that webpage. i think the person asking is either very foreign or very much a db.
i always try to find brooklyn wherever i go. not full on complete hispter havens, but, something i feel comfortable w at least. miami was all scene and weirdness to me, fast cars and girls-gone-clubbing.
alex i saw your friends last night for a quick drink!! nori and tess:)
what else is the good news of the moment…? um, i work two jobs today, but its my last day in my office. thats nice news. i finish moving in this weekend. i am going to maybe do some winter shopping finally bc ive been too busy to… (new glasses!!!). i hope to pick up a good new book to read. and, i try to figure my life out as always. the end, for now<3
soup, fall, portland (alexander)
.. i have been on a huge soup kick, suzy – i wish you were here with me to enjoy. i make nice big batches that last me a few days of goodness. and if i get sick of it a some days in, i toss the rest in the freezer. last night i had the best curried lentil that i froze ages ago. i’m only now learning the brilliance of freezing (the right things.) i also had a few delicious days of cream of potato and celery. and then an amazing smoked tomato with all the roma tomatoes from my garden. they lacked flavor raw, so a yummy tomato soup was great. i made homemade croutons by tearing up a whole wheat loaf and tossing it in oil and brown mustard and pepper. and i think i mentioned the cheddar broccoli soup. tonight, i am cooking up a split pea, a slow slow cook. and yes, with bacon! it such comforting warm loveliness for me these cool cool days in oregon.
i want to see pirate radio only because you said to. i’ll have to read up on it.
here are some simple shots of fall from me…
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