On Monday, New York City welcomed the kind of fresh weather that makes you feel like everything is happening but you’re missing it all. That itchy sensation, when you’re sure that a whole bunch of your 10th grade pals are planning a walk on the Brooklyn Heights promenade. BUT they refuse to tell you about it because they think you’ll judge them for taking ecstasy. All YOU do is hang out at home researching rabbit adoptions on petfinder.com and making vegan pigs-in-a-blanket with your mom.

Didn’t you feel that way when springtime came to high school?

I only ever felt like a real teenager once, at a summer program at Bennington College, which I attended with fellow Diva Joana Avillez. She studied painting and poetry while I veered in a radically different direction, choosing instead to pursue poetry and pottery. We spent a lot of time preparing our spoken-word work for assorted open-mic nights, lazing by the lake, modifying wifebeaters bought at the local big box store, beading bracelets (some spelled CUNT, others boasted early John Mayer lyrics) and loitering at the smoothie counter talkin’ trash. Most camps inspire a cultlike adoration (the major exceptions to this rule are concentration and refugee camps) and when I returned home I was so depressed I slapped my dog in the face for trying to snuggle me. This picture of Jo and me says a thousand words. At the time, we declared it “very Virgin Suicidesy.”

My heart-aching affinity for that girls-of-summer mythology also accounts for my love of Summer Girls by LFO

And Boys Of Summer (The Ataris version, which should totally be adapted into a feature film)

I was starving for a break from the satisfying but occasionally tedious experience of sound mixing TINY FURNITURE. Joana saved me from binge-eating soy pudding by sending links to 2 short stories that evoke the sticky/sexy/peachfuzz/endless potential/rape potential feeling of summer. One by John Updike and the other by Joyce Carol Oates, who Joana deftly noted is a “freak magnet.” Read them. I did! I love Wet Hot American Summer just as much as the next white person, but I need hefty and regular doses of unironic appreciation for summer camp and the humid teenage sex I never had! Taylor Swift is also helpful in this pursuit. Ke$ha isn’t as helpful, but you should follow her on twitter. She’s like if Jerri Blank was attractive and started a pop career. See the tweet below!

I can look forward to more warm weather because the time has come to head to Austin, TX to premiere TINY FURNITURE at SXSW. The HDCam layback has happened. There were some tech issues and I hyperventilated (that’s the medical term for sobbed) and producer Kyle Martin likened it to “watching a baby have a baby” but we got through. See? Kyle is holding the tape!

Made my dad handle it too, for good measure!

Thank you to all who indulged my anxiety and misplaced perfectionism (where was this fierce desire to do things right when I was taking academic classes? Now it’s finally appeared, but it just takes the form of second-guessing trained professionals at elite post-houses.) We leave Thursday morning. Excited, grateful, will spill the beans upon my return (and tweet my head off while there. So many movies and people to embrace!)

When I met you I said my name was Rich.
You look like a girl from Abercrombie & Fitch.

–Lena

Forgive me father, for I have sinned. It’s been more than a week since my last blogfession. If I skip therapy for a week or so, I then scan my mind for important events my shrink might need to know about. Did anyone I love die, or hurt me in an even more malicious way than death? Did I have any jarring sexual experiences? Usually the answer is no and so I just complain about the sliding door between my sister’s bedroom and my own until it’s time to go home. When I next get on the couch, we can talk about the fact that I’ve had this blog for just one week and it’s already a focal point of guilt and obligation!

Mostly, I just wish I was a natural-born blogga’ like Tavi, the wildly precocious preteen fashionplate I spotted front row at the Peter Jensen show. Cuz’ if you didn’t know, it’s fashion week– the week when Manhattanites stop going every place in sweatpants and Sketchers and get serious about their looks!

Here is a video of Tavi rapping about her love of affordable designer capsule collections.

And here is me giving mad Myspace-face in my new Peter Jensen dishrag/turban hoodie.

It’s from his Laurie collection (spring 2010.) Despite her penchant for making me twitch with rage, my mom is also my muse so I get where he’s coming from. This is one of my favorite projects she’s ever been a part of.

So time flies when you’re having fun. And by fun I mean slathering apples with almond butter and watching the incomparable Lance Edmands conform pro-res quicktime footage so that the kind color-correction fairy can subtly tweak the grays and blues and maybe erase the flaming zit that decorates my cheek for half of Tiny Furniture.

The movie is reeeaally close. We have our SXSW screening times and the trailer is forthcoming. So very thankful and excited to return to Austin with the gang, and to share even more festival news soon. Gotta’ love this moment– when you’ve made a movie but no one has seen it yet. The blissful years of ignorance before you realize your child is either sleazy or bo-ring.

Meanwhile, my Ishtar VHS finally arrived and I held the long-promised viewing party! I had hoped to procure Ethiopian food (as my friend C. Mason Wells says, any cuisine that uses food as a utensil is a-ok) or do some internet research and learn to make babaganouge. Or maybe even learn to spell babaganujzg. But some last minute technological pwnage left me without the time or inclination, so Ishtar was the party and the party was Ishtar.

Well, Siskel and Ebert did not like it one bit.

But we liked it! That movie is so much better than our culture’s collective memory would have you believe. Some true LOLs and ROTFLs, and a zany can-do spirit that is rare to see– and odd, since it sounds like everyone on that set wanted to knife-rape each other! It’s all explained in the Peter Biskind Beatty Bio, excerpted in last month’s Vanity Fair Magazine.

I will leave you with this tremendous clip of Nichols & May in action.

Such kismet that on this day, only my second in possession of a blog, I should come across a most unusual missive!

Circa 6 pm. I am just chillin’ at the Starbucks in the midtown Barnes and Noble (don’t ask) skimming my new purchases– Michael Pollan’s Food Rules and the fatty new Warren Beatty bio–when I notice an unassuming, handwritten business card resting atop the formica.

I am a single white male, 45 years old, 5′ 9″ tall, who wants to give oral sex to a woman, age 18 to 59, any race, ethnicity, nationality, religion. I want to satisfy your carnal lust by giving you powerful orgasms.

[ed note: I can provide you with his name and number upon request.]

I want so many things in this world. But not oral sex from a socially progressive (ANY religion or ethnicity, he says) 45 year old who advertises at the midtown Barnes and Noble. But, egged on by Audrey, I dial his number (although not before pressing *67. Who has two thumbs and watches Law and Order: SVU? This guy!) After a ring and a half, the expectant voice of a decidedly middle-aged man… Immediate hangup. Don’t know what my plan was once he answered– I think I just want to see if he sounds pranky, or evil. Neither, and I admire the DIY/grassroots nature of his advertising campaign.

In related news, locking picture on Tiny Furniture this coming Wednesday. Just need to tweak a few things, run it by the trusted ones (the Couvs, Kyle M., Jody Lee, Mom) and then forever hold my peace/piece.

Everyone on match.com (a site I do not belong to, and certainly wasn’t perusing last night) starts their profile with “this whole match.com thing is so not me.” And probably everyone with a new blog posts a preemptive “sorry I’m late to the blogparty! is it still cool? are you bored?” But according to my dad (who has taken to wearing an elfin winter cap indoors, so he can’t necessarily be trusted) I’m a regular Frank Sinatra– AKA I do it my way. So I’ll skip the sorries and move directly into the oversharing– it’s my webstyle.

I enjoyed a fullbellied, diverse 2009. This is not a goth girl’s livejournal circa 2001, so I’ll only list the good stuff. It was my first year outta’ college. Naturally I flitted from man2man and job2job, a wanton free spirit. JK– I bunkered down at the ‘rents place in Tribeca and spent nine months as a proud employee of Bu And The Duck, the hottest children’s clothing emporium around. During that time, I premiered my first feature, Creative Nonfiction, at the SXSW Film Festival. Along with some true soul sisters I made two seasons of Delusional Downtown Divas for the web and beyond. In October, us Divas were asked to host Rob Pruitt’s First Annual Art Awards at the Guggenheim Museum. I co-wrote the teleplay and got the chance to be very involved with the development of that surreal shindig. Then I went right into production on Tiny Furniture.

The beginning of 2010 has proved equally rowdy. Well, I guess “rowdy” isn’t a totally fitting adjective for the act of editing a low-budget dramedy (and, in truth, Lance edits while I research how various foods rate on the glycemic index.)

And so I wanted a place to keep you, my dear readers (mom) abreast of what’s happening with this new feature film, Tiny Furniture. Written in October, shot in November/December, Tiny Furniture will premiere in March 2010 in narrative competition at SXSW. I’m thrilled and grateful to be returning to the festival where I met most of the incredible folks with whom I have collaborated on this movie. A movie that is all about the past year of my life. Too meta to handle!

So learn more about the film and its talented cast & crew at the official site, and check back here often for updates on where we’ve been, where we’re going, what I’m watching, eating, and moaning about.

Mad love/respect/thanks,
Lena

p.s. Is signing your blog a faux-pas, similar to when an old person signs a text message?

p.p.s. Just ebayed a VHS copy of hard-to-find Ishtar, the musical comedy in which Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty traverse the Middle East of Elaine May’s mind. In a wildly ignorant move, I will soon throw a viewing party at which I serve thematically-appropriate Ethiopian food.