Nymphettes

The new Woody Allen film, Whatever Works, is all about unconventional love matches. Larry David plays a crotchety self-proclaimed genius who gave up a luxurious Upper West Side apartment, a professorship at Columbia, and a lovely wife ... for a dingy hole in Chinatown and a life of reclusive morbid neuroticism. In short, Larry David plays Woody Allen as his uncensored self. That is, if Woody Allen decided to give up his Upper East Side townhouse, his film career, and his love of attractive young starlets.

But a jejune 19-year-old runaway from the Deep South intervenes on his life, and they make a mismatched couple: the charmingly spacey underage belle and the semi-elderly cynic with a limp—not a pimp limp, but a limp that resulted from a failed suicide attempt. And the moral of the story is something to the effect of: "life is limited, the world can be a detestable place, so when it comes to love, savor whatever works."

People are desperate to find lasting relationships that make sense according to conventions. But maybe it's time to date the pool boy, or even marry him, if he makes you happy and he's not a total wanker.

Bits of Magnesium

Maintaining an LDR (Long-Distance Relationship) can be taxing at best, especially during the humid summer months when peoples hormones are blazing, and men want to act like wankers, and Princesses in Flight want to flit about town. But there is a practical solution to this plight: SKEX, which I can only describe to you as Skype + Something Intimate. Journalists have named Skype "the best practical-turned-sexual invention since handcuffs."

I know many transatlantic couples who resort to Skyping as a way of lighting up their lonely summer nights. Plus, if one person is in Cambodia and the other is in the Midwest, then Skex can be an evening nightcap for the former and a morning wake-up call for the latter; it's the twelve-hour time distance of destiny. It is depressing that some of the most lasting relationships are virtual ones. After all, web cams give everyone's skin that luminous glow.

Tottering Around

On the one sunny day of the greyest month since 1855, I made a pilgrimage to the home of Edward Gorey near the beaches of Cape Cod. Gorey was a lonely sort whose delightfully morbid stories and drawings have enchanted the world with their timeless sense of deranged Edwardian decorum. Before Gorey retired to the comforts of New England seclusion, he lived in a studio in Manhattan, where he dressed mainly in large fur coats and attended the ballet daily.

Living in his Elephant House with his many cats, Gorey led a life tinged with the sadness of a talented man who was never able to come out of the closet. He wrote a pornographic picture book, The Curious Sofa, under the pseudonym "Ogden Weary." It makes mention of "particularly well-formed" male characters at every turn. At least Gorey found a way to express something of his hidden passions in his art.

Oh No! I am lost again!

In Woody Allen's early-90s divorce epic, Scenes from a Mall, Allen plays a sell-out lawyer who deals sneakers to sports teams. He breaks the news of his multiple infidelities to his wife—on their 16th wedding anniversary—in a shopping mall—over frozen yogurt. In short, he is in true Wanker of the Week form. Bette Midler plays the wife, a sell-out celebrity shrink who recently published a book promoting 'the joys of marriage in an age of divorce.'

After outbursts of panic and violence regarding the division of assets, a series of margaritas brings the couple back together. But then the wife confesses that she too had an affair. The derogatory Los Angeles stereotypes abound: malls, Mexican drinks, sushi, frozen yogurt, Woody Allen's Mimbo-ish ponytail, and the way that, in the end, material goods (in the form of trendy and hideously 1990s outfits) bring the feuding husband and wife back together.

Today at the kiosks in the mall a salesman of vaguely Middle Eastern descent asked my mother, "Excuse me, ma'am...but where did you purchase your eyes?" It was the pick-up line of creeper-dead-sea-hand-cream-salesmen if I ever heard one.

Hell-Bent

After a great period of change or upheaval in life, there is a common tendency to spend up to five days Google searching "silent retreats in the mountains." My sister used to do this when she was about to break up with her boyfriend, but was still living with him. These "meditation centers" usually advertise "meatless meals," "yurts," and "designated speaking areas."

With the text message and cell phone frenzy of my everyday life, "the silent treatment" could be just the cure—though I am not sure how thrilled I am about the prospect of "listening for the voice of Christ." Plus, many of these spiritual escapes sound like cults full of creepers (on the lines of Dahn Yoga), especially with their frequent mention of "sweat lodges" and "drumming circles."

I asked my friend, "What do you do when you're there?" and she responded, "Nothing—it's the only reason to become religious."

A Safe Examiner

While taking a break from post-graduation reality TV marathons, joblessness, and torrential downpours, I attempted to engage in a bit of good Old Master Venetian paintings, or "culture," as they call it up in The Ivory Tower (which I always thought was a nice way of saying 'elitist white people who go to Ivy League schools').

Gauche things to do in an art museum:

1. Taking pictures of the paintings with your iPhone camera, without looking up at the actual canvases.

2. Examining an authentic Tintoretto tableau and asking in a skeptical tone: "Is that the real thing? It's a lot smaller than the poster."

3. Twittering.

4. Pointing at a Titian painting of Venus and commenting: "Her breasts don't look real."

Disengagement

I hosted a reunion fête for my oldest friends in the world—the ones who used to accompany me as a twelve-year-old girl dressed in drag parading around the local video store on Friday nights banging on tambourines to attract awkward attention. Our nostalgic slumber party was upgraded from our middle school days of Toll House cookies and prank phone calls, by prosecco and a trip to a typically Boston, typically preppy bar.

But in the end, we still stayed up until 5 am, watching a VHS tape of our 8th grade musical, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (quite possibly the tranniest musical of all time). I guess the only difference was that this time we did not pee in our pants from laughing too much. And this time we had a lot more to say about our various experiences with mimbos and wankers. When my mother asked, "Do any of you girls have someone special in your life?" my friend responded, "Well, I have a boyfriend, but he's not that special."

Freudian Field Day

What happens if you are finally lucky enough to find your Prince, and he makes you feel so happy and settled in yourself that you no longer want to be a princess in flight? Usually, couples refer to this moment as: "the decision to cohabit." Some say that living together before marriage leads to no marriage at all. But then, wouldn't it just be a rational step towards avoiding divorce?

A girl I know has been living happily in an apartment with her boyfriend of five years. The realities of her domestic communal existence mystified me, since I have never met my own Prince and I could never imagine folding a Wanker's underwear with any feelings but spite. But just as this laundress-slash-girlfriend was daydreaming about her upcoming anniversary plans, her boyfriend reported that he was no longer in love with her. All it took was a "boys' weekend" away playing field games with balls and mallets for her Prince to devolve into a class A Wanker of the Week. He told her that the only thing that kept him from cheating on her was the fact that there were no available women on the playing field. I guess there were only balls and mallets.

An All-White Suit

Marina Abramovic, the performance artist famous for testing the limits of the body through a variety of media (Russian knives, catatonia pills, bullets, etc.), just announced that she will be installing herself in the MoMA for 586 hours next year. Abramovic will stand on a shelf suspended 50 feet high against the wall of the museum's atrium. The shelf will be no larger than the top of a desk, and the ladders descending from it will consist of upturned knives.

For seven hours a day and five days a week, the artist will stand like a lighting fixture, staring down at the visitors who will lounge back on chaises and peer up at her through telescopes. Abramovic does not have a precise notion of what this awkward-and-dangerous high-up prolonged experiment will feel like. But she has no interest in doing a "run-through" either. Performance art is not about rehearsals. It's mostly about successful failures. Let's just hope Abramovic does not end up as a Princess in Flight.

What A Tough Life

Lazing about Central Park eating grapes and gruyère under a lush green canopy, I noticed an oversized pink balloon that was pinned to the nearby forest floor. It waved in the wind, like all the eerie ambiance of Alice In Wonderland. The pink balloon was a signpost for party guests to an all-afternoon baby shower.

Fresh-looking thirty-something New Yorkers gathered together for beer, snacks, celebratory cake, and even a little pot smoking. The little ones frolicked about in the green grass, the pink balloon bobbed in the wind, and the parental units schmoozed in the sun and smoked up in the woods. I think that epitomizes parenting in Manhattan.

"A kind of a genius"

On a rainy day in Manhattan there's no better thing to do than to watch an Andy Warhol film. Luckily, the MoMA was showing Harlot, which consists of one very long (67-minute) shot of a transvestite in a white ballgown, ratty blonde wig, and diamond jewels. 'She' reclines on a couch, nestled in with a voluptuous woman who clutches a beer in one hand and a white cat in the other. There are two creepers perched behind the sofa, one disguised as a prince and one disguised as Marlon Brando. None of the actors speak during the entire 67 minutes. The only movements in the lethargic eroticized black and white tableau: the tuxedoed man smoking cigarettes; the transvestite peeling and eating bananas (at least 4 of them).

One by one the MoMA visitors trickled out of the theatre, ill at ease from Andy Warhol's suggestive banana monologue voice over. The audience dwindled down to a smattering of straggling artists, some hipsters who had brought pastrami sandwiches to enjoy with the show (I overheard them saying: "I'm going to blog about this..."), and a couple New York City creepers.

A Biennale

I was recently in the somewhat posh position of choosing a print to take home from the Yale University Art Gallery collection. Two dozen lithographs, engravings, and photographs were laid out in the pristine climate-controlled space on the fourth floor of the museum.

Gauche things to do in the Yale University Art Gallery Print Room:

1. Chewing gum.

2. Texting your friend as an art consultant to find out which print is the most valuable.

3. Googling the names of the artists on your Blackberry (for the same reason as applies to #2).

4. Selecting the only non-classical/old master/charming French pastoral print and opting for something that involves:
a) a transvestite
b) a tin man clutching two decapitated pig heads under his arms with a contented grin on his face. Naturally, this was my choice—I couldn't imagine anyone wanting anything but such a display of sinister carnal delight...the photographer's name is Michael Garlington and he is described as "David Lynch meets Leave it to Beaver." In short, perfection.

Not A Hot Prospect

Sometimes things work out for the best. And sometimes that is just what people tell you when something unfortunate happens. My sister recently planned to escape from her most recent life slump of living with her father and working as an unpaid intern. She would jet off to Kiev, a rarely visited eastern European city that boasts vodka vending machines and a post-communist ambiance of anxiety. Kiev is also densely populated with creepers, wankers, and the like, as it is a worldwide capital of sex trafficking. My sister would work for an NGO, acquire an uncannily high alcohol tolerance, and possibly learn Russian. To her, the plan sounded lovely.

But talk of Chernobyl, nuclear disaster, and radioactive mushrooms sent her spinning on a last-minute investigation of the health risks of living in an area with ambiguous levels of lingering radiation. Creepers aside, Kiev might just be too hot of a prospect. I told her to go laze about in the Côte d'Azure instead.

Cambodian Doughnuts

I met a blonde woman in Manhattan wearing an enormous diamond-encrusted watch and those Dior flower rings that I imagined were only bought as sweet 16 gifts for Russian heiresses. The blinged-out woman's exact age was ambiguous, but she could have been anywhere from 24 to 40. I asked her what she did for a living, and she responded, "Nothing. I used to work in marketing. I made no money. Then I met a banker, I got engaged, I stopped working. He got everything I had always wanted: a Range Rover, a Porsche, a house in East Hampton..."

And then her story took an unexpected turn: "But then I just got bored. And I broke up with him." Just as she ended her engagement, her therapist diagnosed her with multiple personality disorder. She says that people accuse her of "living in a fantasy world."

She fled to Paris, where she fell in love with a French man who relocated to New York for her. But she recently broke it off with him too. Perhaps "Princess in Flight" is an apt term for such difficult-to-please damsels who flit from one man to the next. Or maybe she's just a pimp.