With a smile and a wink

On many Sundays, for the past 6 years, a little show called Sex and the City entered our living rooms with four sassy women all looking for one thing: love. Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha each represented a little bit of our personalities and also what we all need in our lives: good friends who through thick and thin are willing to tell you the truth, even when it hurts. So it was only appropriate that the final season test those bonds of friendship with the culmination of six years of broken hearts, thrown out backs, crabs, gossip columns, cheaters, Manolos, and lunch taking us back to New York from the city of love.

First, Miranda, the cold and calculating lawyer breaks her hard exterior after years of pushing Steve away and marries the father of her son. The sweet bartender took all her shit and even though she always seemed to be on the rag, he came back for more because he could see who she really is. And for the first time, this season, she gave back to Steve by moving out of the city to Brooklyn and having Steve's mom move in with them after she suffers a stroke. And she finally comes to middle ground with Magda, her cleaning woman and nanny, who once replaced her vibrator with a statue of the Virgin Mary.

Charlotte, in her effort to end the dating since she was 15 and have a baby, gets her baby--a Chinese baby at that with Harry, her bald and hairy-backed (though now he waxes it) divorce lawyer turned busband. After being jerked around by a hick couple from Charlotte, NC, Harry brings home the good news. And in six months, the family of mutts and converts and the Chosen People will be complete.

Samantha, the woman I can relate to in many ways, has been the woman who would never fall in love. Always fighting it with her hard exterior to protect her sensitive side so she wouldn't get hurt. The one time she fell for hotel mogul, Richard Wright, he proceeded to break her heart and she proceeded to go back into her protective shell and only have meaningless sex. That is until the young, hot and alliterative "Smith" Jerry Jerrod comes into her life. He was only meant to be another fling, but somehow, he stuck around. Through Samantha trying to remain cold (the holding hand issue), avoiding the "L" word, and trying to push him away by getting back with Richard for one night in a hotel, Smith was there. Always waiting and calling Samantha on everything she said and did (or didn't do). From shaving his beautiful hair when hers started to fall out due to her chemotheray to taking a flight back from filming on location in Canada just to tell her he loves her. Yeah, it is cheese, but every woman I know swooned when he shaved his head. That's love, I say, that's love.

And then, there is Carrie. The penultimate sex and the city girl. She relinquishes her job, her friends, and her city for Paris and an insecure Russian artist who is too busy fididdling with his light installation to spend any time with poor Carrie. And sitting alone on a bench in a museum in Paris, she finally finds the one thing she lost since coming to Paris: herself. While Aleksandr wants to ignore her feelings, she goes with her gut feeling, the one that has been panging in the back of her mind for weeks: it is over. "I am someone who is looking for love. Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't-live-without-each-other love." Enter Mr. Big. Ready to kick some Russian ass, he comes to his senses, grows the hell up and admits his love for Carrie. She's the one. And he takes her away from Paris back to lovely New York, puts his Napa house on the market, and starts a plan to move back to New York.

This show has been about the relationships we have. The relationship with our friends, the romantic relationships with the men (and women) we meet, and most importantly, the relationship we have with ourselves. It is summed up so perfectly in Carrie's (and the show's) last lines: "Later that day, I got to thinking about relationships. There are those that open you up to something new and exotic. Those that are old and familiar. Those that bring up lots of questions. Those that bring you somewhere unexpected. Those that bring you far from where you started. And those that bring you back. But the most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you find someone to love the you you love, well, that's just fabulous." And isn't that the truth! We all have many relationships in our lives. We have them for many reasons, usually I think it is to help us find something out about ourselves in our journey of self-discovery. But it is those few relationships in our lives that last longer than a few months or years. The true friend who loves you when you're up and out of this world ecstatic, down in the dumps and wallowing like a dying pig, making decisions they don't agree with but supporting you all the same, those are the people whose opinions mean a lick to you. And you, the person you'll have to live with for the rest of your life. It is the self-acceptance and recognition that you have flaws and you have amazing qualities and that you're perfect, just as you are. And those who can see that, who can see you through your tough exterior, your pushing away, your neediness, your bad days and your good, and love you, those are the people worth every minute of your time. Abso-fucking-lutely.

Dead sexy

People goo and ga over celebrities all the time. Hell, I've been known to do it on a minute-to-minute basis. Most of my friends need to give me a sedative when I start up on John Mayer or Jude Law. Mmmmmm... Jude Law. Now, yes, I know I am slightly insane about this. I'm insane about most of the men I find attractive, mostly because if it isn't for their amazing good looks, it is for the size of their cranium or some other random ability. And I mean random! Let's remember that I went to Stanford where the geeks of high school matriculate in hopes of (1) shedding their dorky image from high school and (2) cultivating their dorky interests like frisbee golf and starting the Star Wars Club of Stanford. Okay, maybe that was a dorm club, not a school-wide or -financed club, but believe me, that's what you get there. I spent a majority of my time with the actors and English majors so I swooned over people with amazing creative minds coupled with cockiness and good looks. It was always fleeting and I can only imagine what dating a Hollywood celebrity is like.

Jude Law, my Adonis, co-stars with the likes of Nicole Kidman, Natalie Portman, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Uma Thurman. He's got the pick of the litter if he wanted to date these women and vice versa. With all these gorgeous women, it must be a practice in self-discipline to keep it professional and not fall all over yourself for one of your co-stars. I mean, who isn't drawn to the very beautiful? And to have it on a daily basis at your JOB? It explains why there are so many Hollywood marriages that go kaput--add the hours and traveling; I'm surprised Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward are still married. Currently, Jude's dating his Alfie co-star Sienna Miller--I've proven my own point. Dating a Hollywood star, especially being an average Jane myself where the most exciting part of my day is not playing a practical joke on Bobby DeNiro but solving a coding issue, would be a nightmare. I'm bland in comparison to the starlet whose job it is to look glamorous and seductive and be able to drape herself on any leading man. Sienna wins over me. Ah Jude, the beautiful children I would have bore you.... Now that we've covered the reason why I don't date the insanely famous, who the hell do I find so damn sexy?

I was watching an episode of CSI with my friend Shenan. On comes Greg Sanders, the Lab Techie, who is about to give the results of some tests he's run on a powdery substance. Greg tries to make himself interesting by doing and saying things out of left field. And this evening was no different. He says,"Let's play 'Name That Compound,'" and proceeds to the white board to do a molecular diagram. As he's drawing out the compound, I turn my head slightly to Shenan without taking my eyes off the screen and say in a very calm, breathless manner,"Dear god, that's so damned sexy." I'll even forgive him for having gone to Berkeley. It is followed by a giggle when he's put the pen down and the compound is identitfied. I'm proof that being a male geek isn't going to keep women from wanting you. Quite the contrary, women love that shit! Hell, let's work on functions and do a geometry proof. Recite the elements on the periodic table for me and tell me what they can be used for. I don't care what anybody says, brains are dead sexy. I'm not saying that I think that artists aren't sexy anymore, but I have to give it up for the brains, the geeks, the dorks who are trying their damnedest to be cool, but embrace their dorkdom. Hell, I watch anime like Cowboy Bebop, used to play D&D, love my computer, have watched Star Wars about a million times; I'm a dork and I proudly admit it. To deny it would be to deny my friends and invalidate who I am. So here is to the brains, those who have a sense of humility and genuineness that most artists lack, a love for the intelligent and thirst for knowledge. If there were a calendar out there with one hot dork for every month of the year, I'd be the first in line to buy it. Come on, Greg Sanders, give me a call and let's talk superheavies.

Where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars

New York has had the delight of the coldest damn winter since I moved here four years ago. How cold? Colder than the Antarctic it seems at times--or at least that is what I learned from the nifty weather box on Jano's site. While everyone I know was planning trips to exotic and warm locales like St. Thomas and Puerto Rico this weekend, I went back to the Golden Gate, the Muir Woods, the Haight! Ah yes, the hippie-come-yuppie-come-techie city of San Francisco which inspired Douglas Cross to write the lyrics to a tune which became Tony Bennett's signature song. Rumor has it, he used to show up in Union Square with a microphone to croon tribute to the city.

When I left NoCal four and a half years ago, it was bittersweet in many ways. When I first got to Stanford, I was rather depressed--San Francisco was a good 45 minute drive from campus and me without wheels! I was pretty miserable there the first few months (some of my friends blame it on me being a dorky SLE student) and wanted to head East to New York, Boston, anywhere but Palo Alto, California. I had 18 years of island fever and I felt just as isolated on The Farm. I had that itch to leave and go somewhere, anywhere, foreign and away. California seemed too much like Hawaii and I couldn't deal.

It took me leaving for Oxford my junior year to discover the beauty of Stanford upon my return. Oxford was very different from Stanford: lots of speeding trucks that occasionally hit pedestrians and cyclists (the first time I saw a Mercedes lorry), tea shops, covered markets, large grocery stores where you pack your own groceries, and coaches to London, trains to anywhere else including Chepstow--there's a hitchhiking story here involving me stepping on a dead muskrat or a human heart... still undetermined. Oxford was my gateway to Europe though I only managed to see most of the UK (sorry, I missed Ireland, the land of my brethren) and Paris and Versailles. I had a foreign beau and drank afternoon tea in the JCR. I had friends from Harvard Summer School there who met me in London for dancing and turning lighters into flame-throwers (yes, that was me, the pyromaniac, who still has no idea how she did it). Very different from Stanford and it changed me completely.

I returned to The Farm with a new outlook on everything. As if I wasn't outgoing and aural enough, I had an irrepressible energy (though I think that can be attributed to a sunny spring quarter as opposed to a dank English one) and I wanted to do everything and meet everyone. That included more trips to San Francisco my senior year via borrowed cars and the CalTrain, wine country trips with my galpals, formals and pub nights, hiking 11 miles up Mt. Wittenberg and the trails along the coast of Point Reyes and then heading to Oakland to rave until 6am. I recall a very interesting San Francisco pub crawl that saw me downing lots of lemon drops at a bar I can barely remember... not due to the lemon drops though.

And then, just like that *poof*, it was gone. Diplomas out and New York on the agenda. Yet as much as I adore my New York with its unending energy and the many people who give it the personality it is world renown for, as Tony sings, "I left my heart in San Francisco, high on a hill it calls to me to be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars." And so, I return again and again--thanks in part to my many friends who still live there or moved back and my brother who traded the Chicago winters for the San Francisco fog. I've come to know it better with every visit and seem to fall in love with it a little more each time I return with each new thing I discover. From the Muir Woods (can you believe I never went while I lived there--am I retarded?) to the streets of Chinatown, I can't help but feel at home there. With two more visits scheduled within the next 4 weeks and likely others this year, this may prompt my friends to come out full force to coax me to move out there to spice up their lives. They've been trying for 5 years and I'm still in NYC though. My NYC friends have an easier time convincing me to stay in NYC since I'm here already and my heartbeat is in sync with the city's. But San Fran keeps my blood pressure down and my thighs in shape. Ah the dilemma. I always return to NYC with this desire to sell everything and start from scratch somewhere, anywhere, everywhere. And why not San Francisco? Why not London? Why not someplace I've never dreamed of living like Palau and Jellyfish Lake (I almost wanted to say Alkali Lake a la X-Men until I remembered what they did there to Wolverine and Lady Deathstrike)? I'm not sure why and I'm still trying to figure that out. Until I find my purpose in life, which I'm expeditiously working towards, I'll have to settle for my short skips across 35 states for In-N-Out Burgers and Ghirardelli Square, Monterey Bay and Santa Cruz, the Mission and the Haight, Golden Gate Park and Baker Beach, and my heart, at the top of the hill, waiting for me to return.

What I'm reading: "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac
What I'm listening to: "Waiting for My Rocket To Come" by Jason Mraz

International Quirkyalone Day

This Saturday, millions of people will be celebrating one of the most special days of the year where feeling amazing, beautiful, and loved is on the agenda. That's right, International Quirkyalone Day. Not anti-Valentine Day, IQD is a DIY day for people to celebrate friendship, love and independent spirit. You can either be a quirkyalone (i.e. single) or a quirkytogether (i.e. couple) but either way, it is less about the flowers and chocolates and over-marketed paper cut-outs of anatomically incorrect hearts and fat baby angels with bows and arrows (isn't that kinda scary?). IQD is about celebrating you, your own constant companion, without needing the validation of someone else because you are in a romantic relationship with them. How many of those have you suffered through with the expectation of violins and roses and being put on a pedastal only to get a mediocre dinner with mediocre conversation and maybe ending with a fight over something stupid like why your cat had to sit on your date's jacket and leave a deposit of enough hair to make a wig for Cher? Good note: Expectations are what kill any good evening. You're better off expecting the Apocalypse and then being happily surprised it did not arrive.

To die-hard Valentine celebrants, this probably sounds like a euphemistic way of saying "I don't have anyone to be with other than myself for Valentine's Day" and you'll go about smugly happy with whomever it is you are currently with under the guise that yes, this is what true love and romance are all about. Cheers to you! Enjoy Valentine's Day--my friend Liane is skiing in the French Alps and will be walking the streets of Paris with Sean Penn's doppelganger, sipping champagne and having wonderful little desserts from one of the many pâtisserie's lining the quaint rue de romance. My friend Susan will be with her love in Napa Valley drinking wonderful wine and enjoying the green hills and vineyards. I think it is absolutely wonderful, but my best Valentine's Day was when I spent it as a quirkyalone in 2002 ice skating at Rockefeller Center and meandering over to a Cake Party with a dozen quirkyalone friends dancing, sipping cocktails, seeing Famke Janssen, and spotting two random topless girls make-out as their boyfriends stood on the side without a clue of what to do.

What do we do for IQD? Throw an IQD party or go to one of the many that are being thrown across the country--someone has to capitalize on the number of wealthy single people with nothing to do on Valentine's Day, so why not IQD? Why not a party with a bunch of successful singletons who may celebrate quirkytogetherness next year with someone they met at a quirkyalone party? It would be the biggest quirkytogetherness and you'll feel so special to belong to such a large group of independent and amazing people who don't need cherry cordials or Hallmark to feel special. Go out with your quirkyalone girlfriends for brunch, a manicure/pedicure, and cocktails. Play at a Scrabble Tournament. Start a pick-up game of ultimate frisbee in the park. Volunteer at a pet shelter or soup kitchen. This day is about celebrating you, and all the wonderful things you as a gifted and talented person have to offer the world. Outside validation is fleeting, but self-acceptance and inner joy can last a lifetime.

For those who want to wallow and yearn to be with someone to fight with about your shedding cat, try this game. It may make you feel better. CAUTION: If you enjoy it too much and are a white male between the ages of 20 and 40, you may be a serial killer. Check with your doctor before continuing to play.