On Saturday I celebrated the 20th birthday of a close friend, with a party dedicated to the 90s. It felt really great to dress up, while listening to TLC and the smooth stylings of Will Smith, cultural and lifelong icon of us all. In fact, today I was delighted to turn on the TV to TBS and find three consecutive episodes of Fresh Prince of Bel Air on t.v. I'll always have a place in my heart for the Fresh Prince, and the last episode of the series, where he takes one last knowing glance at the camera and turns off the lights, never fails to make my eyes well up. In tribute to Will Smith, I looked like this.
Dressing up for time travel took less than five minutes, as everything I'm wearing here has a regular rotation in my wardrobe. The next day I watched Clueless and lusted after Paul Rudd, and I missed the 90s.
At this party, I had a wonderful realization about New York, as I peered off the terrace of my friend's absurdly inappropriately posh, upper east side terrace and pretended it was mine, all the while craning my neck to peer in the glass windows of a penthouse room which looked to be a ballet studio in someone's apartment, that our city measures wealth by how high you are in the stratosphere, how few other people are at your level, and when it rises and sets, how long you get to be across the way from the sun.

How long long does it bathe you in its glow as you look out the window of your vast dining room before doing your morning routine in your ballet studio? How prominently might F. Scott Fitzgerald featured you in one of his silly pseudo-moral short stories? Might Christian Bale as Batman have to scale your building while tracking a villain? If so, you've made it.

PS, are other people as obsessed with their cats as I am? Because how great is my cat. I mean really.

-Karen