My folks are in town this weekend. They arrived Wednesday and are here for a week. It's been really nice, but it means I don't have much time for blogging. For this reason, I'm going to do what radio programs do over holidays and run a "best of" entry from the past. This is from way back -- March, 2007 -- back when I had my initial MySpace blog. It's on the longish side (two parts), so if you don't read it all I won't be offended. Every thing you read was written by 2007 DG, starting now ...
(This turned out to be a pretty long entry, so I've divided it up into two.)
Part I
I went to New York city this weekend. It was fun, a lot of fun, actually. T was attending some sort of Montessori conference there, so I went up to visit him and St and St's West Chester best friend, L. It's such a huge city. It works out nicely. Each time I go I end up hanging out in a different part of town then I have before. Last time I spent almost all my trip in Brooklyn, this time it was all in Manhattan. We had an excellent, reasonably affordable hotel room right near Time Square (big props to St on that one, you're check is in the mail, by the way.)
The worst part about going to NYC is the 4 hour bus trips in each direction. Although, when I'm tired, but not in a comfortable enough position to actually fall asleep, sometimes I can get myself into a state which I can best describe as trance-like. I have my eyes shut, but I'm not asleep, I'm cognizant. If I have music playing I can hear all the lyrics and remember which songs played, and I can't do that when I'm asleep. I also don't feel rested when I return to full consciousness, but I don't get bored or antsy in this state, and time goes by really quickly. I can't do it all the time, but it's great for travel when I can. I was able to put myself in this state most of the way there and back, so the trips were tolerable. Also the bus driver on the way back was pretty funny. As we were leaving, he told some jokes one of which was mildly (very mildly) sexist, so then he said, "don't worry ladies. I got something for you. I always got something for the ladies." And he busted out into some Neville Brothers-esque R&B singing. He had a pretty good voice too. It was hysterical.
[Not big on R & B, but this song is pretty damn good.]
The first night there we all had more than our fair share of drinks. Before dinner we were wandering around Times Square giggling like school girls. For some reason we ended up going into the M&M store where they sell a bunch of M&M and other Mars candy merchandise you'd have to pay me to take. Seriously, they only way I'd spend $30 to buy a fuzzy M&M backpack is if it came with a $50 bill in it. I do have to confess though, I waited in line to get my "color tested" by an M&M scan machine. It's a beam of light that reads your mood and tells you which M&M color you are, and what this means. (I was cream, by the way, which is fine by me as I've always loved that Price song.) While waiting I turned to T and said, "well, this is just about the stupidest thing I've ever done." The middle-aged, African-American lady waiting in front of me started laughing, then turned around, nudged me and said, "He-he... ain't that the truth!"
After the M&M store, we went to this Cuban restaurant that had excellent food, and a little live latino music, to boot. Next up was a comedy club "Ha!" (a name which one of the comedians ripped, "It's like naming a restaurant, 'Mmm'"). I've been to a comedy club just like this on a previous trip to NYC (perhaps the same one), and I told T beforehand, "None of the comedians will be all that funny, but we'll all laugh and have a good time because we're there live, and they serve alcohol." I was spot on. Also, we were sitting in the front so I thought that we'd get made fun of a bunch, but we didn't really -- just a little bit. Actually, T said something funny to one of the comedians. He was asking about dogs and he asked T if he had any, and T said, "yes" and the comedian said, "what kind" and T said "mixed." So the comdian said, "A mutt huh, what's it a mix of?" And T said, "two other mutts." I laughed pretty hard. T's delivery was great, and he wasn't trying to be funny. He was just being T, which was precisely why I thought it was so funny. (All his friends reading this know what I'm talking about.) After the show we went back to the hotel and T and I ate mixed nuts and watched St and L lay on the bed, occasionally spank one another, and converse in a language that's a mixture of hysterical giggling and nonsense. It was pretty comical. We then faded off while watching George Lopez do stand-up on HBO (funny how even in a city like New York where things go on 24-7 watching HBO still seems like a real treat). He was pretty comical also. I guess it was all around a comical evening.
Part II
The next morning I was not feeling terrific. I suspect nobody was. T managed to get up early for the conference. St inadvertenly tricked me into getting up earlier than I usually do. She was up reading the paper, and I groggily asked her what time it was while laying in bed. She told me noon, then said, "just kinding it's about 9." But I didn't hear the last part, so I was thinking, "wow, I slept in until noon. I had better get a move on it." So I got out of bed and hustled to take a shower and get dressed, lest I waste the day in NYC. When I was all ready to go for the day I looked at the clock and it was 9:15. I was really confused for a little while.
While T was at the conference St, L and I walked through Central Park. It was a fabulous morning. We climbed up this little rock and looked out over the park. A bunch of people were out ice skating on this rink below us. It was nice. We walked up through Strawberry Fields, John Lennon's memorial site, to the Natural History Museum. Living a 20 minute metro ride from the Smithsonians I've become spoiled and now have trouble paying for a ticket to a museum, but it was really cool. St is way into animals in general, and L is way into sea creatures, so they were both loving it. I'm way into football and Scrabble, but it was still enjoyable for me. We had the typical big museum experience where you start out as if you're going to see everything, so you're just moseying through it, and then gradually you start to get hungry and tired. You look at the map and realize you're only about a fourth of the way through all the exhibits, and think, "Shit. We gotta speed this up." You end up picking out the few exhibits that you really don't want to miss and bypassing most the other stuff. My favorite part was this early man replication. It's two monkey-people walking side-by-side, a male and a female, both anatomically correct, and it looks hilarious. The best thing about it though is that the male has his arm around the female. As if he just strolled up on her, and was like, "Hey baby, where's the fire?" (Although that was probably a serious question back then. "No, really, where's the fire? I'm cold as Hell and gotta cook this beast I just killed.") Two cave people looking like they're strolling down the lane on a first date with their junk flopping in the breeze -- not even the most serious of anthropologists could resist sniggering at that, at least a little. Even Maraget Mead would've cracked a smile.
Upon leaving the museum, to our dismay, we realized that our beautiful day had turned into one that was blustery and quite cold. We divided the unpleasant walk back to the hotel with lunch at this little Japanese restaurant. The sushi was terrific. Something about raw fish wrapped around rice, dipped into a sauce of soy and wasabi, really works for me. I love it. St and I were trying to show L how to eat with chopsticks. She couldn't really get the hang of it and a few minutes later the waiter came over and gave her these "training chopsticks" he had made with a piece of folded paper and a rubber band. It was pretty funny. It worked too. She ate with those for a while, but by the end she was so-so with the real ones.
Walking back from lunch we saw T on the street getting out of his conference for the day. We met T's "boss" D at an Irish pub and had a few Guinni. Then we just killed some time until dinner which was St's big event because we were going to a Vegan restaurant. D's girlfriend recommended this place, and it was terrific. I was amazed. If engine technology progressed at the same rate as fake meat technology we'd all be getting 100 miles to the gallon. I hadn't even heard of a veggy burger until I was in high school, and just ten years later at this place they have vegan meatloaf, chicken, shrimp, bacon, you name it. And it's good. And most of it tastes ridiculously like really meat. In fact, in some ways I prefer it to real meat. We got these buffalo wings that were super tasty, and you didn't have to eat around all the nasty gristle. The only problem with the meal was we got too much food. I was about to split.
After dinner we went to a few bars (one of which was named "The Slaughtered Lamb" not very fitting to follow a vegan restaurant -- it smelled like poo though, literally, so we didn't stay long), but everybody was pretty worn out. I seriously would've been content to fall asleep immediately after dinner I was so tired. We went back to the hotel and watched some Jackass while in bed. I tried to get everybody to watch some porn, but nobody was down. That's only half a joke. St was flipping through channels and on 56 there was something risque and a woman said, "sometimes the men just want to lie and chat." Now, in my apartment VH1 is channel 56, so in my tired state I was thinking it was VH1 in the hotel as well. I said, "wait, go back to that." So St flips back and this scantly-clad woman is cuddling with this naked man (you can't see any genitalia). I had just read an article about "snuggle parties" where a bunch of adults get together to snuggle, and for some reason -- again I'll blame my tired state -- I'm thinking this is some sort of somewhat legitimate news story on snuggle parties, or the naked counterpart to snuggle parties. I'm intrigued, so when St says, "I can't hang" and turns it again I protest, "no, wait, go back to that." So she flips back to it. Now it starts getting really graphic, and St is like, "DG, I'm changing it." And I say, "no, wait a minute, I wanna see where this is going." L chimes in, "I think it's pretty obvious." Then things start happening that they can't show on VH1 and everything dawns on me. Of course, it's not VH1, this is the soft porn channel at the hotel. I've just been adamantly trying to get everybody to watch soft porn. Now that's comical.
The next morning I wake up and ride the bus back. The bus driven by the self-proclaimed, bus-driving comedian.
(This turned out to be a pretty long entry, so I've divided it up into two.)
Part I
I went to New York city this weekend. It was fun, a lot of fun, actually. T was attending some sort of Montessori conference there, so I went up to visit him and St and St's West Chester best friend, L. It's such a huge city. It works out nicely. Each time I go I end up hanging out in a different part of town then I have before. Last time I spent almost all my trip in Brooklyn, this time it was all in Manhattan. We had an excellent, reasonably affordable hotel room right near Time Square (big props to St on that one, you're check is in the mail, by the way.)
The worst part about going to NYC is the 4 hour bus trips in each direction. Although, when I'm tired, but not in a comfortable enough position to actually fall asleep, sometimes I can get myself into a state which I can best describe as trance-like. I have my eyes shut, but I'm not asleep, I'm cognizant. If I have music playing I can hear all the lyrics and remember which songs played, and I can't do that when I'm asleep. I also don't feel rested when I return to full consciousness, but I don't get bored or antsy in this state, and time goes by really quickly. I can't do it all the time, but it's great for travel when I can. I was able to put myself in this state most of the way there and back, so the trips were tolerable. Also the bus driver on the way back was pretty funny. As we were leaving, he told some jokes one of which was mildly (very mildly) sexist, so then he said, "don't worry ladies. I got something for you. I always got something for the ladies." And he busted out into some Neville Brothers-esque R&B singing. He had a pretty good voice too. It was hysterical.
[Not big on R & B, but this song is pretty damn good.]
The first night there we all had more than our fair share of drinks. Before dinner we were wandering around Times Square giggling like school girls. For some reason we ended up going into the M&M store where they sell a bunch of M&M and other Mars candy merchandise you'd have to pay me to take. Seriously, they only way I'd spend $30 to buy a fuzzy M&M backpack is if it came with a $50 bill in it. I do have to confess though, I waited in line to get my "color tested" by an M&M scan machine. It's a beam of light that reads your mood and tells you which M&M color you are, and what this means. (I was cream, by the way, which is fine by me as I've always loved that Price song.) While waiting I turned to T and said, "well, this is just about the stupidest thing I've ever done." The middle-aged, African-American lady waiting in front of me started laughing, then turned around, nudged me and said, "He-he... ain't that the truth!"
After the M&M store, we went to this Cuban restaurant that had excellent food, and a little live latino music, to boot. Next up was a comedy club "Ha!" (a name which one of the comedians ripped, "It's like naming a restaurant, 'Mmm'"). I've been to a comedy club just like this on a previous trip to NYC (perhaps the same one), and I told T beforehand, "None of the comedians will be all that funny, but we'll all laugh and have a good time because we're there live, and they serve alcohol." I was spot on. Also, we were sitting in the front so I thought that we'd get made fun of a bunch, but we didn't really -- just a little bit. Actually, T said something funny to one of the comedians. He was asking about dogs and he asked T if he had any, and T said, "yes" and the comedian said, "what kind" and T said "mixed." So the comdian said, "A mutt huh, what's it a mix of?" And T said, "two other mutts." I laughed pretty hard. T's delivery was great, and he wasn't trying to be funny. He was just being T, which was precisely why I thought it was so funny. (All his friends reading this know what I'm talking about.) After the show we went back to the hotel and T and I ate mixed nuts and watched St and L lay on the bed, occasionally spank one another, and converse in a language that's a mixture of hysterical giggling and nonsense. It was pretty comical. We then faded off while watching George Lopez do stand-up on HBO (funny how even in a city like New York where things go on 24-7 watching HBO still seems like a real treat). He was pretty comical also. I guess it was all around a comical evening.
Part II
The next morning I was not feeling terrific. I suspect nobody was. T managed to get up early for the conference. St inadvertenly tricked me into getting up earlier than I usually do. She was up reading the paper, and I groggily asked her what time it was while laying in bed. She told me noon, then said, "just kinding it's about 9." But I didn't hear the last part, so I was thinking, "wow, I slept in until noon. I had better get a move on it." So I got out of bed and hustled to take a shower and get dressed, lest I waste the day in NYC. When I was all ready to go for the day I looked at the clock and it was 9:15. I was really confused for a little while.
While T was at the conference St, L and I walked through Central Park. It was a fabulous morning. We climbed up this little rock and looked out over the park. A bunch of people were out ice skating on this rink below us. It was nice. We walked up through Strawberry Fields, John Lennon's memorial site, to the Natural History Museum. Living a 20 minute metro ride from the Smithsonians I've become spoiled and now have trouble paying for a ticket to a museum, but it was really cool. St is way into animals in general, and L is way into sea creatures, so they were both loving it. I'm way into football and Scrabble, but it was still enjoyable for me. We had the typical big museum experience where you start out as if you're going to see everything, so you're just moseying through it, and then gradually you start to get hungry and tired. You look at the map and realize you're only about a fourth of the way through all the exhibits, and think, "Shit. We gotta speed this up." You end up picking out the few exhibits that you really don't want to miss and bypassing most the other stuff. My favorite part was this early man replication. It's two monkey-people walking side-by-side, a male and a female, both anatomically correct, and it looks hilarious. The best thing about it though is that the male has his arm around the female. As if he just strolled up on her, and was like, "Hey baby, where's the fire?" (Although that was probably a serious question back then. "No, really, where's the fire? I'm cold as Hell and gotta cook this beast I just killed.") Two cave people looking like they're strolling down the lane on a first date with their junk flopping in the breeze -- not even the most serious of anthropologists could resist sniggering at that, at least a little. Even Maraget Mead would've cracked a smile.
Upon leaving the museum, to our dismay, we realized that our beautiful day had turned into one that was blustery and quite cold. We divided the unpleasant walk back to the hotel with lunch at this little Japanese restaurant. The sushi was terrific. Something about raw fish wrapped around rice, dipped into a sauce of soy and wasabi, really works for me. I love it. St and I were trying to show L how to eat with chopsticks. She couldn't really get the hang of it and a few minutes later the waiter came over and gave her these "training chopsticks" he had made with a piece of folded paper and a rubber band. It was pretty funny. It worked too. She ate with those for a while, but by the end she was so-so with the real ones.
Walking back from lunch we saw T on the street getting out of his conference for the day. We met T's "boss" D at an Irish pub and had a few Guinni. Then we just killed some time until dinner which was St's big event because we were going to a Vegan restaurant. D's girlfriend recommended this place, and it was terrific. I was amazed. If engine technology progressed at the same rate as fake meat technology we'd all be getting 100 miles to the gallon. I hadn't even heard of a veggy burger until I was in high school, and just ten years later at this place they have vegan meatloaf, chicken, shrimp, bacon, you name it. And it's good. And most of it tastes ridiculously like really meat. In fact, in some ways I prefer it to real meat. We got these buffalo wings that were super tasty, and you didn't have to eat around all the nasty gristle. The only problem with the meal was we got too much food. I was about to split.
After dinner we went to a few bars (one of which was named "The Slaughtered Lamb" not very fitting to follow a vegan restaurant -- it smelled like poo though, literally, so we didn't stay long), but everybody was pretty worn out. I seriously would've been content to fall asleep immediately after dinner I was so tired. We went back to the hotel and watched some Jackass while in bed. I tried to get everybody to watch some porn, but nobody was down. That's only half a joke. St was flipping through channels and on 56 there was something risque and a woman said, "sometimes the men just want to lie and chat." Now, in my apartment VH1 is channel 56, so in my tired state I was thinking it was VH1 in the hotel as well. I said, "wait, go back to that." So St flips back and this scantly-clad woman is cuddling with this naked man (you can't see any genitalia). I had just read an article about "snuggle parties" where a bunch of adults get together to snuggle, and for some reason -- again I'll blame my tired state -- I'm thinking this is some sort of somewhat legitimate news story on snuggle parties, or the naked counterpart to snuggle parties. I'm intrigued, so when St says, "I can't hang" and turns it again I protest, "no, wait, go back to that." So she flips back to it. Now it starts getting really graphic, and St is like, "DG, I'm changing it." And I say, "no, wait a minute, I wanna see where this is going." L chimes in, "I think it's pretty obvious." Then things start happening that they can't show on VH1 and everything dawns on me. Of course, it's not VH1, this is the soft porn channel at the hotel. I've just been adamantly trying to get everybody to watch soft porn. Now that's comical.
The next morning I wake up and ride the bus back. The bus driven by the self-proclaimed, bus-driving comedian.
Jesus- thank you for this memory.
ReplyDelete-SB
:) Hard to believe that was six years ago.
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