Busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday style.

Well, we've had out first snowfall and I think (though its cold and the streets are wet and slushy and the sky has been grey all day, making it very hard to get out of bed this morning) it's really brightened my mood. I now finally feel like it is the holiday season. it snuck up on me, but now all of the tinsel and shopping enthusiasm finally makes sense. I felt unusually bah humbug the other night when I left work (precariously situated in Rockefeller Center) and couldn't make it through the throngs of Christmas sweater-clad, slow-walking tourists. They descended like locusts about two weeks ago, making my one block walk from the subway to my building annoying--as that one block just HAPPENS to be the block of Radio City, whose "Spectacular" is like catnip to these Iowan kitties. Usually I just put my head down and charge through, but on this particular Wednesday night they were like an inpentrable fortress of stretch pants and whining children. To make matters worse, police had cordoned off the side streets and huge trucks were driving against the traffic, holding up what was already becoming the longest walk to the train ever. Then I remembered--it's the fucking Christmas tree lighting! Usually my whole commute--from the Lower East Side to Rock Center--takes about 1/2 an hour. Wednesday, amongst the throngs of tree gawkers, it took me half an hour to get to the train! I couldn't even use my usual entrance--they'd closed it! I know we should be kind to tourists. They are good for our local economy. Plus, loathe as I am to admit it, I used to be one of them, staring in wonder at a city a longed to be a part of one day. And I'm usually good about giving people directions and forgiving people for walking slowly while staring upwards--frankly it is a compliment to this awesome town--but Wednesday night I had to actually stop myself from punching people in the throat.

Other things that are making me go hmmmmm this week:

1) Now that we are all reading about Keith Urban (thanks, Nicole!), am I the only one who thinks its strange that his name is "urban" when he plays "country" music? Is that his real birth name? That'd be like if R. Kelly's name was R. Country.

2) I've always been very jealous of my friends with names like Jane or Suzanne because they have tons of amazing songs written about them. (I'm even jealous of my girl Melissa, even though her name only appears in an Allman Brothers song--and I FUCKING HATE THE ALLMAN BROTHERS--and as one of the girls with a "big old butt" in "Da Butt.") I feel like I've got to show some love for Levy, for no other reason that I finally have my name in one of their songs--even if it is my Hebrew name. Hey, a girl's gotta take what she can. So check out "Rivka" off their recent album "Rotton Love." Though James Levy was one of those Sidewalk Cafe anti-folk guys, this album is very faux-Pulp to me. Actually the album has Retown written all over it, with riffs stolen from Jesus and Mary chain and crooned lyrics a la Morrissey. Certain songs even sound like Bell and Sebastian to me (though not as clever). It's so weird that they aren't British. In other news, I clearly need to get me a musician boyfriend so there can be a song with my (actual, English) name in it. C'mon, you don't have to rhyme anything with Rebecca....just throw it in the middle of a line in the verse...

3) The best phrase I heard thrown around this week: "Santa's boyfriend." As in, "My friend is dating the guy who plays Santa." "Oh, so that would make him Santa's boyfriend?!"

4) Do celebrities have a longer gestation period that regular humans? Because I swear, I feel like Jennifer Garner was pregnant for like 5 1/2 years. Britney Spears too was trashtastically preggers for like a decade. I think you must need a longer incubation period to fully develop the sense of entitlement that comes with being a celeb offspring. In Britney's case I feel like little Sean Preston just knew that being in the womb would be the last time in his whole life that his parents wouldn't be whoring out photos of him or paparazzi's wouldn't be snapping shots of him. Plus who'd want to leave Britney's womb--it's all you can eat Cheetos in there all the time!?

5) Google is scary. The last time I googled myself, there were like 29,000 hits and most of them were crazy fanatical people (and some asshole from the New York Press) who wrote articles/blog posts/online comments in response to my article in the Voice. I was called a Village Idiot, a feminazi (nice), a baby killer, and someone who should'be been aborted. This is what's wrong with debate in our country. Rather than try and understand the point I was making with my article (which was simply that people will put anything--sex, violence, titilation--on tv, but not abortion and that ghettoizes the millions of real women who have had them) and then refuting it, people resort to partisan name-calling and threatening jingoism. I thought I would find the hate mail funny, but it actually really disturbed and upset me. I guess its good to know that I'm not sending my work out into a vacum and that it's being read--even if its being hated. I did recieve one awesome letter from a woman who is an abortion provider who felt maligned and angered that abortion was so conspiciously absent on tv and that really makes up for every right to life nutcase who just wants to call me names on the internet.