“I like to stay up late, I like to sleep late, and I like to live like 90 in between. I get up around noon and I stagger outside, out this door, and I throw open my arms and say, ‘Thank GOD I don’t have children!’” — E. Jean Carroll via this incredible video from 2017 at her home in upstate NY.

The film fans who refuse to surrender to streaming: ‘One day you’ll barter bread for our DVDs’ via The Guardian

An excellent companion piece to this one about music fans quitting steaming services.

The playbills I held this week, and the food I enjoyed after each show:

- Patrick Page’s All the Devils Are Here, followed by room service at 1 Hotel Central Park.

- The Life & Slimes of Marc Summers, followed by soul-nourishing ramen at Kohoku-ku.

- Meow Meow’s Carnegie Hall debut, Sequins and Satire, Divas and Disrupters: The Wild Women of the Weimar Republic, followed by two microwaved peanut butter cookies with a scoop of mint-chip ice cream, eaten the couch while listening to WQXR (not pictured).

The Fool is never too far these days.

Onto LA! My Silverlake airbnb was very quirky. It had a toilet in the shower, but it also had a lemon tree and a Little Free Library out front.

As soon as I dropped my bags, I wolfed down an excellent burger at Win~Dow and headed right to the Museum of Jurassic Technology, which wouldn’t be open at any other time during my stay.

The above is, I’m sorry to say, an illegal picture (no photos are allowed to preserve the mystique), but I knew it would be a long time before I would be able to come back and I wanted to remember this place always.

The museum honors the weird and the mystical at the intersection of science, art, natural history. The exhibitions are esoteric, unsettling, and displayed in ways that require the viewer to get very close. There are a lot of miniatures and taxidermy throughout. The space prominently integrates scent and sound into its exhibitions in a way that few others do. What I most appreciate is that the museum doesn’t explain itself to the viewer — you either get it or you don’t.

On the roof, there’s a little garden area where they serve tea (didn’t have) and cookies (had one), and a walk-in birdcage where you can watch zebra finches flitting around your head. What a brilliant fever dream of a place.

I ordered my 400th Lyft of the trip to get dinner at an open-air restaurant called Bacari. Enjoyed the schwarma tacos, salad, and rosewater-infused malabi for dessert.

Then, I walked back to my airbnb and was greeted by the pretty string lights illuminating the patio. I listened to Nimet Habachy on New York at Night until I fell asleep.

Second day in LA! Katelyn and I met up and we GALLIVANTED. First stop was the LACMA — just a perfect visit, no notes. LA does museums very well.

We then hit up the La Brea Tar Pits next door. They were bubbling up through the pavement!

No footage of our trip to All Seasons (a very cool bar in a converted gas station) or Brass Monkey (a divey Koreatown karaoke spot), but perhaps that’s for the best!

The next morning, I felt a little worse for wear. Recovered with a morning walk, looking at all of the weird Cali street signage and sniffing the bitter orange-infused air.

This perfect diner breakfast from Millie’s Cafe brought me back to life.

Hours later, Katelyn and I met back up and hiked to the Hollywood Sign! I am not an experienced hiker, and I would say that this hike is easy-ish, only if you know what you’re in for. The path is wide and straightforward, but it’s a lot of work trekking uphill — according to my iPhone, it was the equivalent of 50 flights of stairs!

We parted ways briefly, then reconvened to see the Sklar Bros’ show at Largo. I really like this venue and want to make it a point to see a show here every time I visit the city. The show was a lot of fun and a perfect note on which to end an amazing, action-packed, yet surprisingly rejuvenating week.

Vegas: Day 2!

We began with a brunch buffet at Wicked Spoon. The best meal of the trip, hands down. (It was impossible to get a good pic of of this restaurant, but it was palatial.)

We journeyed to the Arts District once again for an afternoon of antiquing and wandering in the Burlesque Hall of Fame. Pictured here is the wall of pasties.

I’m not usually a museum-tour type of gal, we had one that was pretty excellent. Our tour guide was a local artist and performer named Buttercup, and she took us through each era of American burlesque and expertly answered all of our questions. Her retro-glam look made me want to start wearing hot rollers and false lashes again.

After a coffee break, we caught the Big Elvis show, then were accosted by some naked cowboys. We needed some group pics of ourselves anyway, so we were game to say hi.

Inside the Paris casino, a very vibey place.

DITA! It felt SO good to be at Dita’s show again. Hannah and I saw her just last year and it was life-changing. I am definitely my most present when watching burlesque — I think no thoughts and just let the glamour wash over me.

Afterward, we had drinks and beignets at the Vanderpump Garden back in the Paris casino. We stayed here till 1am, and I didn’t feel at all tired. That’s when I knew Vegas had me under its time-warpy spell.

Fast-forward to Day 3! The day was spent mostly by the hotel pool. We made the most of the patchy sun and barely 60-degree temps. Nighttime agenda was dinner at Momofuku followed by the Chippendales show. Here’s me that night & the next morning, LA-bound.

Three nights in Vegas, baby!

We arrived on Thursday night and made our way to the Arts District for dinner and a visit to the Neon Boneyard, which was my #1 Vegas must-do. It did not disappoint!

I circled the yard several times, toasting my retinas on the blinking blaze of kitschy color and listening to the low hum that pervaded throughout. It was a gorgeously eerie place. We stayed till they closed.

We watched the Bellagio fountain a second time, and then I went back to the room early instead of staying out for cocktails. Really, I prefer the simple things.

“New York friendships are an education in the struggle between devotion to the melancholy and attraction to the expressive.”

“Once again, as it has with irregular regularity throughout my waking life, that sickening sense of language buried deep within comes coursing through arms, legs, chest, throat. If only I could make it reach the brain, the conversation with myself might perhaps begin.”

“The daydreaming, it seemed, had occupied more space than I’d ever imagined. It was as though the majority of my waking time had routinely been taken up with fantasizing, only a norrow portion of consciousness concentrated on the here and now.”

“Ever since I could remember, I had feared being found wanting. If I did the work I wanted to do, it was certain not to measure up; if I pursued the people I wanted to know, I was bound to be rejected; if I made myself as attractive as I could, I would still be ordinary looking. Around such damages to the ego a shrinking psyche had formed itself: I applied myself to my work, but only grudgingly; I’d make one move toward people I liked, but never two; I wore makeup but dressed badly. To do any or all of these things well would have been to engage heedlessly with life—love it more than I loved my fears—and this I could not do. What I could do, apparently, was daydream the years away: go on yearning for "things” to be different so that I would be different.“

"I felt my eyes turning inward, toward that thick white opacity that surrounds my heart when it comes to erotic love. ’I can’t do men,’ I said.”

I’ll try.

On [redacted day of the week], I went to Poster House. Yet another NYC treasure that I somehow haven’t visited until now! I’m righting so many wrongs in my life this year.

Visited just in time to see two great exhibitions: one on environmental crisis posters and the other on art deco influence in ‘30s and '40s advertisements. I appreciated the exhibit labels just as much as the objects on display — you can always get a feel for a museum’s personality through reading those little plaques, and I felt that this one was quite simpatico.

They have a cafe and great little gift shop, too.

Afterward, I went right around the corner to NY Cake. It’s the go-to shop for baking-industry professionals.

I went mainly to ogle the rainbow sprinkle section and inhale the Valrhona-scented air. As much as I wanted to buy some sort of recherché ingredient or confectionary gizmo, today was not going to be the day.

My spinster outings usually have no rhyme or reason beyond an ineffable urge to overpack my bag and just sally forth, but that’s not what brought me to midtown on this [redacted day of the week]. No, today was planned entirely around procuring the two-part salad you see above, courtesy of the newest fast-casual joint on the block.

Truly, there’s no such thing as free lunch. This one cost me two hours and a not-insignificant amount of my sanity. Also, my order was incorrect. Steve Ells, if you’re reading this, I have notes.

As you might be able to tell, I ate this in Madison Square Park, with Shake Shack in my peripherals and its greasy char wafting through the air. I had to will myself not to immediately order a second lunch after eating this one so I could have some protein in my system.

Thankfully, I was able to placate my cravings with rhinestones, polyester, and arty nudes.

It took an Elton John closet clean-out to get me to Christie’s for the first time! I can understand why I’ve never been here — the auction house is in the center of tourist hell, directly across from Rockefeller Center. And we keep incompatible hours, so I could only be here on a [redacted day of the week].

But! What a treat to explore the collection of my teenage idol. (No joke — my best friend and I shot a completely unironic tribute music video to “Crocodile Rock” in high school and I wore out my vinyl copy of Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Piano Player.)

Apparently, Gianni Versace was a good friend of Elton’s, so there were many hypnotically serpentine motifs to stare into. Fun fact about the shirts! You can’t bid on just one — they’re a package deal.

It was impossible to get a good picture of his 1990 Bentley convertible, which is, to be sure, one of the crown jewels of the collection.

But the scent of leather emanating from this exact vantage point was so potent, I couldn’t move until I felt sufficiently buzzed from the desiccated musk.

Lunch ‘n’ learn

On Saturday, the sun came out for the first time in weeks. Because it was still just a bit too cold for the bike, I jumped on the subway, eager for a proper spinster-y adventure.

My original plan was to venture all the way down to Fong On in the LES to try their exquisite-sounding tofu pudding, but I started to feel kind of stressed out on the train for some reason. I got off early and decided to keep my outing confined to the UES instead. Luckily, there was lots to see.

I headed to the Grolier Club first. It’s a New York society club dedicated to the love of books—yes, really!

As their website states, “The Grolier Club’s purpose is to foster the study, collecting, appreciation, and celebration of books, works on paper, and their related arts and crafts, particularly their art, history, production, circulation, and commerce.”

Admission to their two galleries is free to the public. Their ground-floor exhibition (just days away from closing) was collection of bookbindings from the 15th-21st centuries.

The book on the far right reads “One Hundred Books Famous in Typography,” and it was made by Jerry Kelly in 2021.

According to the exhibition catalogue, the insect embroidered on the cover is a bark beetle that bears the Latin name Ips typographus. They make creepy centipede-looking markings inside trees.

The top floor exhibition showcased notable works of detective fiction from one of the Club members’ personal collections.

After that, I walked uptown to check out the New York Society Library. They also have a gallery that’s free and open to the public and a reading room which was quite grand.

It was unclear if I was allowed to go into this reading room, but I did. I sat in a plush armchair next to a romantically large and drafty window and finished my current chapter of Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking.

Then, I walked even further north to the French Embassy, which is right across from The Met (I did debate whether or not to go to The Met this day, but I’m glad I didn’t). I was there to check out the little French bookstore inside called Albertine.

This bookstore is famed on the internet for one of its rooms having this very beautiful starry ceiling. And like most things you find on the internet then see in real life, it was kind of a “huh, cool,” moment, and then that’s it. I probably won’t be back, but I did enjoy hearing all the French speakers. Makes me want to go back to Montreal.

Then, onto the Cooper-Hewitt, just in time for their pay-as-you-wish hour to begin at 5 p.m. I admit that by this point, I was a quite fried and not able to take in much new information. I didn’t spend much time communing with the works of Dorothy Liebes, sadly.

After this, I waited an absurdly long time for the N train (I was having some really wonky train experiences this day), then ordered Taverna Kyclades for takeout en route home and enjoyed it back at my kitchen table.

It’s totally possible to have a full day of culture out in the city that doesn’t cost very much money. This has been the game I’ve been playing lately.