Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting...and SNL

I have this ever-growing New York Bucket List, a rapidly accumulating catalog of things I want to do in the city before I leave. Which I have NO PLANS to at the moment, but if you don't plan to hit up This Restaurant or That Show, you'll forget. And you certainly have to itemize your priorities here, with so many culturally diverse and interesting things to do.

One of the items on my NYBL was to attend a taping of Saturday Night Live. Tickets are DIFFICULT to come by; you can send one email to the lottery system in August, which I and several friends have done, only to never hear anything more. But! You can wake up with the birds on a Saturday morning of a taping to wait in the stand-by line outside of 30 Rock.

I've had my share of late nights in the city, a few evenings when the hour necessitated a cab ride back to my apartment, but I didn't hail a taxi so I had to walk the distance. Which is definitely frightening depending on the time and the location, but so far, no severed limbs, compromised virtue, or gang initiation has occurred. Well, yes, maybe, but not because of my cheap refusal to take cabs.

But walking the streets at 4:30am? Along 2nd Avenue? Particularly when a gentleman, someone my father would refer to as an 'unsavory character,' stopped to eye me as I walked a couple of blocks away from his locale? I was certainly ill at ease, even on the surprisingly populated subway to midtown. Cars are sparse, the only people out are usually the staggering drunks who look like they are coming right for you, only to upchuck the booze at your feet (a great fear of mine), so I rushed to get to Rockefeller Center to meet up with my friends.

But I turned onto 5th Avenue from 50th and heard a familiar tune piping through what seemed to be the window display at Saks: Frank Sinatra was crooning a comfortable melody.

"I want to wake up in the city
that doesn't sleep
and find I'm king of the hill,
top of the heap."

And just like that, I felt okay. My stomach unknotted, and I wasn't worried about getting shivved on Madison anymore. The line for tickets was in sight, and although we didn't think we had a good chance (word to those considering doing the same: the people at the front of the line had been there since 7 the evening before, sleeping on the hard sidewalk, curled up in fleece blankets. Obviously tourists- they're oblivious to how dirty the streets are), this was going to be a good day after all.

And it was: we got tickets to the dress rehearsal! And how appropriate that this was one of the skits?

The Mento Becomes the Manatee

I’m sure I have railed against this before on my blog, but if you’d like to see a not-at-all discreet eyeroll, then compare me to Carrie Bradshaw. Do it. I dare you. My corneas are positioned. My mildewed ballet flats carry me around the city just fine, save a recent bout of plantar fasciitis; no Manolos for me. I’d like to think that my editorial repertoire consists of more than “The other day I got to thinking,” and I certainly need more than one cosmopolitan to facilitate a successful flirtation with an eligible bachelor. So I’m proclaiming a moratorium on those references, thanks. But feel free to point out the Liz Lemon similarities. She is my television avatar, prone to social gaffes with men and often cavalier about matters of diet and personal hygiene. I’m flattered.

When Liz accompanies her boyfriend, Floyd, to Cleveland in season 1 of 30 Rock, she seriously considers leaving New York, high on the midwestern fantasy of cleanliness and the lure of easier living. A stranger in Ohio suggests she could be a model: “You are so skinny,” but adds maternally, “you really should eat something.” Anywhere but New York would a rumpled writer who subsists on Sabor de Soledad cheese puffs be considered dangerously waifish. “We’re all models west of the Allegheny,” Liz’s friend, Jenna, tells her later. She returns from their Midwestern getaway with a post-vacation glow as if she had been pampered at a luxurious resort.“For God's sakes, Lemon, we’d all like to flee to the Cleve,” her boss Jack Donaghy scowls, “but we fight those urges.” Whenever I leave Manhattan for a trip home, I too float back to LaGuardia on a cloud of suburban comforts. Drive-thru windows! Backyards! Cheaper cereal! (I’m coming at you thanks to the free wireless at Chick-fil-a back home). Inevitably, my euphoria fades, and I’m leery about my devotion to my adopted city.

I’ve been a pre-bandwagon fan of the critically acclaimed sitcom, but my affection for the show was amplified as I moved up here just days before it became clear that the recession was going to have the Best Year Ever, beating out print journalism in a laughable landslide. As much complaining and lamenting I do on this blog (I cringe at my documented selfishness I will fully see later, no doubt), I realize I’m not the only one to come to terms with unemployment and compromised goals. But with my constant rewatching of the 30 Rock episodes and clips, I vicariously took solace in the crazy folks under Jack's hawk eye- a creative! full-time! writing! job!

Before I began to refer to myself as “unemployed”, I would walk through Rockefeller Center to get to work everyday. With the end of my job, I truthfully was more heartbroken that I had no excuse for my daily jaunts through the home of the peacock- there go my chances at ever having a platonic meet-cute with Tina (or beguiling SNL writer Seth Meyers with my ability to stealthily hipcheck gawking tourists on Fifth Avenue). My new freelance status corresponded within a couple of months with my move to a new apartment in which I went from having a TV to depending on computer reruns for free entertainment. So what if I have already seen the episode with Oprah three times? That’s neither here nor there. I no longer have my own office that affords me a daily front row look at workplace antics and politics. I envied their occupational camaraderie and reveled in the boyish shenanigans of Liz’s distracted staff. I empathize with Kenneth the Page’s Southern naïveté and secular innocence and his occupational optimism tethered me back to my once bursting ambition, now supplanted by monetary concerns and research of egg donation. Tracy’s malapropisms served as conversational fodder to enhance my sense of humor, and Jenna’s hair- well, a gleaming reminder that I should probably nix the second day of baby powder and actually shower.

There’s a scene in season 1 in which we see Liz’s true colors in navigating the dating scene of New York. A moderately handsome stranger approaches and asks if the seat next to her is taken. “Dude, can’t you just be cool?” she scowls. “I gotta move my coat. There are like four empty seats down there!” Her friend Jenna points out that the guy wanted to buy her a drink. “Really? I already have a drink. Do you think he’d buy me some mozzarella sticks?” Liz asks. Girl, I feel you. I would easily choose a platter of fried cheese over male attention. Bless our hearts.

30 Rock has reinvigorated my love for the city and reminded me why I moved here, when all I have wanted to do is curl up in my Slanket by the light of Hulu and screen New York’s calls. My year stint in the city is a reason for a fete as any. This is a milestone that I haven’t yet packed it up and hauled back down south. Thanks, Liz, I’m still around.

Season 4 of 30 Rock premieres this Thursday on NBC, 9:30/8:30pm Central.

Just Jack!

Completely unrelated to anything, my television avatar, Tina Fey, won a Creative Emmy this weekend for her Sarah Palin impression on SNL.

Golf claps.

Check out her laying one on Jack McBrayer before she goes to accept her award...and how he shies away!

Come on, Jack, go for it. I would, and I like boys. Those chances don't come along often.

Gone Corporat'

Please be aware the following post contains A LOT of ALL-CAPS used to convey an elevation in pitch and increase in sound should this actually be spoken.

The receptionist I am helping out this week probably wonders why every time she looks over I am munching on a prepackaged bowl of Corn Pops (not the bowl itself, you understand, but the delicious, delicious cereal) or chewing a piece of gum or sipping on another cup of coffee or Snapple. This place has A FULLY STOCKED KITCHEN with every sort of carbonated drink you can fathom, zillions of types of coffee, scads of granola bars, and other snacks. AND I get to order breakfast AND lunch. She meanwhile delicately chews her watermelon or swallows her flax oil pill while I am ravaging another snack option, one definitely full of high-fructose corn syrup and most likely, trans fats.

I HAVE NOT SEEN THIS MUCH FOOD IN YEARS! YEARS, I TELL YOU! It's kind of like the kids you knew in high school whose parents were overly strict, and then they went to college with all this BOOZE and BOYS and ADDERALL and the next thing you know, there's a special on Oprah about What Went Wrong after a notable incident involving gardening shears, the neighbors' pet llama, and a vat of absinthe. It boils down to: LACK OF SELF CONTROL.

All this food is marvelous to have around, particularly since my main physical exertion these days comes from standing up in the shower, but I am so sluggish from the sugar coursing through my veins that my neck lolls back, and I'm standing there slack-jawed under the water.

So praise the Lawd that this place has A GYM! WITH ELLIPTICALS AND DUMBBELLS!

Of course, I won't be visiting said center of physical activity, but it's nice to know these larger companies have options. Options that nourish me and then help me burn off excess calories. It's enough to make me want to go corporate.

See ya, deepest ambitions and creative aspirations. Who needs you when I've got Cocoa Puffs and the inner thigh machine that makes me feel like I'm at the gynecologist?

Let's file this under "Another Reason Why I am Like Liz Lemon"

Law & Order

It's not uncommon to walk down a Manhattan street and notice a city permit, taped on a lamp post, forbidding parking on this particular road for a particular date because Gossip Girl, 30 Rock, or some other New York-centered show or movie is filming. 

Thanks to these, New York is comprised of financially incompetent writers with insanely large abodes or sexually promiscuous trust-fund babes whose various addictions are only paralleled by the scope of their hair accessories. Or rather, the boroughs are crime-riddled dens of debauchery and corruption. (Law & Order will be filming down the street from my apartment tomorrow. Should I be concerned that a neighborhood park will most likely be set as a believable scene of a gruesome and bloody atrocity? Perhaps. I'm more concerned that there's a sign underneath the stairwell in my building asking us to refrain from urinating.) 

Hate to tell you, those aren't the most accurate of representations. However, I know of one show that is true to the stage of life I'm in right now. I refer to this with some trepidation as I have already gotten genuine offers of money in fear that I will do something like this. I know this blog has been a continuous lament of my rather self-involved economic situation, but in the name of Chuck Bass, I assure you I will take no such measures:

Freezing to Death

On 30 Rock, Liz Lemon repeatedly settles into dating her beeper salesman ex, Dennis Duffy, a less-than-stellar boyfriend candidate. Her coworker, Jenna, asks here why she keeps going back to him. Liz says, "If you give into it then you just start to feel kind of numb and warm and then you just get sleepy." She barely has to work at the relationship, doesn't have to keep up appearances, and can continue to munch on her favorite Sabor de Soledad chips. "That's exactly what they say it's like to freeze to death," Jenna counters maternally. Cut to a montage of Liz falling asleep in the snow a la the poor little match girl with her one remaining candle blown out.

I myself thought I was nearing the Great Beyond the past week with the subzero wind chill my long down coat could barely stifle. My joints began to stiffen, and I grew concerned when I realized I couldn't bend my pinky, only to remember the zebra-print bandage tightened around the slice on my knuckle sustained from an unwieldy letter opener. Frostbite averted, I do consider myself like Liz Lemon (oh! count the reasons!) but in so much as our fear of settling. I adore my job, work with fantastic people, and am privileged enough to be paid to work for a successful publication, even if it doesn't involve me writing. But I'm in this industry to write, and to write well, better than I would if left to my own devices (and blogging), and although this is temporal, I know, it's so easy for me to become complacent and forget what I'm in this for. I keep saying I'm going to "freelance" just like I'm going to "take up running" or "give up sugar" or "stop biting my nails," but my career goals aren't flash-in-the-pan whims of self-improvement. So instead of my own aspirations being snuffed out, it's high time a candle got lit under my long-underweared bottom. It's likely that might take some more time, what with the ever-present snow and well, what my sunlight-loving friends and I like to refer to as SAD. Nothing some Mexican cheese puffs and 30 Rock reruns can't fix.