Conde Last

I am starting to resent Gawker. Primarily because they keep writing about how everyone in journalism is now working at Portfolio (the new Conde Nast money magazine, coming out in April). I'm an ideal staff choice, having worked at Portfolio before, when it was called Worth. And yet, despite sending my resume twice, I'm nowhere close to working there. I even used a friend of a friend's name to personalize the introduction. No bite, no nibble. So if getting hired by Portfolio is so easy anyone can do it. What does not even piquing Portfolio's interest say about me?

Then again, Gawker has gone out on a few snark limbs of late. They criticized MCA for skateboarding at age 42. Then the next day, they made fun of the rash of trapper hats in the city. OK, so one of the Beastie Boys is uncool for continuing to do what he's always done, and the rest of us are uncool for wearing warm hats on one of the coldest days of the year. Exasperated sigh. Are there no real miserable assholes left in New York to make fun of?

Plus, I'm a little disappointed with what I have seen of Portfolio so far. I signed up for a free subscription and got a look at the demo cover. Two prepped-out 11-year-old boys sneering in that Paris Hiltonesque, "look what your dirty money has accomplished" way. We haven't seen enough of this? The last issue of Worth was all snotty offspring and the fiduciaries who love them. Which is why, if anyone knew anything, I'd be running Portfolio by now.

Fine, Portfolio, I don't want you either. I have a new job, and not in a dead medium like print. Sure, I'll probably work for you eventually. But by then you won't be on the rise but on the wane, and you'll give me a title promotion instead of a raise before you miss payroll altogether. I've seen your type before.

The New Old Me

I’m back. Somewhat changed but still the same sunny me.

I did not mean to be away this long, but things have been muy loca. Over the holidays I changed jobs while simultaneously attempting to finish two freelance gigs with the worst pain-in-the-ass-grunt-work to pay ratio in all of mediadom. Herr Guitar was this close to packing up the baby and leaving me for a wife who doesn’t sell her sanity for $1 a word, a wife who understands work/life balance and doesn’t scream at her g-mail and can fit into her pre-pregnancy jeans. But then I met my deadlines and auld acquaintance was forgot and lang-syned, and things calmed down again.

Then I started a new job. I gave up on my plan to be a work at home mom after reasoning that neither Swaddlini nor I could handle watching that much Judging Amy. He enjoys running around someplace other than the living room once in awhile and, honestly, so do I. So I compromised, and left my career- and mind-deadening West Side butter tub and leapt back into the “real world.”

Turns out, the real world got a lot younger while I was away. I guess I should have expected it – my new job involves the Internet, and you know how the kids love that crazy thing – but I feel like a dinosaur. A mommy dinosaur, who doesn’t own an iPod*, who has never sent nor received a text message, who has never owned a Dave Matthews album, and so on.

Oh well. The good thing about being older than everyone in the room is that I’m better. I sucked in my twenties, as much or more than every 20-something sucks, and I would not go back if you paid me. I saw an old acquaintance at a party a few weeks ago and he remarked that I looked and seemed better than ever. I haven’t really hung out with him in about 10 years, and he recalled that an evening spent with me usually ended in my being upset or crying. It's a dead-on description, sure, but it left me feeling so nostalgic for crazy me. Not that I want her back, I just want to know her friends again.

This is similar to the semi-paralyzing nostalgia that gripped me recently upon viewing an After-School Special called, "That's What Friends Are For." I bought these After-School Special DVDs a year or so ago and never found time to watch them. They are pretty stupid, for the most part, but this one episode hit all the right notes. The premise: mother and daughter move to Santa Monica, post-divorce, in 1979. They move into an apartment building, where the young girl befriends the building's weirdo, also a divorce kid. Trouble ensues (involving ritualistic doll destruction in the name of parent reconciliation - sort of like Chucky Meets the Parent Trap, only deadly boring), etc. It was awesome. The apartment building, the weird kid, the look of the film stock - it all worked on me like madelines worked on Proust. I still haven't recovered - I see everything in mellow, slightly grainy light, as if backlit by a sunset or powerful scented candle. All music has become a Bread medley. All fashion a pair of pastel SWAT overalls and a t-shirt with a rainbow across it. All food lick-em-aid and spam sandwiches with mustard. And I have an overwhelming need to go back!

* I now have an iPod. Thanks to my Valentine, HG. xo