The impulse to weigh decisions with coffee spoons can seem charmingly eccentric on TV. But real-life obsessive compulsive disorder is no fun, what with the imminent death and all.
"If you asked me what I did when I was 16, I would have told you about playing the alto saxophone and taking tap lessons. I probably wouldn’t have described my penchant for tapping the doorframe whenever I walked into a room, or how, every minute, I counted all the numbers on any nearby digital clocks and then assigned their sum a character value from beneficent to malignant. (I’d never tell secrets or reveal anything I was sensitive about during a malignant number’s minute.)"
Read MoreMusic that doesn't need an Appreciation class to appreciate
"Usually, when I meet new people and they find out I host classical music on the radio, they ask one to three of the following questions:
I’ve only been asked that last question once, but someone did actually say those words to me. I didn’t answer. It was rude."
Read MoreThose who can’t do, learn. As part of our series in which the clueless apprentice with the experts, LAUREN FREY visits a glass-blowing studio in Brooklyn to pursue her lifelong dream of playing with molten material.
"Until last Tuesday, the only molten material I’d ever worked with was chocolate. Even then, “licked off a spatula” is more accurate a description of what I did than “working.” But for the past 16 years, ever since my dad and step-mom took me to an exhibit of glass artist Dale Chihuly’s lilypad-ish flower-like sculptures, I’ve been fascinated by glass blowing. What wouldn’t be fascinating about manipulating a lava-like, potentially disfiguring substance and turning it into beautiful, breakable art?"
Read MoreGrief takes on many forms, though it’s rare to hear about a sudden addiction to comedy clubs and Seth Meyers’s political impersonations. LAUREN FREY recounts an unhealthy obsession.
"If the subway came quick enough after my 7:00-midnight shift at WNYC, I got home in time to catch the last 10 minutes of Saturday Night Live. It was the fall of 2004 and I’d developed a wicked celebrity crush on Seth Meyers. Even though I only saw him play a decidedly unattractive spoof of John Kerry, dorky as it sounds I was charmed by his grin and his sharp comic timing."
Read MoreOutsized attention is a given for places like Central Park. But in a city as big and speckled with green spaces as New York, small, local parks are always a quick walk away right when you need them.
"On Wooster Street in SoHo, there’s a long-term installation called “The New York Earth Room.” It’s a swanky apartment, empty save for 22 inches of dirt. You’re not allowed to walk on it. You just look. In college, a design teacher of mine sent my class there for inspiration because “it’s easy to forget the smell of soil.” Honestly, I’d rather go to a park. Parks have plenty of soil. They also seem to me way more worthy of funding than an indoor dirt beach."
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