It’s a line from “Elf.”

But really, I want a brand new bag. It occurred to me yesterday as I was heading into Midtown to take my boyf to dinner: I have three bags in steady rotation. Now, some of you may be panicking, but don’t! I’m better now. I know, I know. It was scary there for a minute and I admit, I had a problem. But I have not bought a significant bag in years. Two years, to be precise.

Now if Sathya were reading this, which I doubt, she would say, “Yes, you bought a big bag last summer, I remember. And it wasn’t cheap!” – Only she’d say it nicer than that because she’s her, but I would still hear it that way because I feel shame. I want to not want a new bag, but it’s no use. On more than one occasion I have found myself wandering through the lustrous bag department at Bloomie’s on my way to sit uptown. I stare, I stroke, I know I can’t afford, I consider making a big mistake. I’ve also ordered bags on Gilt & RueLala, only to cancel the order in a panic the nest day when I realized how impossible it would be for me to live if I didn’t want to move into said piece.

I can’t decide ifI want a big black bag, or a Navy bag, or a really foxy magenta bag. These are the three colors. I find that choices like Magenta can be great because they don’t “go” with anything, and therefor go with everything. My Orange Mulberry bag is a perfect example, as is my Taxicab Yellow Marc by Marc. Yes, I am aware that name-dropping is tacky.

However, the value of a basic has become clearer and clearer in a year that’s taught me one wearing black is never under or over-dressed. Never. And I have brown bags. The slouchy Caramel-y bag I impulse-bought at H&M the summer of 2004, which always garners compliments and cost a mere $60. There’s the Khaki Canvas with Green Leather Straps Coach bucket bag I picked up on a drunken family field trip to the outlet shops in wine country. And the remarkable bag that looks like an antique mahogany desk in color, and has brass fixtures, and stands up on its own on any surface that I spent half a month’s rent on my sophomore year… I wish I could say I regret that decision, but not even close.

So, I’m in the market. Thinking of checking out eBay. Always on the lookout at Gilt/ RueLaLa… Let me know if you see the CranberryisMagenta-y Tory Burch and tell me what you think. Because in the words of Wayne, when I see it all I can think is, “She will be mine. Oh yes. She will be mine.”

My New Boo.

For those of you unfamiliar with Flight of the Conchords, the awesomeness of this post title will be tragically missed. Le Sigh. Hey Folks. Happy 2010.

So look.

I know I sai dmore posts this year. Once a week was my goal. And so far – three weeks in – nothing. Quel’Lame, I know. But here is why: I AM TOTALLY MAKING GOOD ON MY NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS SO FAR AND I AM COMPLETELY FREAKED ABOUT JINXING MYSELF.

There, I said it. More after I get back from the gym. Like, lots more. I’m ready. I’m going to blow your effing minds! All four of you.

Love betches. Like, Bob Marley style, “One Luuuuuuuuhv.”

One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to post weekly (AT LEAST) so hopefully – assuming someone reads & likes this (Elizabeth) – I will get it together and create a more steady output of material. I really admire peeps like bluejeanamy who can keep it coming. And their blogs get me hooked like a crackodactyl. On that note, here is a video of my friend Baron doing stand-up. Watch it, become his fan, be there before the rest of the world catches on when his pilot airs.

It’s so f*cking cold guys, seriously.

Today I had an audition. Due to the unseasonal warmish weather we’ve been experiencing much of November & December (thankyouGodthankyouGodthankyouGod) I thought I could get away with a fashionable, lightweight sweater and big scarf and leather jacket. You know, cause when you go to a tv audition, you feel better if you walk down the streets listening to “Empire State of Mind” on repeat and looking fly. I was wrong. Like, the wrongest I’ve been since Switzerland (those of you who know me well may recall that I have routinely accused Switzerland in May during my junior year semester abroad as THE COLDEST I have ever been. In life.)

Now, the problem with living in New York is that there is a solution to your problem wherever you go. Whether it be a broken heel that demands a cobbler, or a sharply dropping insulin level that demands fooooood, within a block or two you will find what you need. Likewise, if you have a bad day and need a drink? There’s a bar or twelve nearby that have any number of options to help you blackout and forget all about it. If, like me, you cannot be cold without literally believing you are going to die, and probably crying as you walk down Broadway (SoHo is so not a place to cry down the streets, btw.) it is obvious that my only real option was to take cover in the doorbusting sales at Eastern Mountain Sports.

I love places like EMS and REI. I don’t really rock climb, and I sure as shit won’t kayak, mountain bike or camp… But I like to be warm, and people who play in mountains know a thing or two about that. Luckily, Vanity – like AIDS – is on the rise, so even crunchy ski-bunny types want to look sexy while getting their warm on. Yay! I am stocked on long underwear, and come this time of year I even view my Spanx as a means of maintaining core body warmth. Today I needed something versatile. Something that I could wash, but that wouldn’t smell even if I didn’t wash it. Unfortunately the Capilene stuffs were more expensive than I’d hoped, so I settled on a black fleece shirt-thingy that has a stylish neckline, and little holes for my thumbies. It’s really cute, but I couldn’t find a picture.

Now, you’re probably used to seeing coats like this if you live in NYC but if you don’t brace yourself:

Uggghhhh. Shiver me timbers, is that ugly or what? I can’t do it. It hurts my eyes, and I’m guessing would burn my flesh off. And not in a nice & toasty all winter in my fat-suit coat kind of way, in a Medea kills Jason’s bride way. Skin soup. Blech.

This, on the other hand? I find totally adorable:

Now, this is something I can rock. In fact, I can even rock out in it – it has an ipod pocket. Neato. And it makes me feel like the hot spy/bad actress from Spies Like Us, which is fun. I can wear it under my leather jacket and suddenly feel warm, and cover my head without hat hair (Yippee! I hate wrecking my blow out.). I can also keep it around in the spring with some sweatpants and a t-shirt for that post-yoga-secret-starlet-I-don’t-givvafuck look. I’m in.

Oh, and I bought two Christmas presents. That weren’t for me. Happy Holidays.

Yesterday night. I decided to quit. I quit being an actor, in the middle of an episode of “In Treatment” that was so unremarkable I couldn’t tell you which patient was on the couch. Or maybe I was so preoccupied with my pity party inside my head that I forgot. Either way, I had just found out (realized) that I didn’t get another part, and I just couldn’t care anymore.

I can’t care anymore. And before people freak out and say the same stuff that everyone always says, I will acknowledge that it’s probably not permanent. Because A) I can’t deal with letting my parents down, and B) What the Fuck Else Am I Going To Do? I don’t know what I would do if I weren’t an actor. But that doesn’t relaly seem like a good enough reason to keep obsessing about the same shit week after week for the rest of my life.

Should I get new headshots? Is it really holding me back that my hair is longer in my picture? Maybe if I had more bad-assy headshots/ lost weight/ became a brunette/ redhead/ bought bigger boobies/ decided to be a completely self-obsessed vapid asshole, etc. I would have the career I want. But what is that? What’s the career I want? And the fact of the matter is, maybe nobody is in my way? It’s not just one element, and it’s not something I can control. Great. So why try? Why wait around? I’m tired, and I haven’t even started yet. That’s what other people say. I haven’t been in New York long enough, or I haven’t been focusing on film & tv long enough… But I don’t want to spend my life living on the reassurances of others.

Even though human beings grow up, and evolve into more-aware beings who can rationally comprehend that we are not the axis of the universe, it is also true that we all come to the realization that I am the only one that will look out for me. I am the only one who truly matters. If I don’t take care of myself, then I will not be able to be the person other people deserve or expect. I think that’s true. You can only love thy neighbor once you’ve figured out how to love thyself. So, how come I’m expected to live my life according to the niceties of those I choose to surround myself with. I don’t love my boyfriend purely because he thinks I’m talented. I don’t confess that, “I don’t know if I can do this” just to get a pep talk. I realize that I am impatient and that I am a pussy. I know that this is “a tough business” and if “You can’t stand rejection you’ll never make it.”

UNCLE.

I can’t. I don’t want to. It’s sick and gross. Life is so short. And there are people with nothing, and I’m worrying about my headshot or whether or not I need to lose ten more pounds, or maybe if I hadn’t gone to get my MFA I could be Tala Ashrafi or Cassidy or Zach Gilford or if I’d been here longer I’d have the auditions and representation Brendan has???

Fuck that.

I know I’ve spent my whole life buying into and propogating the myth that I am not smart, but I am smart enough to figure out how to make more of an impact than this. I hate myself like this. I don’t care if you are supposed to wait at least three years after moving to the bog cities to make up your mind about any long-term career stuff, but honestly my mind is in the back seat right now. My heart is not in this anymore. Not today. Not during Savannah. Not for a while. Maybe I went to grad school because I wanted to reignite the flame, but anyone who talked to me more than once a year over the past four knows that I am officially Over It.

So, keep your ear to the ground for a new career for me. Current obsessions are working as a Yoga Instructor for Urban Zen Project and teaching HIV/AIDS patients, copy-catting Terri and becoming a therapist, or just taking out my Nuvaring a few weeks early and pulling a Jennifer Gardiner: “What? You mean, I’m pregnant??? How did that happen?”

NOTABLE QUITTERS:

My Childhood Hero from "Drop Dead Fred"

Who knows if it will stick? I sorta hope it does, just because retiring should mean something when you're famous and you make a big stink about it...

Even Holly Go-Lightly knew that it's all about your real life in the end.

I Vant To Be Alone.

I LOVE THIS VIDEO.

Tonight, the boyf & I finally popped Food, Inc. into the DVD player. I’ve had it from Netflix for about a month now. It’s been sitting ominously atop the tv set, just waiting to rock my world. I knew it would. Just like I knew that if I ever took the time to read “Fast Food Nation,” “The Jungle,” or “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” I would probably never be able to eat meat again. Ironically, it was the Cher Horowitz-in-tone diet tome “Skinny Bitch” that turned the tables for me in regard to eating animals.

As someone who once turned a vegetarian boyfriend omnivore, it seems surprising to me even at the precipice of my six month mark of veganism that I could adopt such a way of life. More importantly, it is absolutely astonishing what an effect it has had on my entire life. So far. As someone who just this time last year was a huge fan of potatoes augratin and a medium rare filet mignon, meatlover’s deep-dish pizzas, milkshakes, omelettes, Milk Duds & pretty much anything you can procure at your average American drive thru; the change was nothing if not drastic. Even I was unsure that I would be able to cut animal products out of my diet. And now I wonder, is there a way to insure that I’m not harming animals with my make-up?

I typically draw the line at honey, because it’s harder for me to understand how that is effecting the safety and wellfare of bees – it seems to me more damage and detriment derive from the use of the pesticides and products used in harvesting crops than in the farming of honey… But I’m sure there’s a lot taht I don’t know about the plight of bees. As tonight as taught me, even the soy bean (my theoretical bestie in terms of protein sourced outside of critters) is responsible for the loss of many a farmer’s livelihood due to the patenting of intellectual properties orchestrated by Monsanto Industries and the legislature signed by Clarence Thomas to prohibit farmers from saving their own seed. Today, any farmer to attempts – or is even alleged as attempting – to do so is investigated and blacklisted from further purchase of certified seed by the agricultural equivalent of Microsoft.

Did you know Tom’s of Maine toothpaste is now owned by Colgate? That there are currently only 13 slaughterhouses in our nation, whereas the United States ran thousands in the post-Upton Sinclair/ Teddy Roosevelt- regulated 1970’s?

That we live in a world which runs on a system created by the same multi-national, billion-dollar industries that keep our government from being able to protect so many of its citizens from Diabetes, but claims to be “The Best” sickens me. I am not saying that Iraqis have it better, or that we don’t have it pretty good, but to know the lies that were created by the very people we entrust with our protection leaves me wondering what to do to help the people in my mostly black neighborhood from succumbing to the statistics we’ve inherited. Is there anything that I can do?

It seems that I should find some way to make a difference, raise awareness, or (as my dear friend Erin & her partner Sam have done) move out to farm and start learning how to grow and harvest my own foods in order to have some semblance of assurance that what is in my food is nutrient-rich and natural. Rather than sitting on the couch bemoaning the fact that I broke up with my agents and no longer have any (even lame) auditions to look forward to.

More importantly, what am I supposed to feed my children? Fuuuuuck. How will I sleep tonight? Are there any eveil soya beans in this glass of cheapo South African wine? No… Probably just a heaping helping of AIDS.

Sweet Dreams, Betches. I’d love to know your thoughts. Unless your Ashley, because yours are already giving me night terrors.