"MAKING ASSHOLE NEIGHBOR ENVY ME BY SHOWING HIM MY NEW PET HOLLY THE TURTLE"

"There's a storm a-coming!" That's what was shouted at me and a buddy as we braved our way through Williamsburg's less salubrious neighbourhoods to find haven in the kind of Mexican places that hipst-anic (hipster+hispanic) communities produce best: cheap tacos, good beer and all the latest underground tunes on the playlist. Despite making a return to summer today in NYC - hot pants were donned in SoHo and chiauauas shunned their tiny tapestry waistcoats due to the heat - I bore witness to an explosive lightning show in an overground train station in Bushwick this evening. Then the rain came. So it's a damp posting this evening.

Enough about the weather - evidently, I'm in the States now and people are far more likely to open a conversation about what their therapist said to them than what's happening with the climate. In the last few days since I posted various developments have taken place. I turned 22 in a wonderfully bizzare Indian restaurant in the East Village, complete with novelty thrift-store gifts and free candle-lit ice cream. Panna II prides itself on having look like a child with especially bad taste had been left to decorate a particularly naff Christmas tree in solely shiny and flashing things. They should have a sign warning epileptics off, except you can see it flashing from two blocks away. Having a birthday in a different time zone really is a win-win situation as you get a whole extra five hours of people wishing you a nice day. Therefore any fears of having it forgotten (a very real fear after spending my Sunday at the Lincoln Centre Film Society's John Hughes memorial day and watching Sixteen Candles) were dispersed as soon as I woke up to the ultimate of Maternal Inbox Treats: "you are probably asleep, but it's your birthday here, wakey-wakey!" and got into my office to find cake and post on my desk.

Last Friday I had my brain exploded a little bit twice. First by NY's American Museum Natural History, something which really does deserve its own post, but for which I will currently reference as 'GIANT SQUID SPERM WHALE BATTLE'. Secondly by Refresh, Refresh, Refresh - a relatively cultish comedy/storytelling night amongst funny media types in Chinatown. Headlining were New York's answer to a Twitter-happy Reeves and Mortimer, Wise and Cranky Kaplan, who were pretty hilaire in person, but whose tweet feeds continue to keep me LOL-ing inappropriately throughout the working day. Cranky's possibly my favourite, mainly because his sadistic tweets regarding tortoises remind me of similar boyhood antics that apparently went on between my late great uncle and my grandfather. Follow them both, though - American 'humor' never was so good.    

I want a Jeremy Scott meat dress, but made out of poptarts.

I'm averaging six hours of sleep per night at the moment. However, unlike the guilty, educationally-associated sleep deprivation I have bemoaned before, this type is from having ludicrous amounts of fun. I'll admit it, I love the 9-5 (or 10-6, whatever). Especially when the hours you're meant to be at work are spent at New York Fashion Week shows, or interviewing your latest girl crush, or running around NYC smuggling packed-lunches into swanky SoHo cafes.

My optimism in organising my internship around NYFW's S/S shows paid off - I managed to witness four shows in as many days this week. Granted, this is hardly a packed schedule in comparison to that of Susie Lau (whom I could spy sitting opposite during Sunday's Preen show), but considering I was turning up to every one in thrift-store finds, it's not bad going.

A 1982 SLR definitely makes me out as a serious fashion journalist and not someone who just blagged their way into a Preen show...

Exciting designer newbie Ann Yee's presentation in SoHo the next evening followed - inspired by Blade Runner, her pretty, accessible silk jumpsuits and crop-tops with flouro accents suggest that she'll be hitting the NYFW schedule in the next few years. The next evening saw Samantha Pleet's Chelsea presentation on behalf of green fashion week, which was breathtakingly beautiful. With a video starring this season's muse Victoria Legrand of Beach House forming the backdrop to a collection of vintage and fishing-inspired whimsical dresses, jumpsuits, blouses and bikinis named things like 'rust red walkabout shorts' and 'ivory moonbeam blouse', there was little else I could do but eat the free cupcakes and feel deeply inadequate - in a thoroughly inspired way, natch.

All of this intelligent, classy, accessible ready-to-wear was, however, blown out of the water by Jeremy Scott's celeb-tastic, 1970s NY homoerotic punk-inspired, screamy, pouty, sexy S/S collection. With guys built like tanks being sent down in bondage-style mankinis, girls wearing everything from bodega-bag-vests to meat dresses (Gaga, eat your heart out) and only a straight-jacket wedding dress pre-empting Scott's own lap of victory around the front row in an angel-tipped leather jacket and kicks, it was beyond amazing. Sitting opposite Kelly Osbourne and Kanye in the front row was pretty surreal, too.

To round of my celebrity-stalking in a more laid-back way, I caught up with newly-discovered girl crush Rebecca Schiffman. Full details on her greatness are to come in Nylon's November issue. However, two facts: she LOVES pigeons and bought me a hotdog. 'nuff said.    

For news about what I get upto when I'm actually IN the office, my first guest post for awesome aspirational writers website Wannabe Hacks made it up this week. As for now, my day off consists of far less glamourous things - wondering what's happening to my clothes at the laundromat up the road, contemplating what new flavour of poptarts I'm going to buy and itinerising my way around taxidermfest at the Natural History Museum... Oh, and happy Yom Kippur!

losing various virginities.

So much for the daily blogging. Bowlface, like my normal diet, has been somewhat neglected over the past week. What used to be my sole output of journalistic musing has become a well-loved but ever-so-slightly superflous friend in these days of insane tipping rules, glossy magazines and wierd brown stuff in plastic cups that everyone carries everywhere. Think it's frozen coffee. They're attached to peoples' hands here at all times.

So, I left off at the Supermarket saga and I begin again after my first real day of culinary success and initiation. Initiation not into gross types of viscous cheese (once. never again.) but into real Mexican and then excellent home-cooked pescetarian/vegan cuisine. My tummy is beginning to love me back after the serial (ha, cereal, Dad joke) poptart incidents. Mexican corn on the cob is potentially my new obsession. Costing around two bucks, this vegetable treat comes tossed in a small amount of normal, solid cheese, chilli and lime - and I just found out there's an establishment selling them around the corner from my office. WIN.

See you at breakfast.

In between the struggle to fit in three meals a day this past week many more New York firsts have been ticked off. First $20 mani/pedicure (a dangerous habit, I'm sure). First under-Williamsburg Bridge rooftop nighttime impromptu photo shoot. First randomer calling me obscenities for no apparent reason in the street. First venture into 'real' Chinatown under Manhattan bridge. First standing up guilty $1 pizza-slice consumption. First 'real NY party' in a dingy club on the lower east side. First getting-on-the-wrong-bus-and-ending-up-in-Malcolm X-street. First time I've had to put on an American accent to ask for a bottle of 'waahh-derrr' to be understood. First buying-a-futon-off-Craigslist and shifting it up six floors. First visit to The Container Store. And, most notably today, first 9/11 anniversary. Those cloud-hitting lights which mark the position of the Twin Towers were the only sign of Manhattan that could be identifed from a placid Ridgewood barbeque this evening.

Plus, of course, my first week at Nylon. There's so much to be said about my experience of editorial internships in New York that to smush it in the bottom of this post would be frankly ridiculous. Furthermore, there's news of my first day coming up soon on an excellent website created by a few clearly success-bound wannabe hacks. I know it hurts, but you'll just have to contain your anticipation a little bit longer. However, to keep you tided over, one more first: my name on the Nylon blog. Right here.

Fancy Nancy is BACK

Back, back, baaacckkk! Yes, FN Fans, she's been returned to the internet. In her righteous, 1988, authored by Ruth Craft, illustrated by Nicola Smee, glorious, old lady-battling form. I'm so in love with these books that I've semi-permanently attached them to my face so that I can type and be close to them at the same time.

This is possibly the most degree-relevant thing I've done since graduating - and I can't help but think that my Childrens' Literature tutor would be mildly proud and potentially distressed at the excitement I'm experiencing.

Re-discovering FN is also fairly life relevant round about now, as her noughties counterpart is New York based and I'm heading there on Friday to try and become a real journalist and eat bagels and whoopie pies. If I wasn't worried enough about people misinterpreting my love of irony for rudeness, or asking me to repeat words like 'snooker', or having to ask where the 'restroom' is, or indeed giving up within seconds and throwing myself under a yellow taxi the minute I escape from JFK - this Fancy Nancy business is enough to lose sleep over. Alas.

As a comfort blanket, then, I've scanned in the most life-affirming (and potentially influential) moments of FN. FN Gold, if you will. I've also picked illustrations where FN's mum is wearing similar clothes to those I favour - classic 90s mum.

Note excellent skipping and satchel efforts from Fancy Nancy and similarly pleasing cardigan/jeans/jazz shoe combo sported by Mum.

Fancy Nancy fights large overdressed lady for the elusive whale-covered bag.

Fancy Nancy befriends somebody else's animal on public transport. Standard.

That's better. Now I've shared FN's original greatness with the world I can happily tuck myself into bed with these fine publications and dream of a New York experience that involves dancing around in a star-spangled banner on a fire escape staircase whilst smothering myself in S'mores.

another way to waste one's day

During the heady days of my second year at university I first ventured into the world of the weekly column. Called 'North by South', it made sweeping regional generalisations based on the often tragically amusing anecdotes that comprised my life in Newcastle. I managed to string it out for 18 issues and get my face recognised in Marks' and by drunk student clubbers, who would often subsequently remark that I was an ignorant southerner or something, and that they read my weekly 600 words of self-indulgence solely because of how pleasantly angry it made them (this is another tragically amusing anecdote, by the way). Plus it allowed me to write about Greggs every once in a while.

Were I to try writing one now, I'd be a bit stuck. After all, today, my last work-free day before I lose another sunny weekend to an air-conditioned hole, I have achieved the following things:
- hemmed an early 90s Aztec-print charity-sourced skirt WITH POCKETS.
- secured a 'tutoring' gig.
- taught myself how to tutor about King Lear (i.e., read King Lear)
- enjoyed the news that Nick Griffin was refused entry to the Buckingham Palace tea party - Go Queen!
- baked a couple of cakes, cocked up the icing. I think it looks 'rustic'.
- Decided that any attempts to make my late 80s hounds tooth-print summer trousers acceptable enough for Milton Keynes (teaming them with savage wedge boots and a top not sourced from my floor) was not worth it to watch Toy Story 3 and reluctantly changed out of them (comfy) into early 90s mum jeans (comfy, but nothing in comparison).

Hardly face-recognising quality content. This became all the more apparent when I was directed to Neil Boorman's new column on viceland.com. Unlike me, he's actually formed copy on events of interest to more than one person and writes about them with Paxman-esque withering 'tude whilst owning a diversely proportional amount of qualifications. Check it outttt.

G is for Gaga and Grandparents

Went on a Shire road trip to visit Grandpa Bowlface today. He's 92, lives in an unwittingly amazing house decked out in enough kitsch and vintage furnishing and wallpaper to stock most overpriced Shoreditch interior design stores for several decades, and takes me out to lunch to places where they paint 'CONGRATULATIONS' and flowers on a plate with free fudge for 'graduating' (which I haven't officially done yet, but what kind of weirdo turns down free fudge?) We drank Earl Grey, ate a load of cake and talked a lot about birds and converting to Judaism. It was the best.

As if my day off couldn't improve much, I come home to find THIS little bloggy nugget on twitter.

Yes gents, contrary to model rumour, this is Telephone-head Lady Gaga herself rocking the androgynous look. Two of my favourite things coming together in a beautiful slightly-Prince-esque way. For, nearly exactly a year after that ridiculous hermaphrodite Glastonbury motorbike scan(man)dal, Gaga has now shown exactly what her lady (gaga) bits look like in the Telephone video and demonstrated that so girly is she that she can even be a man. I've always backed the 'Gaga's a Man!'-dle, in that, hell, if she was a bloke, she was doing a bloody good job of being a lady. 

This piece of styling genius is down to Nicola Formichetti, internationally renowned stylist who I can pathetically name-drop after working the desk at Dazed and Confused during an internship. It took me at least two hours to work out how to put through calls from important types from the likes of Prada and Giles, always asking for 'Nicola' on strict first name terms. Shouty, continental fashion types are scary at the best of times, let alone when they keep being accidentally hung up on. 

Moving on, needless to say I am seriously considering getting a subscription to Vogue Hommes Japan now. Granted, I won't understand much of the text, and I'm not a Japanese man, but who knows which celeb may come under the androgyny treatment next?   

PAXWATCH

Ironically, since ending my academic career by handing in a pathetically small pile of footnote-enhanced pages ten days ago, I've been pretty slow on the Bowlface front. In order to mask the pain caused by departing the warm, cosy cradle of education and its red-brick institutions, I've been treating Newcastle like a tourist resort; gallivanting around on my beloved cycle Joan for afternoon rendezvouses and working insane hours as a catering monkey at its 'premier music venue', the SageGateshead.

However, over the last couple of days my life has become considerably more structured and I'm back on the career bandwagon. In the form of an ever-so-slightly nepotism-gained placement in the BBC News Education and Social Affairs unit. I know, grown-up, right? What with the past 48hours also being major movers and shakers of Governmental educational reform, I've been treated to standing as unobtrusively as possible in various terrifyingly-pressured broadcasting environments. Every now and then, like right now, I'm returned to the dark, quiet corner that all interns are supposed to belong in for blog and facebook-update purposes.

Although all the sneaky tagging-along on filming, editing and producing has been awesome, and watching the 1 o'clock news go out from the gallery (so many screens and buttons and countdowns I felt ever caught between an epileptic fit and thinking about what Twitter must look like to my Mum)was the stuff of filmic legend, I've not been cool enough to suppress my excitement about how many media slebs are contained within this very building. I'm literally ten metres away from the Newsnight desk, however, despite being promised Paxman, THERE HAS BEEN NO PAXMAN. Although PAXWATCH is constantly occupying my mind from this particular intern-location, it's not been all bad as I did bump into a couple of glossy female newsreaders when attempting to find the loo.

In the meantime, I'm researching, which occasionally involves talking to the politest of Swedish press reps from a radical, and google-unfriendly, free schools organisation and trying to work out who leaked the Queen's speech at the weekend. Not been tempted to pop across the road to Westfield Shopping centre one bit.