I miss writing about pop culture. Once upon a time it was all I did all day long and it was grand. Today I go back to my roots on the Huffington Post.

While writing this post, “When the Soundtrack Is Better Than the Movie,” I had this sensation that I hadn’t had since writing for Girls On. Like writing editorial about entertainment could be fun and funny and in some small way important. Because it was diverting and it made you laugh and agree and disagree and it was a respite and it didn’t make you feel that dirty for that long for not focusing your energies on far worthier causes. Like monks being killed in Burma. Which makes writing about movie soundtracks seem…a tad insignificant.

The Girls On writers were phenomenal. I wasn’t even a founder of the site–I arrived after the original Girls had departed and we had just been bought by Oxygen and the whole thing was a late-Internet era dream project and in the blink of an eye it was over. But we did some amazing stuff. I remember the Judy Blume Retrospective, where all the writers chose their favorite Judy Blume books and wrote about reading them as teens and then again in their 20s. I remember the first piece I wrote when I started my job, a review of that TV trainwreck Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?, and how it was 1000 words too long and totally OTT but it was funny so we ran it anyway (maybe minus 500 words). That was the thing. If it made us laugh, it ran.

Now there are zillions of entertainment sites and every mainstream newspaper has its media critics online and we’re not the blazing funny-lady pioneers we once were. But it was actually a Girls On writer who hooked me up with the HuffPost to begin with, specifically to write about entertainment, which I plan to do far more frequently if I can manage to figure out how the posting system works and I can manage to get my mitts on some preview screeners of Gossip Girl. Or at least watch it when it airs.

I taped an interview with the lovely Dave and Debbie of the Q102 Breakfast Show in Dublin the other day, and from the location of my visitors indicated by my super-secret site files, it must have aired. So top o’ the mornin’, my Irish friends. Call me psychic (please!), but something tells me you’re wondering which six fashion items every woman must own.

Okay, to be honest, I was surprised to be asked that question, because it’s not actually technically in my book but part of an interview I did with the New York Post which you can read in its entirety here.

But let’s revise for the weather and fashion particularities of Eire, shall we?

Six Things Every Dubliner Must Own
A Throughly Subjective List by Melissa Kirsch, author of The Girl’s Guide to Absolutely Everything

1. A good coat. I stand by this one. it doesn’t have to be black (as most New Yorkers’ coats are) but it does have to be waterproof. You can certainly get yourself a swell, warm raincoat in Dublin and if you don’t have one, I’m not sure how you’re faring, but I’m pretty sure it’s not well.

2. Boots. A good pair of warm boots that you can dress up with a skirt, wear with jeans, slosh through puddles, etc. Let’s make them knee-high. Let’s stop obsessing about the dampness of the UK and move on.

3. A good bra. This is universal. Debbie mentioned in the interview it can make you look thinner. Yes, this is true, but it will also make you feel much better about yourself. Go to the old-lady girdle shop and get yourself measured. Let Marge the Bra Lady go to second base with you and come out a new woman. You’re looking for support, no spillover, and don’t be concerned about what the size is. Chances are you’re wearing the wrong size, and usually but not always this can be remedied by a bigger band size and smaller cup size but that’s not always true. Measure. Go. Now.

4. Your version of the Little Black Dress. Perhaps it isa little black dress. Maybe it’s a slightly less-than-little but still flattering and not at all camping tent-like brown dress. Or a good-fitting pair of jeans that you can dress up or down. I’m into clothes that do Day-to-Night Barbie duty.

5. A sturdy, fashionable bag. Designer bags aren’t all they’re knocked up (or knocked off) to be. A bag you love by an unknown designer is going to last you much longer than a Chanel reproduction or a super-expensivo Marc Jacobs tote that anyone who cares will be able to pinpoint to a particular season. I like sites like Etsy for cool, original, well-made accessories.

6. Sunscreen. I know you think because it’s slightly grey a lot that you aren’t getting sun damage. The sun is still shining and emitting its turn-your-skin-the-consistency-of-an-old-Gucci-bag rays even when it’s cloudy.

I offer you these tips not because I think you are desperate to know them (although you might be) but because people like tips and at 6am EST it was very difficult to remember all the things I’d told the Post months ago or to speak in bullet points at all. Who speaks in bullet points naturally? Not me.

PS The book is available from Amazon.co.uk right this very second. Tarry not, my bonny lasses (and lads).

I am having a hate affair with the New York Times‘ Alessandra Stanley. I am reluctant to join the ranks of people infuriated by a television critic, but I can’t stay quiet any longer.

On my Tumblr blog, I check in on her review of Private Practice, the Grey’s Anatomy spin-off that premieres tonight and I am pretty sure will be eh and find her, for the second week in a row, heavy-handedly going for a hyperbolic laugh and instead ending up with a rather insulting, overdone comparison.

I would like to go on record as not having anything personally against AS, but I do want it to be known that I find Virginia Heffernan to be a far more compelling critic, not to mention funny, spot-on with her references, and really engaged with the medium. All of which AS is not. I’ll read a VH review even if it’s of something I wouldn’t consider watching. I’ll read her sorta-boring Screens blog because she’s a good and insightful writer. (I feel the same way about Manohla Dargis in the movie section, as I’ve mentioned before).

Anyway, hie thee to Tumblr where I’m working myself up into a lather over syntactical nonsense.

PS: I should say that I am sympathetic to AS, as I too have been known to Overkill the Hyperbole from time to time. In fact, I recall some disappointing momments when writing the Girl’s Guide when I’d get pages back from my editor with “OTT” scrawled in the margin. This, I hasten to add, was always better than when a passage was marked “MEGO” — a far less frequent occurrence.

I launched myself out of bed with fervent purpose today, showered vigorously, and dashed out to vote in the democratic primary. Wouldn’t you know it.

Instead of the “VOTE AQUI” signs that normally plaster the senior citizen’s home across the street where I vote, said citizens clearly saw an opportunity to snag some unsuspecting wannabe-voters and decided to throw a large, sprawling tag sale. It occurs to me that there is nothing to vote for in my district. Which is such a drag. I’d like to know when I am going to be eligible to vote again. After last week’s jury duty bust, my bureaucratic participation quotient (BPQ) is running dangerously low.

I’m totally done with The View now that I 1. leave the house before 11 and 2. don’t care but this is fantastic.

TMZ has learned that legendary singer Barry Manilow has pulled out of his scheduled appearance on The View tomorrow — because he strongly disagrees with host Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s conservative views.

Barry says, “I strongly disagree with her views. I think she’s dangerous and offensive. I will not be on the same stage as her.”

Brilliant.

via TMZ

Gross. HotelChatter has an interview with supposedly deposed hotelier Gregory Peck (who, sadly is not Gregory Peck-esque in any fashion, which might make it all bearable), he of Peck-Moss, titans of the Cooper Square Youth Hostel.

Peck told us that there will be a partnership with the Table 8 group to open a restaurant on the hotel’s ground floor. Peck actually stressed the word “partnership” and “not just signing a lease with someone.” The restaurant will have an outdoor terrace and of course, a bar. A second bar will be in the hotel lobby and a third bar will be in the…wait for it…performance venue in the hotel basement.

Peck said the space will be about 2,000-square-feet and will feature an adult cabaret and live music. When we asked if it would be similar to hipster LES joint The Box, he replied,

“Well, it will be more like The Box than CBGB.”

“Of course, a bar!” While I love a bar, and ironically I deeply love a hotel bar, it just seems untenable. Not because of the noise necessarily. I mean, of course the noise, but what about the peering patrons? Remember Miracle Grill, how you’d be sitting in the garden outside, horribly drunk after one sip of margarita, and you’d look up and there were like twenty crooked tenements with their windows shut tight and bent Venetian blinds pulled closed and you’d think “Oh my god who actually lives there?”? It’s your pity I can’t stomach.
I’m going to be the rent slave behind that window! Although I would deserve it if I owned dusty bent Venetian blinds. I’m eyeing the Tord Boontje Until Dawn curtain. Which I thought I hated (a paper cut-out curtain?) but suddenly decided I love. But it’s really not a serious enough curtain for someone who is about to overlook a bar terrace. Or who currently overlooks a swarm of construction workers.

A guy from New York interviewed me the other day about being a “pissed off neighbor” of the Hotel. Hostel. I mean youth hostel. I mean it’s so ugly! There are thick plastic windows on it now, some of which are fake wood. I’ll try to get a picture. Fake wood plastic?

I never meant to be the cranky neighbor! I commiserated with my favorite uncranky neighbor, Hettie Jones, about the Hostel the other day. Her building is coated in crap on the inside. She has it worse, this I know. The noise and the men plus somehow they are in her building too.

Is it my love of hotels and hotel bars that has brought this upon me? I know I’d secretly love the idea of a fancy new hotel in my neighborhood if not for its proximity to my eyelash. Is it karmic retribution for adoring a restaurant with an outdoor garden? It’s not as awful when the A/C is on but come on it’s 72 degrees and my carbon footprint is going to be Yeti-sized if I keep the Frigidaire running into what you people call fall and I call the dog days of summer because, as I’ve established, I am not acknowledging this whole season thing right now.

Oh PS. I peered into the soon-to-be-Sasha Petraske cafe? bar? down the block and there’s definitely some construction going on in there. So maybe I can hang out there all night while the rest of the world is lining up to get into The Box: Fifth Street Franchise?

PPS I don’t have the latest Milk & Honey number. I was kind of weirded out by the contest Grub Street held in which people who wanted the number had to plead their worthiness and one lucky sap was awarded the digits. I think I was weirded out because I secretly like having the M&H number on hand for special occasions or maybe it just makes me feel safe, like having a cyanide tablet on hand in case things get rough, and of course would not be driven to beg for it. Because those ice cubes are amazing but they leave little room for anything else (e.g. drink) in the glass. However, I’d like you to email the number to me. Okay. Thanks.

Here I am, on Day 2 of Jury Duty, ensconced in my study carrel in the “Jurors Lounge,” and dammit I feel like a chump.

Listen up, County Clerk, New York County. I did not ride my bike down here to sit on my ass doing my actual work with your Wi-Fi while you mysteriously had no cases for which you needed my desperate-to-adjudicate physical presence. After a 2.5-hour lunch during which I could not enjoy the sunlight and free time because I was thinking about what a total waste a good juror this whole exercise has been, how they are probably going to send me home after lunch and that is going to be IT, I am back at my study carrel doing more actual work and feeling really undervalued.

I’ve said it before. Civic duty is MY BAG. I like jury duty! Even though I’ve been on the run from it for about three years and only came this week because I got a very-realistic-looking threat to throw me in jail if I didn’t show! I love voting (got my voter confirmation in the mail yesterday, yes I will be voting in the primary, yes I am available for any/all exit polls, you can have my direct line, pollsters), as we all know.

Here is what I have to report, on location for probably my last five seconds at 111 Centre Street:

1. You people can stop calling your little invitation to breeze in at 9:30am (I was under the impression that JUSTICE DOES NOT SLEEP), use your air-conditioned offices, take a leisurely lunch and knock off at 3pm a SUMMONS. “IMPORTANT: JURY SUMMONS ENCLOSED”? You should have just sent me an eVite.

2. People dress up for jury duty. They don’t come in in their robes, as I was tempted to this morning. Why did I dress up like I was going to a job interview? Well I know why: I was totally psyched to smack the ball out of the park during the voir dire that NEVER HAPPENED. Now I know the real reason I wore this dress was so I could drool sriacha down my front while eating lunch and have to send a perfectly clean voir dire outfit to the dry cleaner.

3. I am that person you don’t want to be sitting next to at jury duty. Stricken with what I’ve been told is definitely a ragweed allergy, I have been sputtering and blowing my nose into my decorative Sniff travel hankies. Then whispering to my neighbor “Don’t worry — allergies!” to allay their inner monologue that was screaming: “Oh great, not only do I have jury duty, but I have to sit next to the woman with TB for the duration. This sucks.”

4. Last time I served was in August and there were no cases. Ditto the first week of September. People said that was good because you would only be on duty for a couple days and then let go early. These people did not take into account that I am chomping (champing?) at the bit to be sequestered in a Ramada Inn out by JFK, nor did they mention that if you don’t serve on a trial, they can haul you back in here in as few as two years. Two years! I’m here NOW. I want to serve NOW!

5. Access to MySpace is denied in the courthouse! How do you like that? Just like a real office!

It’s 2:27 on a Friday. There is still a slim chance they will have an urgent case. I need to be called in. I need to be called in FIRST so I get to be foreman because I would be so AWESOME at delivering the verdict and also because I know I would be the de facto leader of the jury deliberations anyway because I’d be so into it, and also so good at it, and also really ready to lead my fellow jurors in a spirited debate. I can just hear myself enunciating, all-Debra-Winger-in-Legal Eagles, about the shadow of a doubt. I live in the shadow of a doubt. This is my terrain. God I could shine brightly as jury foreman.

Meanwhile, there is zero difference between being here and being at my writing space–laptop, wi-fi, A/C, headphones, work. Did I mention I feel like a chump?

How glad am I to be far from my television, meaning I missed Whoopi’s debut on The View today? Very, very glad indeed.

Thanks to Wicksy for forwarding this brilliant blow-by-blow that proves I have missed absolutely nothing.

From yesterday’s NYT, more atrocities on the student loan front.

Policy makers and regulators say that there are dangerous parallels between the private student loan and subprime mortgage markets. In both, there have been phenomenal profits, aggressive marketing and, until the recent credit market turmoil, a healthy appetite from Wall Street investors.

And, as was seen in the subprime market, many student loans that were made in the last couple of years are resetting at much higher rates.

– Reeling in the College Bound, New York Times

Oh good! Maybe your president* will now make a comment like this gem about indebted college grads whose federal loan rates, incidentally, have skyrocketed under his watch:

Hear that, graduates? It’s not the government’s job to bail you out for buying an education you couldn’t afford!

More on loans, credit surfing and other topics raised recently in the comments coming later this week, when I don’t have allergy-throat.

*Catherine taught me to call him “your president.” Because he’s certainly not mine.

I will not let go of summer. I will not will not will not absorb your silly back-to-school anxiety. Just because it’s Labor Day Weekend I will not wear a coat. I will not straighten out my priorities or stop wearing sundresses or turn my clock back. Today I went to Prospect Park.

Shira’s Birthday Banquet, an annual gala, a gorgeous day. Earlier, I went to Home Depot and purchased Baby’s First Power Drill. It was amazing. It was amazing to bike home with a power drill. I was all lopsided and wobbly but I had in my clutches my new drill. With which I will alternately drill and drive. Don’t say “drill” when you mean “drive.”

I made cucumber juice for the birthday banquet. It was so lovely, and listening to the This American Life podcast about break-ups on the iPod was so compelling, I didn’t mind getting lost, first in Park Slope, then in the park. I have never gone to any event in any park anywhere and not gotten lost. Central Park. I’ve gotten lost every time I’ve tried to find the carousel. Prospect Park is no easier. There was literally a sign with arrows pointing in two opposite directions and they both said “PICNIC HOUSE.” I was going to the Picnic House.

I rode back to the city with Amichai and we went to the Sunshine and saw a weird and quirky movie I knew not much about, Dedication. It was a spontaneous moviegoing, I’d not have seen the movie otherwise, but I’m glad I did. The film included a writer who gets anxious and a house in Sag Harbor, and they guy who played Tim on the British version of The Office (whose skin is looking a little craggy, not that mine isn’t, but I couldn’t help but wish they’d used a little spackle on him), and a completely gratuitous stunt-casting of Peter Bogdanovich. I’m not opposed to any of those things.

Yesterday I went to the Greenmarket and bought about 20 heirloom tomatoes. They’re not like regular tomatoes. I learned this when I got two in my CSA haul last week. I am now ruined for the Jersey tomato. I cannot beat the thought of not having the earth move every time. I am determined to subsist wholly on corn and heirloom tomatoes until the first frost. And beyond. Because I refuse to reckon with the possibility of frost.