Back in May I moved from Brooklyn, where I had two roommates (Streeter and Sharon) to Manhattan, where I’m living by myself in a studio apartment. All in all, I’m really happy with my move. I like being close to work, and I like the privacy and coziness of my own apartment. There is one thing though that I’ve realized: no matter how happy you feel, everything you do in a studio apartment seems sad. This is especially true with cooking.

For instance, I had to stop making tuna sandwiches for dinner because squeezing fishy water out of a can all alone in an apartment just felt really pathetic. Even if I’m having a great time mushing mayonnaise and tuna together in a large bowl, it just seems really lonely somehow. Placing a solitary piece of cheddar cheese on a roll doesn’t help.

However, I do think I need to get over this false impression of sadness. In a way, avoiding meals like tuna is causing me to make even more depressing food choices… Like tonight, I just finished a dinner of cold, leftover Thai takeout and Cheez-Its.

It seems like every year around this time I start having nightmares about school. This is especially weird now since I haven’t been a regular college student for two years. Yet it’s always the same kind of dream- I’m in a huge school building for the first time, and I have no idea what my schedule is or where I’m supposed to be. Someone tells me I’m supposed to be in some kind of science lab class and that I’m late. Once I’m in the class the teacher always asks for a homework assignment I didn’t complete, a giant science packet. I’m pretty sure I know exactly what this dream means. I was a terrible student, and even worse when it came to science and math classes. Somehow, I was so traumatized by them that I’ve developed an irrational fear that I’ll have to return to them every year just after Labor Day.

One thing I’m thankful for is that whereas I used to cheer myself up after these dreams by saying “Don’t worry, school hasn’t started yet. You’ll finish that giant science packet on time!” I now can cheer myself up by saying “Don’t worry, you’ll never have to work on a giant science packet again. Now get out of bed and go work here.”

Amir and I just signed a photo of ourselves for the 16 year old sister of our coworker, Anna. According to Anna, her sister asked for a picture of us to put in her locker at school. I mean it already feels surreal to sign anything, but all that aside- I’m going to be in someone’s locker. And not as a high school student who is dating another high school student.

I’m going to let this sink in. This must have been how JTT felt.

We just pushed a new design for Jake and Amir dot com. Amir’s brother, Ben, did the design and Cohen did the coding. I’m really excited about the entire thing, and one thing in particular. That particular thing is my new blog (which the image of me on the sidebar links to) where I’ve started a collection of the strange things Amir says to me online.

I like giving Jake’s character a blog because it blurs the lines of reality even further. Plus Amir already has a weird blog and I wanted to keep up. I especially like this site though because every single post on it is something Amir has legitimately said to me online, in character, but not knowing it would ever be seen by anyone but me. He didn’t even know it existed until after I had been posting on it for a week. So yeah, check it out!

Amir just got new glasses, and we were all joking with him saying they looked stupid and that he couldn’t pull them off. Of course it was all good natured and Amir played along. But the whole thing made me think about one of the saddest things I can remember. Here it is:

In 5th grade I spent the summer at the beach and didn’t see a lot of my friends. When the first day of school came I wanted to make a good impression and look cool. My hair had been growing for 3 months (I was really into Kurt Cobain) and my parents bought me a huge pair of cargo shorts for the first day of class.

When I showed up, it was awful. Everyone laughed at my hair. People said I looked like I lost a fight with a lawn mower, which is a terrible joke, but 5th grade me didn’t know this. They said my shorts looked like a dress. It was a brutal assault from pretty much everyone. Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore- and this is the saddest part- so I went to the bathroom and cried. It’s a horrible feeling, even to look back on, to feel so sad for yourself.

I realized I was acting like a girl from one of those teen movies, crying in a bathroom stall, so I got my shit together. Picked my head up and walked back to class. I avoided speaking with anyone for the rest of the day. I made a promise to myself that I would get a haircut. School ended and I was really excited to just go home when my friend Mike came up to me with some advice.

Mike, who hadn’t talked to me all day, said only this: “Get a haircut, change your shorts, and lose the tan.” So I replied- and actually I changed my mind, this is the saddest part- “I’m getting a haircut after school, I won’t wear these shorts again,” and then, defiantly, ” and there’s nothing I can do about my tan.” Mike nodded.

I wish I could go back and talk to the 5th grade Jake crying like a baby in the bathroom. I might not have been able to convince him that it didn’t matter what people thought about the way you look, I might have even agreed with everyone about the ridiculous shorts. But I’d be sure to tell him “When you talk to Mike later, just tell him to go fuck himself.”

My best friend from high school, Steve, bar tends at one of my favorite bars in New Haven. The best thing about coming home is walking into his bar (which is called Temple) and seeing Steve, no matter how busy he is, drop what he’s doing, reach into the fridge and slam down a Bud Light on the corner of the bar for me. It’s a great feeling for a ton of reasons which I don’t feel like I can accurately explain.

But as any diligent reader of my blog would know, I pretty much gave up drinking a few months ago. The first time I walked into Temple after that fact was a very hard thing to do, and stopping Steve mid cap removal was almost physically painful. Not because I wanted that beer, but because I was denying him a tradition which I knew he enjoyed as much as I did.

When I told Steve I stopped drinking to be healthier, and to be able to run, he was disappointed. This was a weird reaction considering most people I told were so supportive, but it was the reaction I expected from Steve. And I couldn’t blame him. For so long alcohol was the one thing that could always bridge the gap between our lives as they were growing apart. Giving up drinking suddenly didn’t mean giving up hangovers, it meant giving up shots of straight vodka with my best friend in a closed bar at 4:00 AM. We both felt that loss. I left the bar early that night, upset for letting Steve down, and upset because he could make me feel so bad about a decision that until that night had made me feel so good.

I went back to New York. I didn’t lose touch with Steve or anything, we were always going to be friends. I left Connecticut feeling shitty, but the feeling didn’t last long. A month later I came home and saw Steve on his birthday, and even though he said I didn’t have to, I insisted on having a beer. Still, it didn’t feel right. The one drink I had actually acted as a more visible reminder that I had given it up.

Last night found me walking through New Haven with my friends Rosie and Christine, heading towards Temple. I was excited and nervous to see Steve. I didn’t want to let him down again, but I didn’t want to let myself down by drinking when I knew I didn’t want to. We walked in, I saw Steve smile from behind the bar. He was pouring drinks for a group of people but he stopped and walked towards us. He pointed at Rosie and Christine and asked what they wanted, he reached into the fridge and put their beers on the counter. He reached down again, my stomach sank. But before I could say anything Steve slammed a cold bottle of water down on the corner of the bar. My best friend smiled at me, the strain was gone, and I felt at home again.

I think I need to stop watching baseball. Something happens to me when the Yankees play the Red Sox, specifically, when they lose to them. I just never knew I was capable of so much hate, I’m starting to think I’m a bad person.

A long time ago I can remember watching baseball with my dad, he was raised a Yankees fan, so I was raised the same way. My dad was always relaxed, if the Yankees won, great. If not, no big deal. I didn’t even know the Red Sox were a rival team until I was almost 13. But something in me has changed.

Now I find myself despising every Red Sox player that comes to the plate. Each one more than the next. I think Dustin Pedroia is the worst… Anyway, hating the Red Sox has taken all the fun out of loving the Yankees. You see, my disdain for one team, has lead to an even greater disdain for a team that can’t seem to beat them. I hate Jonathan Papelbon for being such a good pitcher, but I hate Alex Rodriguez more for not hitting off him, and I hate myself the most for getting so worked up. It’s a vicious cycle.

Full disclosure: When the Red Sox came back from 3 games down to beat the Yankees in the ALCS in 2004 I’m one of the people who didn’t get out of bed the next day. I’m not lying.

In conclusion, I am officially done caring about baseball. Starting tomor- fuck who am I kidding? Please God just let them win tomorrow.

One of my jobs at CollegeHumor is to maintain the Cute College Girl section. It actually started my first day as an intern almost two years ago, back then we called it Cute Cheerleader of the Week. When I found cheerleaders were hard to come by we broadened our search. I sent out email interviews and girls sent in pictures. The ball was rolling. Then that Summer we got a bunch of new interns, including my friend Jeff “Rosie” Rosenberg- who came on to help me with the growing Cute Girl section.

We started putting up two girls a week, and to get the interviews done faster and make them more fun, we started doing them over AIM. The submissions kept coming in and soon we began adding three girls a week. We got even more help this past Summer from a new intern, Jake “Tick Tock the Klock” Klocksien.

Doing the interviews over AIM really felt like the heyday of Cute College Girl. The section was always supposed to be sexy, but it was becoming genuinely funny as well, since AIM allowed for some great back and forth banter. Take for example, this piece of conversation between Rosie and a Cute Girl named Diana:

Diana: Ew I hate meat!

Rosie: Are you a Pagan?

Diana: Isn’t that something religious?

Rosie: I know what I said. Answer the question.

A few weeks ago, we ramped up to 5 girls a week. And while we wish we could keep the conversational tone of an AIM interview, it just isn’t possible to devote that much time to the section. It’s almost bittersweet. We now have the ease of an automatically generated set of interview questions for a girl to fill out, but we no longer have the witty banter that made the interviews so fun. Rosie and I did our best to come up with hundreds of amusing questions (If you could be any insect- excluding a butterfly- what would you be?) but it’s not the same.

I had to set all this up so you would understand the breath of fresh air and the unintentional joy that I received from our latest Cute College Girl, whose first language is not english. We usually edit interviews for grammar, but we decided to leave this one intact. I’m happy to know that even as the site grows and by default becomes slightly less personal we can still find ways to keep things funny- even if it’s not on purpose.