"Be in love with your life. Every detail of it." -Jack Kerouac

 

xo kate

"When people ask me if I like Vegas, I wish I could express to them the feeling I get when I step in the cab line, about it see you ladies. It's just... giddy." -LL

McCarran cab line.  Where giddy starts.

This past Easter weekend (I apparently start blog posts and never finish them -- but in honor of D's trip this weekend, I thought I'd give my take on the Paris of the Desert.  I just made that up.  No one calls Vegas that.) was my annual trip to Vegas with my girlfriends.  The title of this post is a text I got from my best friend while she was in the cab line at the airport waiting to come meet us at the hotel.  One of the things that I love about Vegas is that from the moment you get off the plane, the experience is larger than life.  Even the cab line is an event -- there are probably 200 people in it at any given time (many more if you're arrive between 9pm-11pm on a Friday night) and the energy is electric.  You know from that first moment that this is a place like nowhere else on earth.

We've been to Vegas at least once a year since we were 21 and, since we're all getting up there, that means we've had quite a few nights in Sin City.  Originally, we went just for the clubs -- Vegas has some of the best nightclubs ever; always packed, big dance floors, cool tables and amazing DJs. (Seriously, I use to fly to Vegas just to see Clinton Sparks -- who lived maybe ten minutes from me in Boston -- play at Body English, my favorite (now, sadly, defunked) club ever.  The loss of Body English should be a blog post on it's own, since it closed seemingly for no reason and Vanity has nothing on B.E. At any rate, that's a story for another time, since this post is already so tangental that I can barely follow it.)  The clubs were just the greatest scene with the funnest crowds. (Crowds with some of the best pick-up lines ever in the history of the world, like, "Well, going to clown college really chooses you." or "Do you know Pepto Bismol?  I'm actually the heir to the Pepto Bismol fortune.") We always met fun, funny people there, got drunk, danced and had a great time.  There is definitely a certain level of trashiness in any club, and especially in any club in Vegas (Vanity is taking trashy too far.) but the trashiness can be ignored because of the fun.  Also, Vegas has the most amazing bathroom attendants of anywhere I've ever been.  One night at Drai's, I saw a woman rip her dress, go into the bathroom and take off the dress, wait in the stall while the bathroom attendant sewed the dress, and then put it back on and go back to dancing.  For real, that is service.  At any rate, we loved the clubs.  Even though there's still a giant Body English-shaped hole in my heart, I still think they are really fun.

It really is all that.

This past trip we spent time at the Palms clubs, Moon and Ghost Bar, which are worth visiting for the view alone.  You're like 45 stories up, dancing outdoors on this huge patio, with the Vegas lights all around you.  It's really surreal.  Making all the crazier, at Ghost Bar, the floor of the balcony is clear, so you're also watching cars whiz by on the street below you.  Unbelievable.

So, in short, the clubs are awesome.  As we've gotten older though, we've embrace some of Vegas' other attractions.  This past trip, for example, we saw Zumanity, the Cirque du Soleil show that borders on actual porn, but is still completely amazing, despite it's weirdly racist undertones.  Not only was it a great show, but it struck up a lively dinner conversation about which countries the Cirque du Soleil performers were B-list gymnasts in.  It's nice to have something to talk about over dinner.

Favorite people, favorite place. 

In another totally adult move -- and this is a highlight -- I learned to play craps.  It's legitimately the most fun gambling game I've played, and I really like to gamble.  Craps is the quintessential Vegas game, because it's all about strangers coming together to have fun.  In my first game, I won like a hundred bucks, had an entire crowd of strangers chanting "Eight for Kate! Eight for Kate!" and received a marriage proposal.  For someone who likes attention as much as I do, it was pretty much the highlight of my life.

To sum up, I love to dance, drink, gamble and watch acrobats perform well-chorographed soft-core porn.  Like in life, the most important part about Vegas is the people you share it with, and I'm lucky to get to go to heaven in the Mojave (I made up that name too.) with some of the smartest, funniest, wildest girls I know.  Ladies, I can't wait til next year.   For now, I'm so, so sad that I won't get to be with you, D, as you lose your Vegas virginity.  But I hope you know that I'm with you in spirit.  Enjoy the giddy, you deserve it.

xo kate

Soulmating?

I recently saw Titantic in 3D (not recommended--it still ends the same way; Jack still dies).  Nonetheless, it got me thinking about soulmating and about the idea of true and perfect love.

Do you believe in the notion of romantic soul mates?  Me?  I'm very Fox Mulder about it in that, I want to believe.  

But really, I'm just not sure anymore.  What do you think?

Happy Valentine's Day, Lovecats.

Oh, baby, baby...

There are a few things that I love in a way that defies all explanation.  These things are essential to the core of my being and my love for them knows no limits.  I love them more than they probably deserve to be loved, but I can't help it because when you really, truly love something there's never a point when enough is enough.  (I learned that from the classic Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts film The Mexican, before I started to hate both Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts.  Apparently there was a point when enough is enough for that relationship.)  But I digress -- the point is that I hold within me the ability to maintain a deep and abiding love to things and people who can never love me back.  Photo montages. Eminem. Diet Coke. The Kennedy's. Root vegetables.  Clean sheets.  Britney Spears.

It's that last one that I want to talk about today.

The legendary Ms. Britney Spears turns thirty years old today.  She who has grow up with us and in front of us, is officially a grown up.  (I go with thirty as the grown up age since I'm still a few years away.  And, yes, I teach children as a job.)  I was first introduced to Britney in 1998 when she was a regular on the original TRL hosted by Carson Daly before he lost the weight.  I was in ninth grade and it was decidedly uncool to love Britney.  That summer, a boy who liked me wrote out the lyrics to Sometimes and sent them to me at summer camp.  Quite possibly the weirdest form of love letter ever.  In his defense, there was also a very sweet 15 year-old boy poem in the package.

To this point, I pretended my love for Brit was just one piece of my impeccably honed sense of irony, but the truth was I just loved her.  My best friend and I bought her sophomore album (that's for you, D.) Oops...I Did It Again as part of one of those BMC/Columbia music pyramid schemes along with Whitney Houston's Greatest Hits and Ja Rule 3:36.  I still know every song on that CD and regularly put What You See Is What You Get (#6 - yep, I know the numbers by heart) and Just One Kiss From You (#8) on mixes.

Then came Crossroads, which I saw in the theatre and, admittedly, it wasn't great.  But it did co-star Taryn Manning who was also in Eminem's Oscar winning (look it up, bitches) debut film 8 Mile.  The only notable thing about Taryn Manning's career may be that she was in Eminem and Britney's motion picture debuts.  Oh, and, of course, Come On Get Happy: The Partridge Family Movie.  When the video for Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman came out, I thought that might be the end of my love affair with Brit.  I mean, that video is horrible.  It's difficult to watch.  Then she cheated on Justin and, I'll be honest, I was ready to leave her as well.  Later that same year the Cry Me A River video came out and the gauntlet had been thrown.  The court of public opinion was siding with Justin and we was shaping u to be the biggest Mickey Mouse Club star.  Britney was facing her greatest test to date, and so was my devotion.

But my girl Britney doesn't play, she came back and she came hard, releasing In the Zone, kissing Madonna and Toxifying America forever.  Some people consider this to be Britney's last hurrah, but for me it was just the beginning.  I realized that if I could forgive Britney for cheating on Justin I could forgive her for anything.

Two marriages, two children, one shaved head and three mental breakdowns later, Britney is still Britney and I'm still here.  If you ask me, she's only getting better. Her latest string of hits has kept me satisfied ever since begging to If You Seek Amy.  Circus, 3, Womanizer, Hold it Against Me and I Wanna Go show that at 30, Britney still know how to get us on the floor.  Even if she can't get there herself.

I'm not going to say that Britney's some great role model, but if you can watch this whole video of all her hits without dancing at all, I will probably say that you're a little bit dead inside.  So go ahead, give it a try.


Happy Birthday, Brit.  If I have my way, you really will keep us dancing til the world ends.

xo kate

Lovecats: Blair and Chuck

Have you guys been watching Gossip Girl?

You know I love her--xoxo--but I have not been enjoying the continued separation of Chuck and Blair. If there were ever two lovecats that deserved a break, it was these two scheming upper-east-siders. For reals.

I fully recognize that in order to keep the plot interesting, suspenseful and compelling, they need to present our beloved manipulators with challenges to their relationship.  I fully recognize that if Chuck and Blair were too happy for too long, I might get bored.

Might.

Maybe.  Possibly.  Probably.  Not.

But you know what else makes a plot boring?  Babies. 

Yep.  I said it.  Ha.

Don't get me wrong:  like many 27+2 year olds, I am baby obsessed--and that is putting it mildly.  I have tried to kidnap my friend's children.  Literally.  And it didn't go over well, I'm afraid. 

But when young characters on escapist teen dramas have babies, it never goes well. They become mothers with real problems (ie Andrea Zuckerman and Haley James Scott).  And we don't watch GG for insight into real problems.  I want Blair to sport the newest dress from Victoria Beckham's new line...not a breast pump.

How do you think Blair will deal with this transition?  What do you think the writers have planned? What are your predictions for the couple?

I shall never love anyone as I love my sisters.

It's my sister's 30th birthday and this weekend we are shopping for her wedding dress.  The reality of both those things is simultaneously terribly exciting and absolutely terrifying.  We're growing up, and I guess I have to deal with that.  But no matter who we marry or where we live or what kind of trouble we get ourselves into, one thing will not change -- until I'm old and gray, I'll know that my sister is the very best part of me.  Happy Birthday, Win.  I love you more than words.

xo kate