New York State of Mind: Week #2: Tonya Harding, manuscript mania, the beats, and the blues

Another week has gone by so it’s time for an update!

New York is a funny place. I always knew that, but I truly realized it last Saturday. Where would a bunch of college students go on a Saturday night in NY, you ask? Why, the Trailer Park Lounge, of course! Yes, there is such a place, and lucky us, it’s located just a few blocks away from our housing. The Trailer Park has some interesting décor, but I think the shrine to Tonya Harding takes the cake. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of that, but I did get a picture of the place in general:

Yes, those are paper towels instead of napkins and yes, that deer head is wearing a mullet wig. Only in New York…

Sunday, I worked a book fair in Brooklyn, and by “worked” I mean I sat around and listened to poetry while baking in the hot, hot sun. Later, a bunch of us went to check out the red carpet for the VMAs (MTV video music awards). We got there at about 6, and when we saw the crowds of people and realized no one was arriving until 8, we left, but I can say I was there! Here’s a picture of the madness:

Instead, we crammed into one of our TV lounges and watched the VMAs toget

her, and what a crazy awards show it was! If you saw it, you know. Gathering around the TV is kind of a norm here. Every Wednesday night a bunch of us watch Glee together after going to Baskin Robbins for dollar-scoop Wednesdays. A dollar for ice cream in New York? Sweeeet (literally…sorry, bad pun). P.S. Josh Groban was on Glee last week! Only for a couple minutes though, and he didn’t sing. Sad day.

Ok, time to talk about the reason I’m technically here: WORK!

Let’s start out positively. I absolutely love my internship at Futurepoem! September is Futurepoem’s open submission period. My main job at the moment is to go through all the manuscripts (probably will be about 250) to pick the top 30 “finalists” that will be reviewed by the entire editorial board. This morning, after a trip with my boss to the giant post office near Penn Station, in which the workers berated him for letting the manuscripts pile up so long, I got to start going through what we’ve received so far (a whole shopping cart’s worth). It's a strange feeling of power to be able to open up those packages and sort those giant manuscripts into yeses, maybes, and nos. Each writer puts hours and hours into these works, and I can dismiss them in minutes. Weird.

My other internships…I’d rather not spend too much time talking about them. I have nothing against the organizations themselves or the people I work for, but the work I'm doing...that's another story. At one, I’m basically a UPS worker, without the truck. For six hours Tuesday I did absolutely nothing except deliver/pick up packages and package books. Don’t get me wrong, that needs to be done, but if that’s all I’m going to be doing, the guy really should have looked for an intern with muscles instead of literary skills. He could have at least warned me to wear better shoes for that glorious experience. I had to print out three years worth of e-mail the other day too. I could just hear the trees crying. At the other press, my project for the next month is to reorganize some shelves. Enough said.

one of the presses I work for, located in the basement of an old factory in Brooklyn

It’s in the works to find a new internship for me though, something more journalism-related. A lot of the good internships are gone now, understandably, but we’re looking, and there are a couple of hopefuls.

Negativity over. Want to know another reason why this city is so weird, and yet amazing? Yesterday, at a lecture we attended for seminar, we had two empty seats next to us and our adviser invited a woman to come sit in one. They chatted for a while casually, and later, she told us the woman was Anne Waldman…wait, THE Anne Waldman? The Anne Waldman I studied in Beat Literature? The Anne Waldman that worked with Allen Ginsberg and founded a school with him? That Anne Waldman? Really? I couldn’t have known about that while she was sitting about five feet from me? I guess you just never know here…

Anne Waldman and Allen Ginsberg

Well, I suppose it's time for me to go to sleep, since I have a busy day of organizing shelves tomorrow! Haha! No...really. Anyway, I will end with some pictures I took while in Central Park during my day off Monday. The weather was absolutely beautiful!