Miss Manhattan Hangs Out...with Randolph Cornelius Gstaadt III

In light of the weather this week, my MMHO plans changed a bit and I improvised.

About five years ago, a four-foot teddy bear arrived at the doorstep of my old apartment.

“Hello. I’m Randolph Cornelius Gstaadt the Third, and I live here now,” he said.
“Weird,” I said. “Okay.”

It was by far not the weirdest thing that had happened to me since moving to New York so I rolled with it. Five years later, Randolph is still here. He doesn’t pay rent, but he’s at least interesting enough that I don’t mind him being a raging freeloader.

Randolph wakes up and looks out the window. “I’m glad at least the sun is out,” he says. “There’s no way I’m leaving the house today.” On Monday it was the coldest it had been in a long time and we decided to pad around inside in our pajamas all day. Randolph usually starts his day with stretches, a downward-facing-bear or two.

“Downward-facing-bear?” he says over my shoulder as I type. “Are you really going to write that? It’s so cheap. Yoga is an ancient spiritual practice, you know.”
“Randolph, you’re a bear. Lighten up a little,” I say.
“Fine,” he says, walking away. “As long as you don’t say some nonsense like ‘bear-listhenics!’” I guiltily delete ‘bear-listhenics’ from the page. How did he know?

After stretching, Randolph reads to get inspired. He is currently in the midst of Gaby Dunn’s Bad with Money. “I love how she incorporates personal details into the text so it’s not just a how-to,” he says. “It’s really quite excellent.”

Motivated, Randolph works on his screenplay. He has been working on it on and off since he moved in, mostly because he doesn’t have a computer of his own and has to use mine.
“Well, you won’t buy me one!” he chatters at me.
“Buy one yourself!” I say. “What does Gaby’s book say about investing?”

His screenplay is a gossipy biopic on the life of Teddy Ruxpin. I’m curious about the niche for such a film. “You don’t think talking bears just exist, do you?” he says, shaking his head at me then resting it against the keyboard.

He ultimately decides to take a break, to watch some television and have a snack. Bizarre Foods and The Best Thing I Ever Ate are his favorite shows, which he watches happily while noshing on Pirate’s Booty. Sometimes he lets me steal from him.

The outside air is somehow making its way into the apartment so Randolph makes tea. We sit on the couch and chat. As pretentious as he can be, Randolph is also a very good listener. That is, until he doesn’t want to listen anymore.

“I’m going to take an epic nap now,” he abruptly says to me as I am mid-sentence. He gets up and crawls into bed. “See you in a few hours! Or maybe a couple of days, I haven’t decided yet.”

You know how bears are with their hibernating.

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Miss Manhattan Hangs Out...with Project 30

Today I’m launching a new project called Project 30. Below is a condensed artist statement with sample images. You can read the full thing and check out the full project here.

The root of this project starts with my friend Shannon. For her 30th year, Shannon committed to making one Instagram photo per day. I liked the idea of making yourself do something every day which, beyond the normal hygiene and work commitments we make, so few of us truly do. Not a lover of taking pictures on my phone, what could I easily do with my camera where I didn’t have to schlep the heavy DSLR?

Photographing myself during my concussion felt soothing. I liked the way I could manipulate the placement of the camera and put faith in the shutter. That became my idea, documenting myself in this moment of my 30th year.

I started on November 4th, the day after my birthday. I gave myself few guidelines. I wouldn’t edit the photos beyond an occasional crop or lighting fix. There’s no retouching of my face, even on my worst eyebag/zit days (sorry, Mom). And I didn’t want the project to be one more thing I would chide myself for not doing, so some days I forget to photograph myself, too. It became a way to forgive myself for not being perfect because there’s always tomorrow.

To that point I had hardly posted pictures of myself on Instagram--I posted one from far away in 2015, and then not another one until 2017. There were three that year, 17 posts last year, some with multiple images. For the longest time regular selfies and putting pictures of myself on the internet was not an aspect of the culture I sought out. Why should someone need to see my face to know my worth?

But now posting of pictures of oneself online made you culturally relevant. It meant you did something worth seeing (or, that at least you thought was worth seeing). And advertising you had that belief in yourself was a new form of power. By sharing nothing, I was perhaps sharing that I didn’t think I mattered, that I lacked confidence in my own power.

It seemed closed-minded to not participate and I wanted to challenge myself to be involved. More importantly, I wanted to challenge myself to actively express my own faith in myself which, self-deprecating as I am, is not often something I do to people I don’t know well, i.e., those living online.

I also started thinking about self-representation and performance, what we choose to let others see about ourselves and what that says about us. I wanted the project to reflect the truest version of me as much as it could. But I still feel myself sitting a little straighter, raising my chin a little higher, angling my face a certain way to make sure I look like a version of myself I’d want recorded. I do think there’s truth in that, too.

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Miss Manhattan Hangs Out...with George Kong

When I arrive at Fifth Hammer Brewing Company in Long Island City, Queens, George Kong is already there. He’s drinking an IPA--“It’s hoppy, I don’t know if you’ll like it,” he says. My friend of six years, he’s right.

I haven’t seen George since my birthday, and now he says we’re doing that thing friends do when seeing each other the first two weeks of a new year: recap the old, make declarations about the new.

But actually George has a lot to be excited about in 2019. For starters, he has launched his own dating consultancy, byGeorge. Having been a matchmaker previously, he now offers “customized dating services and advice for busy singles.” This includes auditing dating profiles, offering live date support, in-person consultations, dating refreshers, and more that will help people “date smart,” as he says.

It’s exciting to see byGeorge in motion, to see George address a need in a market that very much needs someone like him and is so perfectly tailored to who he is as a person. A people person and connector at his core, he’ll be bringing people together, showing them the best aspects of themselves, teaching them how to share that with another person--it’s work he’s prepared to do because it’s work he’s already done on himself, reflecting on the kind of person he wants to be and successfully instituting those changes.

Tonight, though, is not about work. Tonight is actually about bowling. While bowling for so many of us is a novelty night out leftover from decades past, for George it’s a regular joy, a call back to his past life as a child bowling champion. For years, he went bowling every Saturday morning and practiced during the week, eventually adopting the stance he still holds to knock those pins down.

For a while, George has been gathering friends together for bowling once a month at The Gutter, a bar/bowling alley in Long Island City. We walk from Fifth Hammer and George gives a twirl in his navy trench coat, his favorite item of clothing currently. He shows me his King Kong button from the Broadway show, resting on a blazer covering a button-down shirt covered in bowling pins and bowling balls. It’s all very George, this combination of wacky, classic, and bravado.

We go inside and there’s a wait before the lanes will be empty, so we sit with his friends. Ever prepared, George offers snacks from the kit of granola bars and bananas he prepared in his gluten-free days. Once the lanes are ready, George corrals eight adults into lanes and administers advice only if requested.

On his own turn, he prepares: eyes focus, then there are four steps, the stance, the release of the ball. It’s all followed by the sound of pins clattering to the wooden floor. Sometimes it works better than expected, sometimes worse. There’s so much about the world that changes, George says, but for the most part bowling always stays the same.

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