That's it. I'm totally getting rich.

I was just at Starbucks on the Upper West Side where I overheard an adorable mother-daughter team speaking to a friend they'd just run into.

"We're having a beauty day," said mom. "Tomorrow is Madison's bat mitzvah."

"In case you hadn't heard," said the sweet-faced Madison.

Madison, self-consciously, looked my way. I smiled. Inside, however, I was cringing, weeping, having internal nervous breakdown. Sure, when I am back home in Los Angeles, my mother and I have been known to troll more than our share of Starbucks and Coffee Bean/Tea Leafs (we buy iced venti drinks like they're going out of style - all on mommy's dime because I'm "on vacation"), and we have also been to spas together. But there was something about the combination of the Starbucks, the beauty day, the bat mitzvah, little Madison and the Upper West Side - all while I was stealing five minutes to grab a mocha that will hopefully distract me from the drudgery that will inevitably fill my day - that was too much. I admit it, I was very, very jealous.

Maybe it's my mood lately. There is just too much rich surrounding me. I have had it with stories of stratospherically rich hedge fund managers that currently rule New York (with the exception of the one who is indirectly responsible for my paycheck - him I like). They're getting richer by making the rich richer. And I guess, technically, I am too because I write about them in magazines dedicated to making the rich richer. But while I may be getting technically "richer", I'm not getting rich. I'm just struggling to pay off a tiny amount of credit card debt and pay my tax bill. Is this a Democrat thing?

No. The problem is, I chose to be a journalist. Well, I chose to be a writer, I became a journalist because that's how writers make money. Not a lot of money, but more than your average full-time poet. In almost any other field, someone with my drive, determination, work ethic and skill would be really successful - this sounds immodest, but I've known people with very little of the above who are wildly successful. In fact, many of my friends or acquaintances have been markedly lazy or unmotivated or dumb, have taken easy way out or not tried to become successful, and today they're doing just about as well as I am, maybe even better. (Don't worry, they're proud of it.) I don't really know when or how it happened, but it did. To back up my point, I cite research from the inimitable Dr. Phil, who posits that children may develop at different rates, but at a certain point they all get to the same place. Damn straight, Dr. Phil. You know your shit.

Another problem: I don't want to be a hedge fund manager. (I hardly want to be a capitalist any more, and would try the alternative if it were available.) I do want to be a writer, but can't seem to get past my inner critic and start writing. That's why I'm nauseated when reading about the 20-something novelist/scamp Jonathan Safran Foer, his increasing paychecks, and his $6 million mansion in Park Slope. I read like 45 pages of his piece of crap first book, Everything is Illuminated, before if flew out of my hands at my brain's insistence. The second one sounds even more insipid, and yet he gets so much attention. I can't escape his press.

It has me so worked up that I've decided I should do anything and everything I can to copy him. I mean, even though I get a stomach ache when I hear about the success of Paris Hilton, it doesn't move me to action because her fame is wrapped in something inexplicable that involves being a spoiled, idiotic heiress. I have no chance of being that. (I'm spoiled, but in more of a lower-middle-class kind of way, where my mom runs up massive amounts of credit card debt to have my prom dress tailor made, and has to declare bankruptcy years later.) But I at least have some chance of being a novelist, be it a hacky faux literary type like JSF or an actual talented writer. Either way, if there is a chance that a $1 million advance could come my way, why am I not taking it? Self pity? Laziness? Desire to give up the capitalist way of life? Please. Those are luxuries for people in their 20s, not for Jesus-peak-age soon-to-be moms.

This is why the next time you see me there will be greed in my eyes. Or why you may find yourself the inspiration for a character in my soon-to-be-published mediocre masterwork. Either way, just smile and accept it. It's just business, and the new me means business. Say it with me, in the blandest drone you can muster, "That's hot" (tm).

Am I the Only One Who Notices that Robert Rauschenberg owns a Jasper Johns?

Last Saturday Herr Guitar and I went to see the Jean-Michel Basquiat show at BAM. I'm a big fan and knew this was probably my only chance to see so many of his works in one place. I won't go into the boring details of color and composition and Blondie and Madonna, I'll just say the show is great. It moves on to LA MOCA in July.

I visit museums often, and whenever I go to temporary exhibitions, I always like to check the description card to find out who owns the art. Am I the only one who does this? I think it started when I saw a Jasper Johns retrospective at the MoMA almost 10 years ago. It caught my eye that David Geffen owned one piece and was lending it to the show. I started looking at all of the cards, and sure enough saw other famous owners. Stephen Spielberg owned one, and I think Michael Ovitz. I kept thinking that all of these Hollywood types were keeping up with each other by getting bigger and bigger Jasper Johns to hang in their living rooms. Robert Rauschenberg, a Johns contemporary, also owned a painting.

The thing I noticed at this show is that tons of these Basquiats have the same owner: The Stephanie and Peter Brant Foundation. Stephanie Brant is supermodel Stephanie Seymour, and the only other time I have seen more than one Basquiat in one place is in the offices of Brant Publishing, owned by her husband, Peter (after seeing all of the pieces they own, HG said, "It's a good thing she dumped Axel Rose."). About eight years ago, when I was slinging administrative hash in the sales department at Newsweek and desperate to get into an editing position, any editing position, I went on a job search that led to two serious prospects. One was an editorial assistant gig at Financial Planning magazine, for which I thought I was completely unqualified. The other was second assistant to the publisher of Art in America. I love Art in America, but was not jumping at the idea of continuing to be an assistant. And one of the reasons they liked me is that I had worked for monsters in the past, which for some reason qualified me to work with this publisher, Sandra Brant. The bright spot of the postition is it involved editing a monthly art book review section, that included 25-35 different books, which I would describe in 100-word blurbs.

The other bright spot was the environs. The office is at 575 Broadway, in the Guggenheim Soho building. You walk in and are struck by an overwhelming number of original Warhols and Basquiats lining the walls. The office is quiet and library-like, but utterly beautiful, filled with bookish yet perfectly bone-structured types, the kind you usually only see in movies.

Financial Planning magazine had none of the charm or cachet, but I didn't have to answer anyone else's phone. That was my big career goal at the time, so I took a job there. Now I'm a professional financial journalist, and only an amateur art fag.

Here's a picture of Stephanie and Peter and another amateur art fag, Dennis Hopper. He is my unrequited actor love (well, he's one of them). Did I tell you about how I asked him to my high school prom (this was in 1989, you do the math)? That's a story for another entry.