One of my great pet peeves is Sex and the City: love the first two seasons, hate the way it makes people think that everyone who lives in New York is rich, promiscuous, and hobnobs with famous people. My parents were in town from North Carolina this week, and my mom was desperate to spot a celebrity, preferably one doing something embarrassing like picking salad out of their teeth in Sardi’s.
Luckily for her, Heeb is in a large office building which it shares with other semi-glamorous companies. By the time I arrived at work on Monday morning, no fewer than seven TV crews were camped out in front of our building, desperate for a glimpse of our building’s most (in)famous tenant: Martha Stewart. By the time my parents showed up to meet me for lunch, they almost had to bitchslap boom guys to get in the front door. My mom, of course, was having a field day. By the time she and my dad made it up the elevator, they had plotted to have my mom pose as a decoy Martha, even though their only physical similarity is that they are both blonde and middle-aged. I decided to take the blase approach. “Oh, yeah, we have camera crews here all the time.”
Despite showing her my own personal desk and introducing her to such notables as the Editor in Chief and Managing Editor of Heeb, my mom was way more impressed by Martha, who we never managed to see in the flesh. “Martha has left the building!” a reporter crowed into her mike outside. Mom was crushed, but planned to repeat the story in full to all the girls back home. So much for her hip New York daughter and that glamorous publication she works for. Then again, Mom wasn’t terribly impressed by the Beastie Boys on the last issue. She thought one of them was Eminem.