• by Kelly Samardak , August 6, 2009

I woke up this morning to grey skies and a sweet cool breeze sucked in by my window fan.  I'm sure this is but a brief respite from what I like to call Swim Week here in NYC, where humidity has reached percentages immeasurable by the tools of man and deodorant has been rendered powerless in the face of such fierce perspiration.  I'm not saying my deodorant, but I think we should all take this time to regroup and perhaps relaunch our antiperspirant strategy because I feel confident in saying that some NYCers may have built up a tolerance.  I'm just saying.   I'm also saying that my August calendar has a couple of vacancies, so if you've got an industry party in the works, send off that invitation to yours truly.  Want to know what's in the pipe?

Let's talk about this week first, though.  A couple of weeks ago I got the invitation for Gawker Artists' Mom and Popism, an installation reinterpreting "Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York"  by James and Karla Murray (which looks frickin' awesome).  You can't deny that with every new Applebee's in Harlem (yup), a piece of the real personality of the neighborhood is disappearing.  And I probably don't have to point out how much I love photography --  in fact, the only time I can tolerate museums is if there is a photo exhibit.  Go ahead, call me gauche -- and I'll tell you I don't speak French.  Anyway, I was really looking forward to the press preview and opening celebration on Wednesday.  But guess what?  At 9:14 p.m. on Monday night, the organizers sent out a reschedule notice due to the weather.  For Tuesday.  That's right, that's a day earlier.  For the love of [insert deity of your choice here] I already had the BitePR shindig planned for Tuesday night.

 I honor commitments in the order in which I receive them so I wasn't about to blow off the chance to gab with Bite's Matt McLernon before he heads for palm trees and sand fleas in San Fran.  And as it turns out, I didn't make it to either party due to another commitment - to a fun project here at MediaPost!  With all of my schedule shuffling, I have that needling feeling at the base of my skull that I'm accidentally missing an event, but what can you do?

Next week I'm hitting the AFAR magazine launch party, which I'm hoping will shame me into buying less refridgerated Sauvignon Blanc at the Trader Joe's Wine Shop and start socking my hard-earned green away so I, too, can travel to far-off, exotic places where fruits look like rocks and fish look like rocks and people look like ... rocks.

In the week of Aug. 17^h, come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me and  GiveAndDate.com, which made me look like I was man-hunting at work when I did some quickie research on them.  Heh heh, quickie.  Anyway, I like that this isn't your run-of-the-mill match-making site.  They're putting singles in bed with charities.  That's right -- you can only "flirt" with featured single New Yorkers afteryou've made a donation to one of their partner charities.  I always figure you can't suck as a human if you give to charity, so the quality of pickings might actually be higher than at some of the disease-hosting bars in this town.   And hey, putting a bunch of randy, giving, hungry-for-love singles on a boat with "stunning views of Manhattan" will make for amazing photos.  I mean really, you can't screw that up.

In that very same week Mashable is hosting its Summer of Social Good climax with the Social Good Conference at the 92^nd Street Y.  Again, I have to dig for the invitation, but I think it might be on Facebook, which is not as crippled as poor Twitter today, but close.  

In the meantime, get back to work, enjoy your friends and families, and let's all meet at the buffet table sometime soon!

Catch up on JAOLM's you've missed!

Send invitations to kelly@mediapost.com!