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Jenni & Emily do battle with Wii Boxing, originally uploaded by emilyrems.

I know I’m way late on this one, but how come nobody told me how insanely fun the Nintendo Wii is? After a Memorial Day spent kickboxing, brunching and watching the crackheads put on their own live-action nature show in Tomkins Square Park, I headed over to Jenni’s place with LCF to get my first taste of her coveted white console. In this vainglorious picture above, I’ve just successfully knocked out Jenni in Wii Boxing and am shamelessly gloating. The silliest part of the whole thing is that the Wii let us make adorable nerd-girl avatars of ourselves, complete with nebbishy black glasses, so as we worked up a sweat feverishly flailing our limbs at her TV screen, or virtual selves were ruthlessly punching each other HARD in our respective bespectacled faces. Like, over and over! Ever the artist, LCF spent a really long time carefully creating his avatar, agonizing over the shape of his lil’ cartoon-self’s eyebrows, but had no interest in actually playing any games with it. I, however, was all about slugging Jenni in the face. Maybe eating lots of soy hasn’t made me lose my violent edge after all.

NYU dorm, 14th St. 5/23/07, originally uploaded by emilyrems.

This time of year, the decidedly Sporty-Spice-style inhabitants of the NYU dorm by my house clear out for the summer, and their rooms are immediately repopulated by a refreshingly weirder, more free-spirited breed known as the summer students. Here, two such specimens were captured in their natural habitat, on the street in front of the residence hall’s main entrance, engaging in some sort of primitive mating ritual involving inappropriate use of office scissors. Aren’t they presh? Much like Happy Fun Ball, it is wise not to taunt the summer students. Not because they’re dangerous or anything. I just think they might be sensitive. Awww.

Loose Marbles in Washington Sqare 5/23/07, originally uploaded by emilyrems.

I’m such a bizzy-bee this week I don’t even have time to pee, but I couldn’t let another second go by without telling all of N.Y.C. to run to Washington Square to try and catch the Loose Marbles! This New Orleans jazz collective will make you shout “Allelulja!” to the heavens, they’re so astonishingly good! We’re talking, trumpet, clarinet, tricked-out washboard and high hat percussion, acordion, upright bass, steel guitar, olde tyme dancers, a girl singer with an amazing voice, THE WORKS! They usually grace the street corners of New Orleans where they’re local legends, but for the next little while they’re playing Washington Square Park during the day and clubs at night, so hit it don’t quit it!

Freaky-ass girl guitar, originally uploaded by emilyrems.

And who says there are no women in rock? Mad props to Cokane for bringing this little gem to my attention. No explanation came with it. I guess it just is what it is. May God have mercy on his soul.

Fantasy, originally uploaded by emilyrems.

Only in the East Village can a gal such as myself roll out of bed at dawn to give her gym’s new “Cardio Wakeup” class a go, only to end up with a private fly girl lesson from one of Mariah Carey’s backup dancers from her “Fantasy” video!!!!! Seriously. You can’t make this shit up. At 7:30 AM, the heavily tattooed Levi had all the moves: we did the bus stop, pop and lock isolations, hip rolls and more to a remix of “She’s Like the Wind” while he shouted out directions a la Debbie Allen in FAME: “Five, six, seven, eight…and FREAK…and FREAK…and FREAK!” He also had many entertaining anecdotes about how I could use these moves in clubland, and even had a special excersise “for the back of my jeans…to make the guys turn ’round.” When the class was over, the girl running the juice bar outside the classroom gave me a round of applause, so I guess while I was getting a private lesson, I unwittingly became her private dancer.

Billy Blanks Busts A Move, originally uploaded by emilyrems.

I’m totally overstimulated by the fact that my gym, which I lovingly refer to as “ShittyFitness,” finally got off their toned collective ass and started offering exercise classes. Last week I crunched myself into painful oblivion in Mat Pilates, and yesterday I almost fainted during kickboxing because the room wasn’t air conditined and all that bobbing and weaving and jabbing caused every ounce of fluid in my body to violently leap from all my pores onto the floor (ever watched your fingers sweat?). Drama aside, the class was badass. All the ladies in the room, including our totally ripped instructor Stephanie, showed up wearing black, so when we got into the routine, we looked like a coordinated gang of chubby grrrl ninjas out for street justice. It was hilarious so I had to disguise my laughs as heavy breathing and coughs. The best part by far was when Stephanie got frighteningly pumped duing her flow of motivational chatter and started shouting “Yeah Muthafuckas!” I was all like, “Hell to the Yeah.”

Jade Mountain, originally uploaded by emilyrems.

THE NEW YORK TIMES
East Village:
For Bright Beacons, a Murky Future
By CASSI FELDMAN
Published: May 13, 2007

For decades, they floated over Second Avenue near East 12th Street like twin stars guiding tipsy East Villagers home: “Jade Mountain” in glowing pink bamboo-style letters, and above it, in rosy neon, a smaller, two-sided sign bearing the words “Chow Mein.”

But these days, the name of the old-school chop suey house is obscured by a giant “For Lease” poster. Jade Mountain closed in February, five months after Reginald Chan, its 60-year-old owner, was hit by a truck and killed while making a delivery on a bicycle. As Mr. Chan’s family, which owns the building, looks for a new tenant, neighbors fear that the vintage neon signs, like the restaurant, will soon disappear.

Emily Rems, a 32-year-old magazine editor who lives on East 14th Street, is particularly fond of the Jade Mountain sign, and the buzzing sound it made when some of its letters started to dim. “It just seems like it’s been there forever and ever,” she said the other day, “and there’s something comforting about that.”

The chow mein sign captivates Ed Cahill, a 46-year-old actor and filmmaker. “It’s like something off a Hollywood lot,” Mr. Cahill said.

The restaurant, which opened in 1931, spoke to a bygone era, serving steaming plates of egg foo yong and moo goo gai pan until the day it closed. Last week, passers-by were still pressing their face to the glass as if willing it to reopen.

Mr. Chan’s 25-year-old son, Nick, who lives above Jade Mountain, does not know the history of the signs or what will become of them once the space is leased. “I don’t know who would have room for something like that,” he said.

But for Ms. Rems, who once kissed her boyfriend underneath the Jade Mountain sign, the image will always have a certain glow. “I thought it would be lucky,” she said. “Now I’ll have to do it one last time.”

*They printed this photo too! Hooray!

My Little Cthulu, originally uploaded by emilyrems.

My tiny apartment already resembles the island of misfit toys, and there is literally no room in there for anything else until I buckle down and do that massive spring cleaning purge I’ve been promising to do since LAST spring, but OMG you guys!!!!! Look at this!!!!! Never has a Lovecraftian beast of the deep been so adorable!!!! Here’s the stats on him I just got from my toy pusher:

“My Little Cthulhu from Dreamland Toyworks just arrived. Each 8″ tall vinyl comes with 2 Little Victims for you to have him dismember and you can even buy an additional set of My Little Victims for more gory fun. Based on the art of John Kovalic who has reinterpreted the classic H. P. Lovecraft character in his award winning strip Dork Tower.”

*sigh*

Care Bear Crash, originally uploaded by emilyrems.

If you saw my play Li’l Care Bear Crash mounted (he he he) by Cherry Red Productions last week, there can be no doubt that your life was irrevocably changed. If you missed it, that means you haven’t yet been touched by the play’s poignant message of peace and tolerance and are probs still a racist. Either way, you know you want to see it (or see it again for the first time), so check it out here on YouTube and tell all your friends!

Windsor Garage Transients, originally uploaded by emilyrems.

I suggest the Upper East Side! In other vintage NYC neon news, I returned home from band practice on Sunday night to find an intriguing phone message waiting for me from one Cassi Feldman of the New York Times. She is the reporter who first did the Times story about the tragic death of Reginald Chan, the owner of East Village landmark Jade Mountain, who was killed last September by a truck while making a bike delivery. I guess the family bailed after his death, so now Jade Mountain, a 2nd Avenue fixture since 1931, is closing, and with it is going their evocative neon signage, which is what brings Cassi to me now. A year or so ago, I blogged about how much I love the Jade Mountain sign, and Cassi found this blog entry while researching the sign to see if anyone would care that it’s going to come down (surely to be replaced with a Chase or a Starbucks or something equally douchey). So I called Cassi back and I said YES! It makes me WISTFUL that it’s coming down! Alas! Alack! Listen to me! I’m a cranky old Jew whose neighborhood is being destroyed! So now I think I’m going to be quoted in her Times article this coming Sunday. Check it out and share the wist or whatevs.

LCF’s doll awaits slaughter at Niagara, originally uploaded by emilyrems.

In my dream this morning, I was on a retreat with the WoW Women’s Theatre Collective I used to be an active member of from about 2001-2004. They had chosen for their retreat spot a funny little encampment on the outskirts of an old amusement park. We weren’t the only ones there. Lots of punks and artists and young, hip weirdos were out and about, some of them with small children, wandering in and out of a cluster of multipurpose buildings that had apparently been abandoned by the amusement park and were now being used as squats. In our building, where we planned to put our sleeping bags on the floor, a band of cute indie boys was playing a set of blues music on a dirty blue oriental carpet. I really liked their music, and the lead singer was super sexy, and kept eyeing me as I danced to his songs in the back. I wanted to hear them play longer, but I had to go back to work, so I slipped out the back.

After work, I returned to the shack and the blues boys were still playing, only this time, they were shut up in a room next to where they were playing before, and people who wanted to hear their set had to gather outside the door to listen. I asked why they were plaing inside the small room, and one of the WoW girls said it was because the lead singer had stagefright. I found this very endearing since I get stagefright at rock shows too. After the set, the boys emerged from the room and we all applauded, then the crowd dispersed and the WoW girls left to cook dinner. I was going to join them but the hot lead singer came over to me and asked me to stay. I had never spoken to him before, but the first words out of his mouth were “I love you and I want to marry you.” I blushed and giggled. He pulled me towards him and deeply inhaled the scent of my neck. He said I smelled good, and I said he smelled good too. There in the middle of the room, he pulled me down onto the floor and started alternately hugging me and smelling me. In a flash, I remembered LCF, and knew I shouldn’t be on the floor, letting this boy hug and smell me. I looked over his shoulder through the window and started laughing. He jumped off me and asked if I was laughing at him. I said I wasn’t and pointed out the window. Through the window, we could see two tilt-a-whirls in the amusement park going simultaneously. In one, a bunch of pink-cheeked fat families were spinning around and screaming together. In the other, the same thing was going on, except everyone on the ride was dressed in a big fluffy panda costume. It was so funny I couldn’t stop laughing, and the singer took this as a sign I didn’t want to make out, which I actually didn’t because of LCF, so he took off.

I walked outside and saw a little baby girl toddling by on the dirt path in front of our hut. She was wearing only a diaper, and I was afraid she would step on something sharp, so I picked her up. When I first picked her up I was aware of having seen her with her mom before, and felt confident I would recognize her mom if I saw her so I could give the baby back, but I didn’t see anyone around, and the more I walked around, the less sure I was that I had actually seen this baby’s mother at all. The baby was pink and warm and soft, and smelled better than anything I’ve ever smelled in my life. I kept cuddling her closer, and smelling her little neck, just like the singer had been doing to me, only that was sorta sexual and this was clearly not. At first when I passed people, I would ask if they knew who the girl’s mom was, but they would always shake their heads no. I stopped at a tree stump, because sitting on the tree stump was an elaborate black box with a crystal pyramid mounted on top of it. The bottom of the box said “Vinnie’s Tampon Case” on it, and inside the pyramid were a few tampons made out of black velvet, some silver ball bearings, and some highly polished black stones. When I shook he case, eveything rolled around and sometimes an object would settle into a little circular groove cut out of the floor of the box, like in those cardboard pinball games I would sometimes get as a kid. I wondered if the case belonged to the baby’s mom, because the baby seemed to recognize it, but when she saw it, she grabbed on to me tighter and turned her head away from the box like it frightened her. I held her tighter too, smelled her some more, and walked away from the box towards the smell of food.

I carried the baby over to the park’s concession area where a guy who looked like Alec Baldwin was grilling buffalo wings. The smell was so spicy it made my eyes water, and I was about to walk away when the guy called out, “Hey! Do you know Edward Norton?” I said I didn’t know him personally, but I really liked Fight Club. The guy shouted to me over the sound of sizzling chicken that Edward was the love of his life, and sex with Edward was the best sex he ever had. Another guy who was waiting for chicken heard this, and shouted that the guy cooking was full of shit because everyone knew Edward Norton wasn’t gay. A red-haired lady who was also working the buffalo wing stand chimed in that she had also had sex with Edward Norton, and that it was also the best sex she had ever had. I pulled the baby closer and covered her head with my hands, because I didn’t want the spice to burn her eyes and I wasn’t sure she should be hearing this conversation. I told the skeptical guy waiting that I didn’t know Edward Norton at all, but if he had slept with both the guy and the lady working the buffalo wing stand that he might just be bi or experimental or whatever. The skeptical guy walked away, disgusted, without any chicken, and I woke up holding my pillow like it was a baby.