Totally Beast

While in New York, I learned from my publicists that the new "cool" is "beast." As in, "this publicity meeting is totally BEAST.*"** I tell you, I bore that information back home with me and presented it to my sixth grader as proudly as if I had brought him the giant floor piano from FAO Schwarz for a souvenir.

"That's not new," he said.

Well, if he doesn't want it, I'm keeping it.

One of the beautiful, paradoxical things about social media is how it both broadens and shrinks the offline world. Within about fifteen minutes of letting it drop on Facebook and Twitter that I was Big Apple bound, I had more enticing invitations for coffee, drinks, lunch, etc. than I could possibly hope to accept. It's hard for a people pleaser and an extrovert like myself to turn any offer down, but with my days full of meetings, I had to beg for a lot of rain checks.

Rather than try to spread myself too thin, I went deep, and wound up having a few really special and memorable evenings. Like introducing one of my dearest "internet" friends to one of my earliest childhood friends over prosecco at Buddhakan and eating our weight in pasta at L'Artusi, before going on to a speakeasy in the Village and having my tarot cards read.

Like going with Isabel to the Cool Mom Tech launch and getting to finally chat face to face with Liz - two women who are both smart, kind and funny enough for me to try to work past the fact that they are both gorgeous as well. Like seeing Alice and Doug again, and meeting Pierre and Christina.

And especially seeing My Morning Jacket play at Terminal 5, with Monica, who had come from Houston to see all five shows, and had an extra ticket with my name on it. I only knew MMJ for their last album, which I played on endless loop two summers ago, and from a cameo appearance by the lead singer in the Bob Dylan biopic, "I'm Not There." But I was informed by several people that my attendance at the Terminal 5 event raises my "cool" factor considerably. Which is good, because frankly, it could only go up.

The venue itself was fantastic. I love concert halls. You couldn't get me to go an arena for the second coming of Jesus, backed up by the Beatles. I like to be able to see the performers' faces, and not on a giant screen. Monica had staked us out a spot close to the stage, and I will say that My Morning Jacket fans are a gentle, geeky-hipster folk who don't push or shove. Here's a few snapshots:







*They did not actually say that. I was just trying it on for proper usage. But it was totally beast.

**Also,"my publicists" looks incredibly douche-y. Just so you know I know. But "the publicity team assigned to me by my publisher" isn't much better. Sorry about that. It's still the same old me. :-)