Give me a few weeks of 80 degree humidity, and I’ll be back to my whining and moaning about how much I hate the heat. Trust me.

I don’t know about you, but all I ever really wanted to do as a kid was go to camp. Specifically I wanted to go to sleepover camp the likes of which probably don’t really exist. I wanted to sleep in cabins with a counselor who slept through late night shenanigans. I wanted to make Best Friends Forever with the other girls in my bunk. I wanted to go on midnight kitchen raids and do nothing but eat peanut butter straight from the gigantic industrial-sized barrels of it that you just KNOW they have back there.

I blame television and movies for this problem. I’m thirty years old and, at this time of year, I still yearn for a footlocker trunk, friendship bracelets and the excuse to just be dirty for three months without worrying that I don’t look grown up or professional. So here are a few of my all-time, salute-worthy, kitchen-raid deserving, summer camp movies:

The Parent Trap

Look, I get that you grew up with Lindsay Lohan, but if you haven’t seen Hyaley Mills in the original Parent Trap, we can’t be friends. YEAH I SAID IT. You need to watch Hayley Mills in The Parent Trap. You just do. Their camp has uniforms. It’s AMAZING.

Indian Summer

Are you romantic? (yes) Are you nostalgic? (yes) This movie is for you. Grown ups go back to the summer camp where they all met. The movie is peppered with sepia-toned flashbacks to truly fantastic 70s era fashion. Oh, and did I mention that it basically takes place in the 90s? Because the perms and patterns make the entire thing worth it. Really, you need to see this movie. I adore it.

Camp Nowhere

Kids swindle their parents out of super-selective (and super judgmental) camp funds and create their own “no adults allowed (except eccentric Christopher Lloyd)” camp for a summer. There are meals of pop tarts and mud slides when it’s raining and general awesomeness. Plus. Andrew Keegan. Andrew Keegan! Before he was the douchey tube sock model in Ten Things I Hate About You he was in Camp Nowhere as the pre-teen thug with a heart of gold. His best friend is the computer nerd (also the mastermind of this genius camp), and much like Judd Nelson, he gets the princess in the end.

Wet Hot American Summer

Want to see all your favorite actors before they were big and/or before they were on SNL? This is the movie for you. Be warned: there is a lot of sex and a lot of drug use, and Janeane Garafalo is my role model forever.

Meatballs

Bill Murray. Bullied children. Awesome summer camp hilarity. You need this movie in your life.

Camp Rock

Music. Jonas Brothers. Demi Lovato. This is total campy fun. Good luck getting the songs from this one out of your head.

Honorable Mention: Salute Your Shorts

Camp Anawanna! We hold you in our hearts! And when we think about you, it makes us wanna…..

Camp isn’t just a place.

Camp is an experience.

You grow and learn and become more of a human being by interacting with all of the other kids and adults in your immediate vicinity for a few weeks. At least that’s what they tell me. I never got to go to sleep away camp – not the kind I wanted to go to at least. I went for the occasional week long excursion to horseback riding camp or the quasi-Outward Bound kind of thing, but never a whole six or eight weeks in a cabin in the woods with 200 other kids and a handful of semi-adults with very different camp experiences than the kids. I guess I’m too old now. I’ll just have to live through the movies.

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I’ve been 30 for about six months. I’ve been single my whole life. As you might imagine, I spend a lot of time by myself. It’s okay. I’m rather introverted no matter what you think of that definition if you know me in real life.

I like being by myself.

By myself, I read books, fall in love with characters, listen to music and listen to people smarter than I talk about things they know. I go to the movies by myself. I go out to dinner by myself.

I honestly don’t really think about it much. Having always been alone, I am so used to it that the idea of walking into a restaurant or bar and asking for a seat for one is second nature rather than an insurmountable wall of self conscience.

I’m thinking about it now, as I write this, because I am again out to dinner by myself, sitting at my favorite bar with my laptop and a glass of my favorite red wine. Sitting next to me is another young woman – probably about my age – who is also eating and drinking alone while writing in a notebook.

She got here first. I don’t know much about her aside from the fact that she speaks English as a second language (her accent is delightful). When I sidled up to the empty seat beside her and set up shop, trading pleasantries with the staff who all know me by name and greet me with a wink while I set up my laptop, she paused in her writing and observed.

I ordered dinner.

I ordered a glass of red. I did not specify a label – my bartender knows my taste and price range and always serves me something I love. I write here regularly.

Everything was delivered like clockwork, and I was left alone.

“I am glad I am not the only girl eating dinner here alone,” she confided after questioning after the glass of wine I was drinking, ordering one for herself and a small vegetable side.

There is a camaraderie in eating at the bar. Ask Lorelei Gilmore. She will agree.

Regardless, our simple exchange – she has gone back to her writing and dinner as I have gone back to mine – got me thinking.

So many of my girlfriends over the years have said some variation of the following to me:

“You’re so brave – traveling like you do, by yourself. I could never do that.”

“I can’t go to the movies by myself!”

“But I have no one to eat with!”

I’ve always been confused by this.

What if you have no one to go out with? Are you going to stay inside and never interact with anyone outside of work again?

Are we really so trained by a society that spent millennia protecting and holding back the bearers of children that the idea of independence is not only frowned upon but actually scary?

I love going out by myself. I make friends with strangers. I learn to trust my instincts. I have learned my limits with no one to rely upon but myself. I hope that you, dear readers, know that it is okay to go out by yourself. Obviously, learn your limits, go safe places, and befriend the locals, but there is no shame in sitting at the bar of a favorite restaurant and having dinner alone.

Anyone who judges you sucks.

You’re awesome. Own it. Eat what you want. Eat where you want. Bring a book if you want. Bring your cell phone. Learn to love spending time with yourself.

I’m betting you are not half bad as a conversationalist.

Feature Image via Shutterstock

The post Why It’s (More Than) Okay To Go It Alone appeared first on HelloGiggles.

Stay Out, I’m Reading.

When I got in trouble as a kid, my parents had to find somewhere else to send me because getting sent to my room wasn’t really punishment. I would just spend the time I was supposed to be thinking about what I’d done with my nose in a book and not thinking about my transgressions at all.

Much to my parents’ dismay, I haven’t changed much in the 22 years since then. Books have always been my escape.

What’s the last book you dove into with whatever you equate with fierce abandon?

Was it a sappy romance novel you started on your morning commute and finished on your evening commute while sneaking pages here and there throughout the business day? (guilty)

Was it when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows finally arrived on your doorstep, and you stayed up all night to finish its 766 pages?

I did that too but it WAS NOT my fault! Stupid UPS put it in my mailbox instead of delivering it to my door, and I didn’t know it was there until late in the afternoon!

I love a good book I can really sink my teeth into – or a good series. No one ever wanted to travel with me as a teenager because I carted more than one suitcase full of clothing with me. I also brought along a duffelbag full of books. I just couldn’t be without them. What if I ran out of something to read? What if I wanted to read that particular passage of that particular book right now? What would I do? 

This was in the days before Kindles or even smartphones so I really didn’t have much of a choice, did I?

It’s a little bit harder (and a little bit easier) now that I’m an adult. I mean, we live in the Digital Age, right? I don’t have to travel with just one book to make luggage weight anymore.

I actually left the house the other day without a book in my purse. I didn’t realize it until I was halfway to the subway stop, and I was already running late, so I just didn’t have time to run back and grab the one I had so carefully laid out next to my things that morning. I had to venture into my day without papers bound in glue and cardboard to distract me from the swirling masses of humanity around me on the trains.

But don’t fear! I survived. A few months ago, I had downloaded a few books to my phone that I had seen recommended on Twitter or Tumblr over the course of a day. I was saved! I sat happily on the train and started a novel I could barely remember with a super sappy title. I didn’t notice when we crossed the river and were in Manhattan, and I nearly missed my subway stop. I read standing in line for my coffee. I read while I ate lunch. I read the whole way home.

Reader, I finished that book long before I turned out the light that night.

I have never been able to define what it is about a book that makes it “un-put-downable” but I usually know by about ten pages in whether or not what I’m reading is going to be a book I obsess over in the end. I’m not ashamed to admit that there was a time when Twilight was one. Once I got started I inhaled everything Harry Potter but I am still slogging through A Casual Vacancy months after its release. Likewise, I cannot seem to sink my teeth into 1Q84 with any more obsession than the occasional foray into its odd world. I bought it the week it came out, in hardcover, and am barely at the halfway point.

Some books are a sprint. Some books are a marathon. It’s not something I always know when I sign up for the race. While frustrating, it can also be incredibly rewarding when I dive into something I am expecting to not love or am expecting will take me weeks because I’m familiar with the writer’s style, and then his characters or plot are so wonderful and engaging that I can’t put it down.

The post Leave Me Alone, I’m Reading appeared first on HelloGiggles.

Don’t get me wrong. I love sudden wealth of fun, distracting, but not always challenging books that I can read through in a couple of hours. But the magic and the drama and the fact that one of the main characters seems to always be some fantastical creature that doesn’t exist (that we know of…) just doesn’t ring true to me.

Yes, this is where I make some impassioned speech about being barefoot and a school route that was uphill both ways.

Here are five YA books you may have forgotten or just not found yet. Give them a try.

Just as Long as We’re Together

I think I learned to be a teenager from Judy Blume and the various young women she wrote about. These girls went through everything I was going through – or wished I was going through. First dates, getting their licenses, first dances, first kisses – all that stuff that seems like an afterthought (well except the kissing that’s always front and center) in YA books I pick up now. It’s like teenagers are just supposed to know how it all works or learn it from TV.

A Wrinkle in Time

There were evil forces, family members you didn’t always understand and adventure. How could you not love this book? It’s a grand tale of good vs. evil, and the big bad is called The Black Thing. There’s a lot of imagery and illusion in this book that critics equate with Christianity, but when I read it, I just loved the idea of kids taking control and going off to save the world. So cool.

The Dragonriders of Pern series

Dragons. Need I say more? These may be housed in the general sci-fi/fantasy section of the library, but I read them for the first time as a teenager and they were a gateway drug to serialized science fiction. It was fantastic. The main character was young, and female, and kicked major ass. Because she had a dragon. Not that she “had” a dragon, but a dragon imprinted on her and they were a team. Who doesn’t want a dragon??

Sweet Valley High

Before 90210 took us into the glamorous high school halls of California, the Wakefield twins were getting into crazy troubles. They were beautiful and nice and completely different for all that they were identical twins trying to navigate adolescence. For the younger set, Sweet Valley Twins took readers through their middle school days. And once you read your way through the long, long series of original books, there were all kinds of specials, including mystery sets and past lives sets. It was the best.

Stephen King

Ok. I get it. He’s scary as all get out. And I’m not usually one for guts and gore and horror but Stephen King had a way of getting under your skin and keeping you up at night. I had friends who read their way through everything he had written and then tried to get me to sit down and watch all the movie adaptations with them. (I don’t like scary movies. I don’t know what they were thinking.) I’m not saying they were easy reads but they were approachable and felt just dangerous enough that you probably would get some fierce questioning from parents who caught you with a couple of his books.

So next time you’re on the lookout for something to read in an afternoon or just can’t bring yourself to read yet another paranormal romance novel – because it feels like all the YA books are such now – give one of these a try.

Feature Image via Shutterstock

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September 11, 2001

My mother remembered where she was when she heard JFK was killed. I remember where I was, and what I was doing, when the planes hit the Twin Towers in New York City. I was a freshman in college and rushing through my morning routine alongside my roommate when another girl on our floor walked in – we had codes to access our rooms, not keys – said nothing and turned on the TV.

The first plane had just hit, and in the following hours, days and weeks, the newsreels were a constant replaying of the now iconic images of smoke billowing from buildings so tall that nothing stood around them, just uninterrupted blue sky.

America has never been the same.

Death

The summer after my freshman year of college, I travelled to London through an amazing program that helped me get a six month work visa and lived and worked in the city of Shakespeare for a summer. Weeks before my return home, my dad called to tell me that my mother had died the night before. She was diabetic, but she hadn’t been particularly sick. It was very sudden, and then she was gone.

There is still a lot I don’t remember about getting home from London. There was a kind man who sat beside me on the plane and told me stories about his kids with a soft Irish accent. There was a coworker who took me home from the office and helped me pack my things. There was a friend in Chicago who came to the airport for my layover just to make sure I ate something before getting on my second flight.

I was 19, and I have never been the same.

Katrina

It was just another hurricane in hurricane country until the levees broke. Then whole communities were washing away, the 24 hour news cycle went into overdrive, and the image of President Bush surveying the devastation from the comfort of a helicopter became iconic as people suffered and Washington didn’t mobilize fast enough.

Volunteers rushed to aid, donations poured in, and New Orleans started on its long, long road to recovery.

I don’t know that New Orleans or the country that watched the waters rise and engulf will ever be the same.

Birth

At 23, my siblings changed the game of never-ending questions about my singleness at family gathers by procreating. That first grandkid/niece – who is pretty damn cute, if I do say so – changed the focus of every family gathering after.

I adore my nieces and nephews – there are four of them now – and wouldn’t go back in time for anything. But they definitely changed my world. From the moment I held one in my arms, nothing revolved around me anymore.

Okay, that’s not true. I’m being honest here. I’m still pretty me-centric.

The kids my siblings had have definitely put everything into a different perspective though. Of course I recycle everything I can. There are children who need a planet to live on when they’re older. Stupid decisions? I have to be a role model not a cautionary tale.

Again, I’ll never be the same.

Boston

There is little I feel I can say on the repercussions of last Monday’s bombing that you probably don’t already know. In addition to the loss of life, the great quantity of injured, and the heroism and determination of the Boston people, public debate has vaulted into a new stratosphere. (And I really do mean that the 24 hour news cycle has covered all of the heart-wrenching details to such an extent that I do not want to recap them here…again.)

Can journalism recover after their multitude of screw ups this week? A reporter tweeted asking for people who “knew” the suspects to DM her because she wanted to interview them. She has now deleted the tweet and blamed a “well-meaning producer”. Yes, seriously.

Elected officials voted down stricter measures for gun control and passed CISPA legislation that allows websites to harvest your personal information without a warrant. They also made insensitive jokes, and publicly recommended throwing constitutionally-mandated rights – like representation and indefinite jailing without trial – out as they apply to the one suspect who was successfully captured alive.

In America, the world has changed, and continues to change, again.

Let us also not forget the other way the world changed last week:

A fertilizer plant blew up near Waco, Texas. Not everything is sure as I write this but the latest reports say that 14 are dead – 11 of them possibly first responders and firefighters – and hundreds are displaced. It will take time and funds to rebuild.

A 6.6 magnitude earthquake devastated a rural part of China near Sichuan province, killing more than 150 people and injuring thousands.

The Kepler telescope reported that there are almost definitely more Earth-like planets out there…even if they are thousands of lightyears away.

Who knows what next week will bring?

Feature Image via New York Theater and Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)

The post 5 Times My World Changed appeared first on HelloGiggles.

If you’re reading this – and you’ve ever read anything I’ve written before – it really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. I kind of like books. They kind of complete me.

Growing up in the Midwest, the library was so much more than just another place for my parents to take me on a rainy day when they needed to get my hyperactive toddler and small-child-self out of the house before they lost their minds. The library was my home away from home.

It was the only place I was allowed to ride my bike without supervision before I turned ten. A privilege then taken away when I tried to bring home an entire shelf of books in plastic sacks balanced on the handlebars.

I’m not saying that I almost got run over by cars because I over-borrowed and bags broke in the middle of intersections, but I did cause quite the distraction to small town drivers that day.

Anyways! Here are the five times a library changed my life:

That first library card…

I think I got my first actual library card – with my name on it and everything – around kindergarten. I can’t remember the exact date but I timeline it there because I distinctly remember sitting at a short table in the library, next to my mom, gripping what felt like a really long pencil in my tiny hand, and filling out the very official scan-tron like form with my sloppy block letters. I had to ask my mom how to spell our street name.

But man, the feeling of that flimsy piece of plastic (it was mint green and white if you’re curious) with my name typed on it by a real typewriter? I walked out of that library feeling a million feet tall.

Summer Reading Challenges

The library I grew up going to had the most amazing children’s section. I know that now children’s sections are often colorful and welcoming and great but this was the 1980s. Stop for a minute and picture libraries from all the movies you have seen from the 1980s. Yeah. Think about it.

Anyways, our library was pretty much split in two: half for the adults and half for the kids. We had carpeting and comfy chairs and big social areas where kids could sprawl on beanbag chairs and generally cause a ruckus while their parents attempted to read them stories. It was the best. One wall was devoted to huge posters that chronicled the reading challenges our awesome librarian came up with every summer. There were themed stickers. There were prizes. Everything you wanted to inspire rampant competition in local children was represented. You had to figure out your reading list early and you had to borrow those books immediately or there was no way you were going to win.

No, I’m not kidding.

I like to credit my constant one-upping of everyone I talk to about books to this lovely summer memory. Thank you, hometown library for turning me into an obnoxious competitive reader as an adult.

Social Hour at the Library

College is a time for study and learning. It is also the time to test your body’s ability to survive the sleep-deprivation, completely unhealthy eating, and the introduction of alcohol into your social life, because I know that no one drinks before they go to college.

At my college, Sundays were for cramming all of your weekend homework into the shortest number of hours of work at the school’s library. My friends and I would convene at the dining hall shortly before noon, inhale the most unhealthy brunch you can possibly imagine, and trek over to the library to “study.”

The reason I put “study” in quotation marks is because little studying actually happened before I was holed up in my room that evening, blasting music and trying to ignore the world while I slammed through hundreds of pages of reading. The library, where we were supposed to be doing all kinds of work, was actually the time to flirt with the boy you liked, make plans for next weekend, and rehash whatever insanity had gone down the night before.

I know what you’re thinking. SACRILEGE! How dare you desecrate a place of worship so!? The reason it changed my life is because, as I’ve said ad-nauseum, I was a total nerd. These library social hours were some of the first times I didn’t feel like a social leper, but like one of the cool kids. So thanks library. I know you hated us in those years, but you may have turned me into a socially-competent adult.

Grad School: Back to Life. Back to Reality.

While college was a total and complete social classroom, graduate school brought me back to knowing the library the way it was supposed to be known. It was like I had to go through orientation as a student all over again – ironic considering I was a teacher at that point.

That’s right. They put me in charge of young minds. Be afraid.

For the first time since I was a child, the library became a peaceful escape from the loud, social world. (Seriously, why are people so loud?) It was where I could go to get away from the television my roommate always had on, the voices of my fellow teachers on the floor where all our offices were, and the general cacophony (which is a fun word) of the local coffee shop.

I could wander deep into the stacks, find a cubby hole of a desk where I faced a blank wall, and not see a single soul for seven to eight hours while I tried to read, write and research my way to a higher level of intelligence.

The post Five Times A Library Changed Me appeared first on HelloGiggles.

I haven’t seen it.

I probably won’t for a few more years.

Despite my inability to watch anything at the right time, when I do find what I term “perfect” shows, I get just as obsessed as the early adopters. Here are five shows that I inhaled with the gusto of the fat kid eating Mrs. Trunchbull’s cake in Matilda:

Firefly

Maybe you’re a long time fan of Joss Whedon and his merry band of actors who troop from project to project in his wake. Maybe you just discovered him when he killed off (spoilers) Agent Coulson in The Avengers this summer. Maybe you’ve never heard of him. But you’ve definitely heard of his shows: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Dollhouse…they must ring a bell. Unlike his long-running sci fi adventures with Buffy and her Scooby gang, Firefly was axed by FOX after only one season.

It had the actorly talents of Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Morena Baccarin, Adam Baldwin, Jewel Staite, Sean Maher, Summer Glau and Ron Glass.

It had cows in spaceships.

An actual western adventure set on a spaceship 500 years in the future. There were government conspiracies, evil-doers, and a ship with a captain and crew just trying to make a living in any legal and illegal way they could.

For years and years I heard, “Rachael you have to watch this show. You will love it.” And I scoffed because, cowboys? Spaceships? No thank you.

Clearly I can be dense sometimes. I didn’t finally sit down to watch it until last year, and within a weekend I had watched it all and was tweeting things like, “THAT’S NOT A SERIES FINALE, JOSS.” at the internet and being laughed at by my friends.

Friends

Friends was on from 1994-2004 and while I am now caught up, I completely missed the anticipation of would Ross and Rachel get together? What would Rachel name her baby? Would Joey sleep with all of New York? I only jumped on the weekly-watching bandwagon at the end of the tenth season and then went back and watched all the seasons in a row.

For a show that is now incredibly dated (check out their cellphones) and completely unrealistic (check out those apartments), the comedy totally holds up, and I’m still watching random episodes from the box sets almost ten years after it went off the air.

Feel sorry for my roommate.

Veronica Mars

I came into this show while it was in its second season. I know that’s not the same as finding it after it went off the air completely. And I know it’s coming back in a fashion. *squee* But I still missed out on the original mystery of Lily’s death when it was on the air the first time, and I still freaked out all over the internet when I did discover it in all its high school noir glory.

Have you watched it? Go watch it. And don’t try to tell me you’re more of a Duncan fan than a Logan fan. That’s how I know you didn’t make it all the way through all the seasons.

Doctor Who

You guys all know I love Doctor Who. I mean, it’s pretty obvious. Doctor Who was one of those shows that I put off watching. I think that I knew, somewhere deep inside, that if I gave into the peer pressure from all of my friends (and I do mean all of them) and watched it, I would never be able to pull myself back out of the TARDIS.

I was right. The reason I include it in this list is because I really wish I had found it sooner, wish I had caved and gotten cable so I could watch last season in real time rather than sitting around waiting for Netflix to get the latest season (YES I’M STILL A SEASON BEHIND), wish I had listened to all my friends sooner.

They’re really all very smart. They didn’t even make me say that.

But anyways, don’t get overwhelmed by the fact that 2013 is the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who. You can do what I did. Start with New Who – that’s Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant and Matt Smith – and move forward from there. Then you have nice little summer breaks where you can go and watch Classic Who – Doctors 1-8 – on Netflix when the shows are off air for the summer.

Really, you won’t need to watch anything else for months.

The post 5 Times The Perfect Show Found Me Too Late appeared first on HelloGiggles.

The cover story is: My life was shaped by the parents who loved me, the brothers who tortured me and the schools I went to for 20+ years.

But really? Stories changed my life.

Five Times Television Changed My Life

Married with Children

We were decidedly not allowed to watch Married with Children in my house. Well, we kids weren’t allowed. I’m pretty sure my parents watched it after we went to bed. Actually I know that they did because the way that Married with Children changed my life was simple: it taught me a life skill, silence and manipulation. All my brothers and I wanted was to watch that show. It’s not that we were completely invested in the storylines, characters or actors. We were kids. No. We wanted it because we were not allowed to have it. We learned to sit silently through The Simpsons and whatever else was on, and to make ourselves as invisible as possible so that we were ignored and forgotten about. And if we played our cards right, if we blended into the living room furniture enough, there was always the chance that we wouldn’t have to go to bed before we caught a full half hour of the forbidden fruit.

It may seem like a small thing – the way this silly show “changed” my life – but I have to say, learning the value of silence and discretion has helped me so much as an adult.

Gargoyles & Tiny Toon Adventures

I’m a procrastinator. In my family, we say it’s genetic. I can procrastinate procrastinating by doing super active things that have nothing to do with the actual task I should be working on at the time. I’m rather proud of my ability in this arena. Homework was my nemesis from the first time a teacher assigned it.

Do work in my off time? Was my teacher insane? Afternoons and evenings were for reading and watching TV. I was not going to do homework. I was going to put it off until the last possible moment no matter how much my mom yelled and my dad glared.

Then I got hooked on afternoon cartoons, specifically Gargoyles and Tiny Toon Adventures.

Then Mom and Dad decided that the only way to get me to do homework before I was already supposed to be in bed was to take away my privileges, namely the TV. For some unknown reason, they decided to break generations of genetic conditioning for procrastination by docking me hours of TV in the afternoon and weekends for each assignment I started after a certain time of night. There was no getting around it. I had to evolve as much as I didn’t want to. I had to learn to work at a sensible pace and not just do everything at the last minute. It changed everything. My grades got better. I slept like a healthy kid and not a crazy sleep-deprived zombie. I learned to actually plan things….around TV.

That’s healthy, right?

Sesame Street

Do I really need to tell a story with this one? Do you know a kid who grew up in the US who wasn’t profoundly affected by Sesame Street? I don’t.

I remain convinced that half the reason I ended up living in Brooklyn is because Sesame Street indoctrinated me with a deep-seated need for brownstones and quaint New York borough neighborhoods.

Sex and the City

Don’t think I’m crazy, but right after Sesame Street, all I can think about is how that other show that basically featured New York City as a character also changed my life. Before Sex and the City, television was benign. The things I saw on TV – short of what censors may have considered “racy” on shows like Married with Children – were comedic, generally half hour, and of the sitcom variety.

We didn’t really have cable until I was well into my teenage years.

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