Meetka Otto

Meetka Otto on Radio Alarm Clocks, Brighton Beach, Mike Leigh Films, and more.

June 9, 2022

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Meetka Otto is a New York City-based composer, writer, model, photographer, and waitress. She seemingly knows everyone from her many years in the Dimes Square neighborhood, and she’s hilarious on Twitter, which is probably why her name repeatedly comes up in articles about this little corner of Chinatown and that it was her that broke the “Subway Shooter was at Dimes” news right before he was caught. But Otto isn’t just a waitress in a trendy neighborhood, she’s also a very talented composer that dropped a fantastic EP last year titled Lateen, and she tells me her follow-up will drop “within four years”. There are few people as tapped in as Meetka, and lucky for us, she’s here to talk about what she’s been into.

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Lifetime’s Intimate Portraits

If I’m ever at all anxious, I put YouTube on my TV and watch an amazingly comforting series called Intimate Portraits, which focuses on one woman in Hollywood per episode. The subjects are usually from the Golden Age of Hollywood up until about the 80’s or 90’s. The usually English female narrators talk so slowly and precisely about Bacall’s depression or Garland’s divorces, it weirdly makes me feel so relaxed and distracted. My favorite episode is on Lauren Bacall, and once you watch one, you can’t stop!

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Mike Leigh Films

Film at Lincoln Center is currently doing an full retrospective of the iconic Brit filmmaker, Mike Leigh. I got into him doing lockdown when my best friend gave me a list of his films to start off with. Last week I saw Secrets and Lies which won the Palme D’Or in 1996. Afterwards Leigh came out for a Q & A which i couldn’t stay for but I highly recommend, especially on the big screen.

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Radio Alarm Clocks

Since teenagehood I always used my iPhone’s alarms, those horrible sounds to abruptly wake me from sleep and comfort. Now I use a radio alarm clock I got from Sharper Image that slowly gets louder over the course of 2 minutes to whatever station I desire! This makes waking up easier, and slower, less abrupt. You also can get lost in the radio, weekends are for the classical station and weekdays are for NPR. I wake up at 7 or 7:30am and lay in bed for a bit listening to the news and stories, not immediately looking at my phone, which now charges out of reach from my bed, which I also recommend! You can get them at Best Buy for like $20.

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Siri Hustvedt

I read most of Hustvedt’s work when I was in Berlin and Paris in 2019. She writes so beautifully about neurology and illness, neurotypical anomalies, but in a greatly poetic yet digestible way. I suggest one starts with Living, Thinking, Looking (2012).

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Brighton Beach

Fuck The Rockaways, Fort Tilden, Jacob Riis…I personally have no issue with those beaches but if you want to actually be able to take a use of the lou and have a real meal all while enjoying the beach and all of its usual offers…Brighton is the one. On Fort Tilden, you have to walk the width of what seems to be the continent just to take a shit. For what? Some space in the sand? No. You can take a train to Brighton, have some pierogies, take a dip in the sea and be back in the city before noon and still have some energy to do other things.

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Meetka Otto

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