I once worked in at a local access TV station in the Bay Area, and someone introduced me to LL Cool J. Nice guy, soft-spoken.

I love real Xmas trees, but alas we have to get fake ones because we have a cat. The fake ones are safer because they don’t attract her attention.

To me fake is simply not being true to essence. Dolly Parton strikes me as a pretty authentic person, for example.

So I know what it is like to be a New Yorker — but also what it is like to have left that identity behind, to a large extent.

I wanted to ask you and it’s genuinely out of curiosity — do you ever wonder what it would be like not to be stamped as a New Yorker? What it feels like to live in a very different environment?

You live such a rich life that, in a way, to read your blog is to become a tourist, not solely of your life, but of the life of a city that many of us never experience. And yet perhaps there are places and folk who do that for you?

In any case, this post turned a very interesting direction. Real, authentic, fake. Whatever. We’re all people, that makes it real by default, whether it’s because we are proud of our scars or ashamed enough to hide them, it’s all real. Just as a real tree will have as much meaning as a fake tree.

We’ve done both, the live (and almost dead tree) which I loved for it’s visual and olfactory stimulation, and the artificial tree which I have hoped saved one more tree for one more day. Both are authentic feelings, authentic reasoning and both were mine. Does that make me fake? Nope, just dynamic, complex, and ever changing.

Thanks again Aidan, for making us think.

anyway, also must apologize for the lack of proper Caps, it’s a lazy saturday night and i’m stuck at home watching my boyfriend write a paper for grad school (also 20 degrees out).

ANYWAY…so celeb sighting. i ran into brooke shields about a month after michael jackson passed away. it was in some north african restaurant in soho. she looked like she was in deep conversation with a guy, but i wasn’t going to let that stop me. i apologized for interrupting and told her that the world was sad for losing the MJ that brought us the moonwalk and billie jean, but she had truly lost a friend. she held my hand said “that’s really touching.” her face looked so sad. for that moment, i forgot how fake celebs can be, and realized that deep down they are fragile and vulnerable, even more than most of us, since they’re always parading for the public to criticize.

since then i’ve refused to pick up a tabloid magazine. who cares what brad, jen and angelina are doing? ive got my own day-to-day dramas!

cheers!
chris

Have fun picking out, and decorating your tree!