Bright College Years

It's spring! New beginnings and all that. Was walking past some NYU students in their graduation gowns the other day and realized it's been six years since I graduated college and 10 years since I graduated high school. Thought I'd post some photos for old time's sake. After four years spent competing against each other, graduation attire was a great equalizer, wasn't it? Everyone looked fat in the robes and the hats were shaped like a McDonald's filet-o-fish and flattered no one. Kind of brilliant, I must say.


Where it all began! My best friend Lindsey and me in 1998 on high school graduation day. We went to different high schools, hence the different colored robes.


Kissing my Yale acceptance letter in '98. You always knew the big envelope was good news. And, no, I don't know what my parents were thinking with that couch either, but how awesome was our wood paneling?


Graduating from college in 2002. I later wrote about the experience for the Yale Daily News. Being a complete idiot, I didn't try on my graduation gown until about a half hour before the ceremony, at which point I discovered that the sleeves were three feet too long and inexplicably sewn shut. Luckily we managed to find a replacement gown at the last minute so I didn't look like an orangutan during the commencement walk.


Running with my diploma beneath Harkness Tower. That gate is only unlocked on commencement day for graduating seniors to walk through. To tell you the truth, it was kind of a pain in the ass the rest of the year when you wanted to cut through the courtyard, but now I appreciate the pomp and circumstance.


The quality of this picture is terrible (it was a point-and-shoot and the flash had stopped working) but it's my favorite picture from college graduation. We'd just had a whirlwind weekend of activities and lunches and ceremonies and I'd sat down, exhausted, on my dorm room floor because we'd already packed up all the furniture. Notice the bottle of vodka, Cheerios and toilet paper sitting on top of the mini-fridge. How great was college?

For Shame, Dick Wolf

Earlier this year, I was ready to give up on the new cast of Law & Order, I honestly was. You guys know what a big decision that is for me. That show is my bread and butter. But the new season was leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Sam Waterston wasn't getting enough airtime. Newcomer detective Cyrus Lupo has a name like a soap opera villain. The Medical Examiner has done something ridiculous with her hair color. The new braggadocio A.D.A. (played by Linus Roache -- another soap opera name) just seems like a Waterston ripoff.

Then I lost my job and my television-watching time quadrupled and I ran out of TV shows. Now I find myself clinging to the new cast like the floating door at the end of Titanic. It’s like when you’re about to break up with someone and then you get some bad news about something else and you chicken out, saying to yourself, “I can’t believe I was going to break up with him! I don’t know what I’d do without him! What was I thinking?”

But I’m not so blinded by love that I can’t admit that tonight’s season finale was incredibly disappointing. It was the dramatization of the Eliot Spitzer hooker scandal yet somehow it was completely unriveting. I was confused by the plot line where the guy was thrown into the incinerator, but admittedly I wasn’t paying that much attention. I was still contemplating that McDonald’s commercial, wondering where they got the idea that southerners eat chicken biscuits for breakfast. Anyway. They didn’t even get to the governor till almost 40 minutes in, then they made Silda out to be a co-conspirator! Silda! That was cheap, L&O. Cheap!

P.S. I've said it once and I'll say it again, though: Sam Waterston is still hot. I don't care how old he is. As the kids say, I’d let him get it.

What I Know For Sure

I just devoured the Nora Ephron book I Feel Bad About My Neck. It's a fast and delicious read. (Though after reading about how much she accomplished in journalism in her twenties, I felt like writing a book called I Feel Bad About My Career.) The penultimate chapter is titled "What I Wish I’d Known" and includes random insights such as:

The plane is not going to crash.

There’s no point in making piecrust from scratch.

The reason you’re waking up in the middle of the night is the second glass of wine.

If only one third of your clothes are mistakes, you’re ahead of the game.

Anything you think is wrong with your body at the age of thirty-five you will be nostalgic for at the age of forty-five.

There are more but I won't spoil them for you. Off the top of my head, below are a few pieces of my own wisdom that I’ve accrued over the years. Some of these missives have probably been said before by other people, yet it seems like we always have to experience them for ourselves before we believe it.

-- If you’re wondering whether or not he cheated on you, he probably did.

-- Always go on the interview, even if you don’t want the job.

-- You should always make friends with the people in the tech department.

-- Once you overpluck your eyebrows they’ll never grow back the same way again.

-- Mini-umbrellas are engineered to break after the fifth use.

-- Women apologize too much. Men don’t apologize enough.

-- Laser hair removal doesn’t work all that well.

-- Once you download AIM onto your laptop, it’s never quite as fast as it was before, even if you uninstall it.

-- If you’ve seen one Law & Order episode you’ve seen them all (trust me, I’ve seen them all).

Your Celebrity Guide to Current Events

A few years ago, a writer at the Yale Daily News wrote a clever and surprisingly accurate essay explaining international relations by using characters from The O.C. In the spirit of that article, I thought I’d share which modern day celebrities come to my mind when I’m reading about world affairs. This isn't going to be nearly as thorough as the YDN article. If I thought harder about it, I could probably keep going, bringing in the housing crisis, gasoline prices and Hezbollah but I think I’ll keep it on the small side for now, at least until I figure out how to make my posts jump to the second page (it’s some html thing I’m too lazy to figure out).



The Presidential race is The Hills, the surrealist, often silly drama that's been captivating America for several seasons now. Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt are Hillary and Bill Clinton, a polarizing couple disliked by many. In the beginning, Hillary was friendly with Obama (Lauren Conrad) but as time went on – and with Bill’s help – the two have become fierce enemies. Bill and Hillary have had to resort to mud slinging in order to stay relevant to the plot line, launching a hate campaign that involves going on talk shows and radio shows to talk about how much Obama sucks.



Lauren Conrad is Barack Obama. The sensitive, all-around favorite. Star of the show. Can’t understand why Bill and Hillary keep saying such nasty things about her.



Stephanie Pratt is John Edwards, trying to stay on everyone’s good side but recently sided with Obama and sold “Hillary” out during a trip to Vegas.



Whitney Port is John McCain. Has the most experience out of the bunch, is certainly likeable enough but not necessarily a real contender. Always surrounded by rumors that she going to be kicked off the show.



When it comes to foreign countries, Britney Spears is clearly Iraq. Highly unstable. Everyone keeps hoping for a comeback. In the last year, there was a surge in the relief effort to help Iraq. Lots of people rushed to Iraq’s aid and for awhile there it seemed like things were looking up, but the situation still looks dire. Most people think that a comeback won’t be possible until Iraq learns how to help herself.



Our second unstable region, Darfur, will be represented by Lindsay Lohan. Darfur isn’t getting the help she really needs to stop self-destructing, partially because she's being enabled by China (Dina Lohan), who keeps pumping her for resources. Everyone is saying that China has a responsibility to protect Darfur, and China claims that she’s trying to help save Darfur. However, China has a lot invested in Darfur and she’s not going to sacrifice money in the name of humanitarianism.





Ah yes, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe aka: The One Who Will Not Go Away. He will be played by Paris Hilton. Both have been in jail, both have been terrorizing their countries for quite some time. They easily turn on those who stop supporting them and become powerful in their own right (see: Kardashian, Kim; Richie, Nicole). Paris lost her considerable inheritance, Mugabe destroyed his once-booming economy. Ironically, Paris keeps saying she’s going to Africa and Mugabe won't leave.



Bear Stearns’ sudden fall from grace? Look no further than the collapse of Miley Cyrus Incorporated (via Vanity Fair, symbolizing high risk investments). Both rose to become leaders in their field and raked in buckets of money before their respective downfalls caught the public by surprise. Though Disney is supporting Miley and Bear Stearns is being rescued by J.P. Morgan, their reputations are now tarnished.



The recession will be represented by Rihanna’s forehead. No explanation necessary.

My Father Has Inmate Friends

My dad, who has a penchant for sending me Wall Street Journal articles, recently branched out into CNN articles. Yesterday an email arrived in my inbox with the subject line: “I just saw it on CNN: Man's rare ability may unlock secret of memory”. It was an article about a man with hyperthymestic syndrome, a condition involving excessive remembering. Give him a date and he can tell you not only what he was doing but what world events happened that day. I wrote back to Dad, “That’s so unfair. I would have done so much better in school if I had a better memory.” My father responded with one of the strangest, more spectacular emails I’ve ever received from him. It read:

I’m really jealous of people who can recall in great detail. There is a guy who goes to the catechism class at the prison on Monday nights (he’s an inmate) who studied at a seminary at one time who can recall an amazing amount of detail about the church’s history (he also helped me pronounce “concupiscence” last night - as I was reading the night’s lesson).

'Scuse me???I love how he casually drops “the catechism class at the prison on Monday nights.” I should point out that my dad is not in prison. I have no idea what he was doing there. The man works in the cable industry. I guess he’s now ministering to The People (and the incarcerated people, at that) in his spare time. Very humanitarian of him. I also had no clue what “concupiscence” meant and when I looked it up just now on dictionary.com, all I saw was “sexual desire; lust” before I was frantically moving my cursor in the direction of the X at the top right hand corner of the page.

When the Steakhouse Becomes a Metaphor for Dating

My boyfriend and I had dinner at Strip House on Saturday night. We were celebrating his 32nd birthday but it was a last minute sort of thing and we didn’t have a reservation, so we ate at the bar. About halfway through dinner, three women rolled up and stood on the other side of Nick. They were in their mid-30s, drunk and ringless. Even though Nick and I were clearly on a date, they kept coming up with excuses to talk to him. One blonde was particularly transfixed. She said they’d gone out to dinner earlier and decided to come by Strip House afterward for a drink. “Wow, that smells really good,” she said, gesturing to his steak. “Why do you think it smells so good?” Nick was friendly but trying not to engage too much.

“Er, I dunno,” he said. “Because it’s a steak?”

I’m the first to admit that I have a jealous streak. There was a time when I might have leaned over and said something cutting, or at the very least, “Excuse me, can I help you, ladies?” But they seemed harmless so I said nothing. When Nick left the table to go to the bathroom, the blonde plopped down in his seat and looked at me with accusing eyes.

“How old are you?” she demanded without introducing herself. I knew where this was headed.

“28,” I said. “Turning 29 in two months.”

“Oh, sorry,” she said, taken aback. “Wow. You look great, honey.”

She continued: “I thought you were, like, 19. We were over there like, ‘Why is this guy with her? What is he doing with someone that young?’”

I, by no means, look 19 so she must have been extraordinarily intoxicated. But it raises a point I made last week about how women are hardwired to view all other females as competition. You would never see a guy go up to another guy at a bar and demand to know his vitals. The scenario reminded me of that episode of Sex and the City (why does it always come back to SATC?) where Carrie’s Vogue editor, Enid, complains about the injustice of thirty-something Carrie dating fifty-something Aleksandr Petrovsky.

"It's not fair,” she says. “When you're a successful fifty-something woman, all the men your age like the bimbos, and so it's a very small pool...it's a wading pool, actually. So why are you swimming in my wading pool?" It’s true: As men get older, their dating pool gets bigger and the women’s pool gets smaller.

So why is it that I didn’t take offense to those women? Maybe it's because I’m confident and secure in my relationship. Perhaps I’ve gotten more mature with age. Or maybe I've also realized that could be me in a few years, trolling a steak house for a prime piece of meat, wishing all these damn kids would go back to the baby pool.

Did I Ever Tell You About the Time I Received a Cease-and-Desist Letter from Tom Cruise’s Attorney?

Tom Cruise has been everywhere lately. He’s on Oprah! He and Katie and Suri are in New York! They’re at the Met Costume Institute Gala! So I think the time has come that I tell you about a letter I once received from his attorney. Cease-and-desist letters are very commonplace in celebrity journalism but that didn’t dampen the experience for me. This was my cease-and-desist letter. It is among my most prized possessions and now hangs in my bathroom in a lovely double frame because the attorney needed two pieces of paper to adequately convey his displeasure. It sits on the wall opposite my Yale degree -- that’s how important it is to me.

The day the letter was placed in front of me, I think I physically turned around to see if there was someone standing behind me. Really? Me? This couldn’t possibly be for me. Yet there it was at the top of the page: Ms. Noelle Hancock. It was addressed both to me and to the president of the company. The lawyer must not have realized how low I was in the pecking order because he definitely skipped a few rungs on the corporate ladder. I was just the blogger, the messenger, if you will. I was simply reblogging a story that had been written by someone else. I don’t even remember what the story was about now. TomKat was in full-force then and, frankly, there’s nothing we could’ve said about Tom that was any worse than what he was already saying himself.

There are no less than four other lawyers CC’d on the letter, but what really stands out is the unlawyerly language. One sentence reads: "Your greedy desire to sell your salacious publication by smearing these two decent people is disgusting." And later on: “Your deliberate choice to brutalize this lovely couple by printing false statements to create scandalous and shocking headlines to sell your publication demonstrates your malicious intention to defame Mr. Cruise.” Whoa. That is an aggressively long sentence, which sounds like it was written by a publicist rather than an attorney. Also, use more adjectives.

The note continues: “You and your staff are a disgrace to the profession of journalism.” Well, I don’t have a staff unless you count the one I carry when I’m herding my sheep through the foothills, which happens more often than you would think. But calling someone a disgrace to the profession of journalism is a bold, BOLD statement. The only statement more laughable might be "a disgrace to the profession of law practice."

Then -- in a stunning crescendo! -- it reads: “You should be ashamed of yourselves.” Ashamed of ourselves? I love it. Sir, I’ve posted pictures of myself on the internet at the age of 12 wearing a rhinestone-studded leather jacket with dangling crystals. There is no shame left. There hasn’t been for some time.

It is signed "Very truly yours." I really love this letter.

Just How Handy Are Handi-Snacks?

I agree with Megan. I totally use the paddle. The crackers just aren't strong enough to handle the cheese-scooping duties and always break. I think we can all agree that the paddle is awkward, though. It's a tough call as to which is less efficient: the red paddle or the white stick that comes with Fun Dip. On the one hand, the stick is edible (though it tastes like chalk and might actually be chalk). But the stick has to be licked first in order to work, which is a pain. I'm overthinking this, aren't I?

[Via eatsleepdraw]

A Disturbing New Trend in Men's Footwear

I have to tell you, I hate mandals. They scare me. Three summers of lifeguarding taught me that men's feet belong in the category of Things Best Left Unseen along with Wild Hogs and celebrity vaginas. You know what else I fear? Gladiator sandals. Are they shoes or are they little foot prisons? Either way, this is me giving them a big Joaquin Phoenix thumbs down. When this trend took off in Hollywood, I responded more violently than I did to the great leggings plague of 2003. So when I was on the F train earlier today and looked down and saw a dude wearing gladiator sandals, I strongly considered pulling the emergency brake so that he would fall over and get some fashion sense knocked into him. Instead, I decided to get out my Blackberry and secretly take a picture of them. What else can one do in the presence of gladiator mandals? Unfortunately, the camera flash (which I didn't even realize my Blackberry had, by the way) had somehow been set to automatic. This big flash went off along with that audible click that says "I just took a picture." So busted. Everyone in the vicinity turned and looked at me standing there with my cell clearly pointed at the terrible shoes, at which point I turned and looked out the window.

Alcohol: It Does a Body Good (According to Study)

My guest-stint blogging at Nymagazine.com has, sadly, come to an end. I wrote my last post yesterday about alcohol, which I thought was appropriate for my return to unemployment. See it below...

I always joke that everything in life should come with a two-drink minimum like at stand-up comedy shows, and I was so right! Vindication! A new study reveals that a drink or two a day may make for stronger bones, while more than two drinks may lead to a broken hip (due to bone loss, not because wasted people are falling down). People in the study who drank between one half and one alcoholic beverage a day were 20 percent less likely than teetotalers to sustain hip fractures, The American Journal of Medicine reports.

What is it about two drinks? It’s that magic number on which so much social interaction hinges. It’s enough to make you feel good but not enough to get you sloppy. And why is it we New Yorkers can so rarely limit our consumption to two drinks? Do we just not want to good times to end? Is it because we have more taxis than you can wave a hand at and don’t have to drive home? Or is it because we’re an extreme generation living in extreme times and are completely incapable of moderation? (Remember the first time you found out that four drinks is considered binge drinking and you were all, “That’s not binge drinking. That’s a warm-up”?)

If you’re on a date, the two-drink theory is also a good indicator of how your night will turn out. If you have more than two drinks, the date is going well and you’re probably going to hook up. If it’s not going well, you usually won’t have more than two drinks. There's that awkward moment after you’ve each already had two drinks when the waitress asks, "Another round, guys?" and it’s like she might as well be asking, "Do you want to have sex?” Then there's that pause where the two of you look at each other and have to, like, decide.

The two-drink litmus test can also be used when you’re having drinks with people connected to a job opportunity. If you and your prospective employers get tanked together, it’s a good sign. But if the meeting doesn't go beyond two drinks, it likely means you're not getting the job. Or it means that they have kids and are really devoted to their family, in which case you shouldn’t take the job anyway because you’ll be stuck at the office till 10 p.m. every night doing their work while they peace out at 5 p.m

Study: 2-Drink Limit Pretty Hip [NY Post]
Examining the Two Drink Barrier [NY Mag's Daily Intel]

Are New Yorkers Actually Rude?

I wrote a post for Daily Intel today pondering whether or not New Yorkers are rude. See below.

New Yorker writer Joan Acocella recently went slumming and wrote an article for Smithsonian magazine debating the question, Are New Yorkers really rude or really nice? And, if they are rude, did they come here already rude or did New York turn them rude? Personally, I arrived here a polite southern gal and later turned into an asshole. This much was evident over the Christmas holidays when I found myself in Rockefeller Center and sent a friend a text reading: Omg, I hate plowing through the Rockefeller Center and Radio City tourists every day. I literally just want to tackle every one of them from behind, grab their heads in my hands and bash them into the concrete.

Seriously, I used to be lovely.

Acocella, for her part, thinks that New Yorkers are no-nonsense but pretty nice overall. She writes:

It is said that New Yorkers are rude, but I think what people mean by that is that New Yorkers are more familiar. The man who waits on you in the delicatessen is likely to call you sweetheart. (Feminists have gotten used to this.) People on the bus will say, "I have the same handbag as you. How much did you pay?" If they don't like the way you are treating your children, they will tell you. And should you try to cut in front of somebody in the grocery store checkout line, you will be swiftly corrected.

She doesn't really get into why New Yorkers are sometimes short-tempered, but here is my answer: We’re constantly surrounded by people. We live on top of each other in apartments for which we pay too much and which are too small (as I type, I can hear my neighbor’s cell phone going off and it’s on vibrate). We live in the most expensive city in the country so we always feel poor. We have to walk to get everywhere so it takes more physical effort to get places. There are tourists everywhere, and since they don’t have to be at work, they move more slowly than the rest of us, and they don’t know where they’re going so they just stand in the way. It’s enough to drive a person to drink, if we could afford cars, parking, and the $12 cocktails. But the fact that we have to work so hard to live here only makes us love it more. It's also incredibly fun and enriching, and really good pizza is always available.

Disagree? Well, fuck you!

Are New Yorker's Actually Rude? Discuss! [NY Mag's Daily Intel]

There Once Was a Man From Nantucket

Plane's-eye-view of Nantucket.


More photos from terrifying altitudes.


The first of two terrifying planes I flew on this weekend.


The second of two terrifying planes I flew on this weekend.


Keep in mind that I was sitting in the BACK row.


Inside the airport. It's just like 'Wings'! Sorta.


This was our room at a local B&B. Bow before its quaintness.


Nick and I at the wedding

I was recently having a Relationship discussion with my boyfriend of two-and-a-half years when he burst out, “Why don’t you ever bring up marriage? You are, like, the only girl in the entire history of the world who doesn’t obsess over marriage. It’s, it’s…weird.”

“I dunno,” I shrugged. Truth be told, I have given some thought to my wedding, but mostly just the playlist and whether or not the wedding party should reenact the dance from "Thriller" at the reception (I’m thinking yes). I guess I don’t feel the need to bring marriage up all the time because the rest of the world does it for us. The subject comes up almost every time Nick is invited to a wedding because most of his friends have a “no ring, no bring” policy: guests are only allowed to bring spouses and fiancés. But when two of Nick's friends got married in Nantucket last weekend, Nick got a +1, which is how I found myself in Boston climbing aboard a (depraved) puddle-jumper plane about to fly into a rainstorm. Nick was coming from Albany so the plan was to travel separately and meet in Nantucket.

I call him right before I get on the plane. “If the plane goes down, you’re not allowed to move on and marry someone else,” I tell him. “You have to remain celibate and mourn me for the rest of your life. And if you don’t, I’ll haunt you and your wife like in that horrible Eva Longoria movie.” He laughs, a little too heartily for my taste.

I loathe flying, in case you couldn't tell. I find it to be a most unnatural practice. “Oh my god,” I say to the person sitting next to me as we take off. “This is like the end of La Bamba – only I haven’t done anything noteworthy yet!” With every new bout of turbulence, I inhale sharply and tense up. This is how I respond to unwelcome situations in life. I’m a clencher. When the going gets tough, I grind my teeth and squeeze my eyelids shut. My position of choice during turbulence is to grip the bottom of the chair and pull upward. A part of me truly believes that if the plane suddenly falls from the sky and I pull hard enough, I’ll be able to lift it up like Superman and save us all.

To take my mind off of my imminent death, I think about who will come to my funeral. I worry that my media friends won’t have anything to talk about with my investment banker friends, but then I remember that they’ll be talking about me so it won’t matter. “She always hated flying,” they will say tearfully to each other. “It’s just so…tragic.” I'm concerned that my death won’t have as much of an impact because Nick and I aren’t engaged. If we’d been betrothed my death might have made the cover of the New York Post (“Fiancé Recalls Last Phone Call With Plane Crash Victim: ‘Never Marry’”) but as a free agent I don’t have a chance. Nobody really cares if your girlfriend dies in a plane crash, but if your fiancée dies in a plane crash? Then you’re cooking with propane. As I’m contemplate this, the plane starts to descend and we wobble on down to the sweet, sweet earth.

Among the wedding guests are a highly likeable group of Irish people doing their best to fulfill every national stereotype simultaneously. One such Irishman is sitting next to us at dinner and drunkenly opens up the conversation by asking every unmarried couple at the table, “Why aren’t you married yet?”

“We don’t even live in the same city,” says Nick, who works in Albany during the week. “First we have to live in the same place. Then we have to move in together. Then we’ll think about marriage.”

Throughout the night, whenever the Irishman sees us, he calls out gaily to Nick, “Are you married yet, brotha?” Oh, and my boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend of five years is there with her fiancé, whom she is marrying in two weeks. It is a very comfortable situation, is what I’m trying to tell you.

But the wedding is truly lovely and we end up having a blast, as one always does when partying with the Irish. We head home early (by Irish standards). Back at our B&B, I shriek at Nick for Blackberrying in bed, and Nick gets mad at me for using too much of his saline solution and for taking too long to get ready for bed. See? We’re practically married already.