THE HALOGEN-BRIGHT morning sun beat down on my crusted eyelids. Opening them felt like I was prying the top of an ancient jar of mustard. To my right, my girlfriend’s carcass was comatose, immune to meddlesome light. I stood and stretched. My back snapped and crackled like bubble wrap, my muscles sore and flu-achy. Perhaps it was the tub of Buffalo Trace bourbon I consumed the previous eve, but it took several beats to make an important realization: Well, I thought, it looks like I’ve lost my pants and underwear. Read more Read it in print

CONAN O’BRIEN HAS been comparing L.A. favorably to New York since he landed, way before his recent swipe at nearby Newark’s crime rate. Watching a clip from The Tonight Show in a cab, I saw O’Brien riffing on his new L.A. driver’s license photo. “They are so image conscious here,” he said. “The woman told me to smile and kept saying ‘You can do better than that!’” He contrasted his beamingly vapid California image with his old New York driver’s license, where he is caught mid-blink, his mouth hanging open, really impressed that the woman gave him three tries. Read more Read it in print

GROCERY SHOPPING IS not for the faint of heart. Every second Saturday, I woke with tremors knowing that I would have to lace up, ship out and somehow make it back alive with dinner. The East Village crowds I had learned to fend off, swimming through strangers to grab frozen pizzas and fajita mixes. But the sheer physical pain of carrying plastic sacks home a half-mile, two or three committed to each forearm, had me worried I would lose a limb before the ice cream melted. Read more Read it in print

THIS MAY SOUND as sacrilegious as an Exxon exec owning an electric car, but I often despise patronizing bars. I have a love-hate explanation: I love craft brews. I hate paying $6 or $7 a pint. Read more Read it in print

YOU CAN CHUCK them in your mouth or put them in water, but if anyone vomits,” the cute Chinese event coordinator chirped, pointing to trashcans lined with I HEART NEW YORK bags, “they’re disqualified. Anyone have any questions?” Just one: Why did I enter Chef One’s sixth annual dumpling-eating contest? Answer: A little bit of hubris, a lot of jet lag and, naturally, no common sense. Read more Read it in print

“I won’t shave the beard,” said David. “The beard stays.” When my boyfriend of eight years said this to me, my heart filled with dread. Pimples around my lips and cheeks forever from trying to kiss the Brillo pad of whiskers that now surround David’s face—I didn’t sign up for this. Read more

MY GREATEST ASSET is my gullet. Despite my horse-jockey height, my gullet is long and elastic, permitting me to swallow ponds and streams in one breathless gulp. It’s like discovering a Wizard of Oz munchkin is hung like Dirk Diggler. Read more Read it in print

LET ME BE blunt: I loathe interviewing celebrities as much as I detest raw tomatoes, a vegetable barely fit for chucking at American Idol rejects. Read more Read it in print

GROWING UP, I daydreamed I was Princess Leia, in freakishly braided buns, traveling at light speed in the Millennium Falcon and hanging out with Ewoks. Read more Read it in print

When I was young, with a liver that performed like a Lamborghini and employment as the world’s surliest receptionist, I adored open bars. I’d spend workdays alternating between misdirecting phone calls and scouring Craigslist for freebie offerings—say, unlimited Bud at Lit Lounge or vodka tonics at Blue Owl, a Wednesday standby that endures today. Read more