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Author Archive | Alison Rosen

It's come to this


Fabric swatches on my couch.


More fabric swatches.


More.

There aren’t different swatches in each photo. Just a different configuration.

In other news, today I went to a press luncheon presentation for Chile. This is one of the perks of not working in an office—getting to go to things like this. See, I used to get invited to stuff like this all the time but had to say no because if I vacated my desk for three hours I might never come back. Back in those days I was young and naive. I didn’t know what I know today, which is that even though you might think Chilean food is spicy, it’s not. That’s one of the big misconceptions about this diverse and friendly country with many organic ingredients. “Flavored well, not spicy,” said a bald man wearing a pink tie. Also, there is something called Merken and NO ONE made any merkin jokes. That’s how civilized this crowd was.

Um, what else? Please forgive me, I’m distracted by Jeff Conaway and that piece of work Vicki Whatshername. Oh wait, I’m wrong! He’s not bitching at Vicki! He was telling the new tech Luisha that he doesn’t like her. I should never multitask like this.

So I jotted down a few choice sentences I heard today. These are they:

“I just want to give a shout out to the avocado oil.”

“Basil? Sauvignon? Love it!”

“Sole Valhalla”

“It’s not a wine that shouts at you with exclamation points.”

My friend Mike took some photos which he told me he’s heard are referred to, in the porn business, as food porn. Or maybe it was in the food writing world.

I’m joking as I’m actually familiar with this atrocious term and long ago decided that until a naked person appears in the photos I don’t think we should be calling it porn. Have people no respect for porn?

Um. Oh, Mike’s photos:



Oh, also, also! I think I’ll get to drive a MINI E which is the new electric MINI. I’m totally going to try to plug my hairdryer into it.

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Wear yourself out by listening to me go on and on about furniture


Earlier today I had a whole temper tantrum inside my own head and decided that when I got home I would write a blog post entitled “I don’t know how I feel about my couch. P.S. I’m neurotic and going to die alone.”

Then I found out that title had already been taken so I had to go with the one above.

See, I’ve been going back and forth on this couch. Not literally. On the upside, it’s comfortable. On the downside, sometimes I look at it and think “it looks like barf.”

But considering how goddamn long I took to decide and how annoying I was about it shouldn’t I just love it? Love it to pieces?

Because I don’t. But I think I like it. Maybe? I don’t know. I like it better now that I bought throw pillows for it (I haven’t decided which ones I like, hence the three different pillows.) Earlier tonight I decided I’d go with a silver, gold and white theme which is neato and, um, yeah. Neato’s all I got on that one. Fancy? Neato and fancy? I could do neato and fancy. And secretly Christmasy.

But then sometimes I look at the couch and think “it looks like a giant gum eraser.” I also think it looks like liver and I also think it looks like steak that’s been chewed up and spit out. Also: gristle.

But then I see it in photos and I think maybe it’s ok.

See, complicating matters is the fact that the delivery men nicked it in a couple spots so C&B offered to replace it. I explained that it was kind of difficult to get it into the space so they’re sending someone out to look at it here to see if he can patch it up in situ. What does in situ mean? Hold please.

God I’m smart.

Um, yeah, so anyway, if I act fast I could get this big gray menace out of my apartment and my life forever and then I could invite something else into my living room that I will go nuts about. Seriously, I’m sick and tired of myself.

But it’s not like I never like anything ever. When I look at my bed, my white duvet covered bed, I feel calm and good. I don’t have this crazy ping ponging meat-comparison making reaction happening.

Yet I’m not at peace with the decision to just return the fucker either. That makes me anxious too.

Let’s talk about my last apartment, shall we? I moved into it under duress. I wanted to stay in the apartment I was in before that, my first real apartment in New York, but it’s a long story and that wasn’t feasible so there my sister and I were, needing to find an apartment or break up and she had a friend who was vacating this great apartment in the village and we went and looked at it and because I couldn’t find anything else I said yeah, that’s fine. But then before we pulled the trigger I began doubting the decision and was freaking out and begged a friend from work who was later my boyfriend, unless he was already my boyfriend at the time, to go look at the place with me. We did and he reassured me that it was a great place and I would be happy there.

Sadly it was a terrible place and I was miserable there.

Or rather, it was a pretty decent place but I wasn’t happy there anyway. I never liked that apartment or that neighborhood. Also, there were mice. Oh my God, my couch looks like a big sheet of mice.

So I was thinking about all this this morning and thinking that if I’m having doubts about the couch, instead of letting myself be talked into it, I should just honor those doubts and not keep the damn thing and just wait until I find one I really feel good about.

But then sometimes I look at it and I like it.

And it’s comfortable. It’s really comfortable.

So then why not just get it in a different color?

Because that will take 12 weeks. And plus I’m trying to avoid having people remove it and bring in another one but I’m not sure why I’m trying so hard to avoid that. I mean, just because my idea of hell is moving furniture doesn’t mean that someone whose job it is to move furniture feels the same way.

But still, I just feel like I’m doing it. That thing I do. I don’t know what that thing I do is which makes it hard to know whether I’m really doing it, but I suspect I am. I mean, this feels very me in the extreme. I hate extreme me.

I’m also trying to see if it’s possible to get slipcovers for this couch. I mean, I know you can order them from C&B for about a thousand dollars but for that much, I may as well just get a different couch.

Still reading? I’m sorry to put you through this. On the upside… um…. well okay technically there is no upside. Oh wait, I know! Today I saw a woman pushing two black poodles in a stroller!

Also, I’m aware there’s a world that exists outside me and this couch. I find that annoying, too.


And then I see this photo and I like it again.


I also like ducklings.


Here I am not thinking about couches.

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My couch is eleven hours old

And already I’ve fallen asleep on it and nearly lost the remote control in its butt, or whatever the appropriate furniture term for seam between the cushions is.

Also, I know the couch is much older than eleven hours but I choose to ignore the life it led before we crossed paths.

Also, unrelated, I don’t like video chatting. I just don’t. No thank you, gmail.

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A joke about furniture

Note: sometimes I come up with terrible jokes, the kind that make you groan. It’s getting worse as I get older, though my allergy to cats is getting better as I get older. I don’t know what to make of this. Eventually my sense of humor will deteriorate to the point where the only kinds of jokes I can make are truly embarrassing and at that point I’ll know it’s time to have kids.

Anyway, to the joke, and I use the word “joke” loosely:

Woman: It’s an occasional table.

Man: Well, what else is it? (maybe this should be: What’s it when it’s not a table?)

Or maybe it should be “What’s an occasional table when it’s not a table?”
But then I don’t know what the answer is.

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That super long ring before it goes to voicemail

You know when you call someone and it rings four or five times and then it rings a sixth time and you think the ring is about to stop but then it redoubles its effort really rings like it means it and then goes to voicemail? What is that? Is that the ringer giving up? Or is that the ringer giving you attitude? Like “FINE! Have it your way! I’ll put you through to voice mail.”

This is not to be confused with the ring that lets you know you’re interrupting someone’s call: That weird high pitched tone at the end of each ring which makes you think maybe you should hang up because you know they’re on a call and they know you know.

Anyway, if I ever do stand up comedy again perhaps I’ll make the above funny. Has anyone done anything on phone rings? Am I ripping off Seinfeld? I’d really rather not be.

Wait, I have one more thing to say about rings and ring tones. I had to change all my phones to regular sounding ring tones and my alarm to a beeping sound because my brain is an evil sponge which grasps a few bars of melody and then replays them over and over and over and I couldn’t stand my personal soundtrack being “Calypso.” It was like I was trapped in a Girls Gone Wild commercial. I think maybe I already wrote about this? Well, it’s still true though.

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I don't normally complain about physical pain

I don’t normally complain about physical pain, being that I prefer to complain about deep psychic wounds and stuff, but yesterday I dropped my wallet on my foot and was convinced I broke my toe. This is not a sign that I am so full of money that my wallet is a weapon. It’s a sign that I need to clean out all the assorted crap that I’ve been keeping in my wallet for so long because when I get a piece of paper, I like to file it in my wallet.

And then last night I was reading in bed and somehow I did something because my neck hurts so bad today I can only move slowly and melodramatically. I should probably start sighing.

Maybe I need to drop my wallet on my other foot to knock everything back into alignment?

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A moment of silence for Fred

Blog readers, I have some bad news. Fred the Jade Plant has left us for the great garden in the sky. In fact, he shuffled off his mortal coil a few weeks ago but I haven’t thrown him out yet because I’ve been thinking I need to take a picture so I can make a touching tribute video highlighting the impact he’s made on our lives. But I don’t think I’m going to get around to doing that. So basically a very dead Fred has been sitting on my kitchen table for three weeks getting deader and more shriveled with each passing day and instead of giving him a proper burial I just look at him and think “Huh, I should do something about that.” What kind of monster am I?!

But I choose to remember Fred as he looked in his youth.

Fred as a young houseplant
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Photo from last night

With Patti Ann Browne, after the show. Apparently we’re a couple of blurry ladies. Blurry chicks? Blurry broads? Blurry TV personalities? Blurry broheims who are girls? No, not that last one.

I wish I’d taken photos at the next place I went last night–WOR studios—because that was priceless. I was the youngest person there by about sixty years and everyone there was crazy in this very entertaining old timey showbiz kind of way, made more surreal by the fact that it was two in the morning.

Well maybe not sixty. Forty. Thirty five? Well, you get what I’m saying.

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See me, hear me

So I’m doing Red Eye tonight and then I’m jetting—in a car—downtown to be interviewed on the Joey Reynolds show on WOR 710. The interview will air live at midnight in NYC and 8AM in the 220 other markets that carry it or where it airs or something. Anyone know what that means? I don’t speak radio. I do have a radio-ish voice though, so the irony cuts deep as you can imagine.

Anyway, for some of you that means you can hear me before seeing me on Red Eye. Like the opposite of thunder/lightening!

But not like that at all.

For others there will be a five hour wait time during which I hope you’ll reflect on important things involving me.

Thank you.

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