unsolicited life advice (ny)

you are a prisoner
1...whatever your walking pace is, speed it up by 20%. if you need to stop, step out of the way.
2...pedestrians run the show so cross like a boss, whether or not you have the right of way.
3...get your metrocard out ahead of time, black strip facing inwards. swipe it like an amex.
4...new york is really fucking expensive and we don’t talk about it so … try not to talk about it.
5...talking about your broker’s fee or how much you pay in rent, however, is totally acceptable.
6...buy smart / weather appropriate clothes that make you feel smart / weather appropriate.
7...do things by yourself as much as possible even if you have a +1 or already know people.
8...i’m serious. go to restaurants by yourself. wander around by yourself. get lost by yourself.
9...make personal business cards. no … not shitty ones. nice ones. heavy ones. letterpress.
10...fold your pizza.

unsolicited life advice (la)

you will meet a tall beautiful stranger
1...you are on your own. you are in charge of your own schedule and your own transportation. so go places by yourself. learn the roads and the backroads.
2...la is not a single city. it’s lots of different neighborhoods. downtown is just a different section just as is culver city, silver lake and venice.
3...explore la. each neighborhood has its own culture and gems. go east of the 405. go west of lincoln. go south of lax. go north of hollywood. look up directions and then put them away. get lost and explore. the valley is not as far as you think. find where you fit in.
4...learn to love driving. not sitting in traffic, but driving. have your radio station, your podcast, your go-to phone calls.
5...self promotion is survival. everyone talks about work. you come to la to do what you love and so talking about work is talking about an extension of yourself. it’s both a means of getting to know someone and a means of survival. get used to it and if you don’t like it, you better have something interesting to talk about.
6...learn your drink and your limit. aka don’t drink and drive. there are occasions to get very drunk, and those are occasions to cab or to find a dd. most nights, you will be in at least one bar, maybe more, and you should learn your drink so that you can enjoy it, nurse it, sober up and still drive yourself home safely.
7...every day is a nice day. people don’t usually talk about it. instead, they take advantage of it. there’s the beach, but there’s plenty of other outdoorsy things too. hikes, parks, biking trails, boating, canoeing, skiing, surfing. be outside.
8...get out of town. la is close to so many getaways you can leave for the day, the weekend or for a while. santa barbara, san diego, vegas, palm springs, mexico, mammoth, big bear, ojai… part of being in la is getting out of la and balancing your life.
9...friends are family. most people are not from la. most people come here from somewhere else, so everyone gets homesick and misses their family. so your friends become family on holidays, birthdays, good times and hard times. find good people, probably not from bars to be your family. take classes, go to meetups, meet your neighbors, perform, network. find good people. find their good people and make a new family. sidenote: this fact also makes thanksgiving and christmas very quiet in la. it can be lonely, or it can be the most relaxing time to be here.
10...no one dresses up. but dress well. you can get away with jeans and a tshirt every day. almost anywhere. but don’t be lazy. get well-fitting clothes. get some in-between shoes and a blazer. la is casual, but you’re still a self-respecting adult.

– jake kahana

happy birthrave.

what is done in the darkness
at the cliff
“people are always saying you should be yourself, like yourself is this definite thing, like a toaster. like you know what it is even. but every so often i’ll have, like, a moment, where just being myself in my life right where i am is, like, enough.” – my so-called life

i turned 27 today
and my only plan is
to take parker‘s 7:30 ride
and force everyone to wear
100 party city glow bracelets
cause right where i am
is, like, enough.

it was all a dream.

let's pretend
water works
the other day i made a spotify playlist of all the albums that got me to and from some of my worst “i don’t want to tell you what i do because i hate what i do and, like, earlier today i was so fed up with my passive agressive co-workers and bullshit work duties that i tossed my blackberry in the sad little trash next to my desk and hoped no one suspected dumpster diving when i fished it out a few minutes later after remembering i needed to pay rent and shit” dayjobs. it’s called worksux.

sooOOOooo,
what’s on your playlist?
don’t be a stranger.
lemme know.

for the record,
work does not suck.
not anymore, that is.
not one bit.

mrs. goldbloom.


“what a sweet little peck.”

swoon.
swoon.
die happy.
swoon.

Published
Categorized as .

boyfriend.

john slattery
john slattery2
i’ve been in more scenes where it says, “he sobs” … and sobs is a scary word, right? weeps is okay. he gets emotional, fine. sobs, and you go, oh shit, man. i’ve gotta sob? how am i going to sob? who sobs? you see that word in a script, and when you go to bed, you’re just thinking, why do i have to sob? do i have to sob this week? no, i don’t sob until a week from monday. then somebody tells you have to shoot it earlier. “no we don’t.” “yeah we do.” “no. we don’t shoot that scene until next monday because i’m emotionally inching my way up on the sobbing and i’m telling you it’s next fucking monday!” i don’t even know what the question was.

– john slattery

what the fuck is a sesuhmee?


“it’s quite easy, man. my advice is always make sure that you write down thoughts that are funny cause you want to make sure that you hang on to all the funny things you think of. so, simple as that. write down anything funny that comes to your head. don’t be lazy.”

– mitch hedberg

todaydreaming:
mitch hedberg
on twitter.

strangelove.

sad ghosts
to be joyous
is to be a madman
in a world of sad ghosts.

– henry miller

Published
Categorized as .

ffnfiu.

lips
guys! my home state personalized return address stamp finally arrived and i lurrrrrve it. obvs my first instinct was to show you a picture of what it looks like and stuff, buuuuuuuut then i realized that would be voluntarily sharing my exact new york city home address with the entire world wide google-able internet so i’m going to try something new and … undershare.

ed. this post was sponsored in part by the foundation for not fucking it up.

finding five.

IMG_1219
5 ing’s from last week that felt fantastic:

1. sending an “i’m not into you romantically” email instead of going passive aggressively radio silent until – hopefully – the other person forgot i existed and / or stopped trying.
2. posting a #nofilter photo on instagram and discovering an artist i really admire “liked” it.
3. taking my favorite heels to alex so i could keep naomi campbell walking allova town.
4. being asked repeatedly what sports i played in high school (answer: uhhhhh drama club?)
5. graduating from the 3lb to 5lb hand weights at my local synagogue.

waddaboutyou?

bear fox franco.

bear
fox
james franco
oscar wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it – that is your punishment, but if you never know, then you can be anything. there is a truth to that. we are not nouns, we are verbs. i am not a thing – an actor, a writer – i am a person who does things – i write, i act – and i never know what i am going to do next. i think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.

– stephen fry

the deep end.

tahiti
sooOOOooo, as it turns out …
this actually works really well.
officially, i’m going to be:

amy ruth marsh,
associate interactive producer
jwt digital production team.

obvs i’ll let you know
when i officially figure out
what that actually means …

the end.
just kidding.
the beginning.

me.

ps – today is my first day and right now i’m either in orientation or trying to procure something healthy + delicious to eat in midtown. if i am still in orientation, i swear i’m paying attention (i drafted this post last saturday). aaaaanywho, like ya do during ye old werewolf bar mitzvah new job honeymoons, posting throughout the next two weeks or so might be a little lighter than usual. take a lap. i’llllllllllll be right baaaaaaack.

throwing shade.

throwing shade
this week, i’ve been trying to assess which of my toiletries and cosmetics are more than half empty because next week is gonna be crayzay and i just like to preemtively replace shit (you know, instead of waiting until the last minute when i can’t even shaken baby syndrome a single drop of conditioner and i have to hit up 2 different sephoras, bloomingdales, space.nk.apothecary, duane reade, ride aid, walgreens, and ricky’s all in one fucking day just to replace the essentials). for the record, i also like to make my bed every morning, keep no more than 5 emails in my personal inbox, follow exactly 100 people on twitter, and balance my checkbook whenever i use my debit card no matter how small the purchase so, like … DON’T WORRY ABOUT TELLING ME HOW TYPE-AMAZING I AM BECAUSE I ALREADY KNOW. aaaaaaanyway, the point of this story is that i had to take special note of the colors and shades of the various products i use and i think, together, they paint a pretty accurate personality picture:

honey
raven
penny lane
addictive
turning heads red
no poo
alaska
intensa
low poo
silver factory
lollipop
flirt

honey raven penny lane addictive?
turning heads red no poo alaska intensa?
low poo silver factory lollipop flirt?

spooookyaccurate, no?
theeeeese are mine!

tat tectonics.

geology tat
geology tat2
back in november, i decided to do some major gmail maintenance (i had been using abby728 as a login and amyruthmarsh as an alias for about 5 years, but with the purchase of my 1st iphone and the prospect of having to click “send as” every time i wanted to email someone, i decided it was time to let go of abby728 and port everything over to amyruthmarsh). usually, i love these kind of internet time sucks, but i had actively avoided this one in particular because i knew it was going to be such a fucking pain in the ass. i mean, going through 40,000 archived emails (i love gmail, i’m an agressive archiver, i never delete anything, and i had ported all of my college webmail into abby728 before graduating) as well as my entire on the record chat history was not even my twisted idea of fun.

up until this point, i had only imagined how annoying it would be, technically. like, “ugh, copying and pasting and labeling and saving and exporting and importing all of this shit via some super unreliable mail client? life sux.” but the spectrum of terrible widened pretty quickly after i got started and realized every moment of my legal adult life – the good, the bad, the great, the terrible, the awful, the hilarious, the insignificant, the momentous, the honest, the dishonest, the judgmental, the unconditional … everything – had been recorded and stored in the catacombs of this ill-chosen email address. this wasn’t just going to be a painful project, technically. this was going to be a painful project, late night at the holocaust museum emotionally.

sometimes, the emails made me cry (like the ones from my dad i never responded to). sometimes, i didn’t recognize the sound of my own voice (like the ones to my improv troupe a few weeks after i started college). sometimes, i was impressed by my courage (like the ones to a more than a friend asking him to reflect on our relationship and be honest about his feelings and actions). the transfer took about a week to complete and when it was all over, when every email had been absorbed and unarchived and accounted for, i felt totally wrecked. but. but! i also felt totally alive. like … fuck yea! the things i’ve experienced still effect me! i actively participate in the fabric of my life! i’m emotionally capable of getting myself to tomorrow! i’m upset right now! i’m a human being!

check.
fucking.
plus.

ps – i also have a theory about 20-something tectonics and think this tattoo and i are b’shert.

make ’em laugh.

yesterday will be better
a very, very good friend of mine just lost one of her parents and, knowing a fair bit about my history, asked for some “grief tips.” this is what i told her:

1...everything changed when patrick told me, “amy, you get a pass … take the pass.” right now, you don’t need to apologize for feeling angry or hurt or frustrated or happy or unstable or delirious or whateverthefuck you’re feeling. you get a pass. TAKE the pass.
2...we – your friends, your family, your given support system, your chosen support system – we’re all here for you no matter what.
3...it’s okay to laugh cause, like, this one time jay judah made a joke on the way into my dad’s funeral and when i laughed i realized it was the first time i had felt like myself in 3 days.

then i texted her this.

sometimes.

“tonight i was having a cigarette on bowery outside a congee restaurant where i was having a drink with an old friend who’s in town for a couple days and there were all these sheets of paper in the street, like someone had dumped a box of loose leaf. they were blowing around and i thought about that window washing article that was in the new yorker recently, about the guy seeing a whole connected stack of printer paper blow out a window of the empire state and fly into the air like a dragon. the paper on bowery was everywhere, whipping up in the lion wind, and i paused for a second and tried to make it an american beauty moment, to realize the loveliness and solemnity of some paper roiling in the air in the monday dark. but i quickly realized that was dumb, and that maybe in a general sense i should stop trying to find signs of things, of hushed literary moments of beauty, everywhere i look. so i put my cigarette out and went inside, as unpoetic as anything else. sometimes it’s just paper in the street.”

– richard lawson