Sunday, September 25, 2005

You Foodies Make Me Sick

Last night I dreamed that I'd traveled to Mars as part of a photojournalist expedition to locate and photograph what life forms there were that could be found. In the dream, Mars was really lush and cool, and a bunch of humans -- holdovers from previous expeditions -- had set up apartments there, so there were comfy accomodations for all of us. We did manage to find one apparently indigenous life form, a practically naked woman not disimilar to Pris, who took a bit of shine to me. Unfortunately, like Pris, she turned out to have a bit of a murderous side, so I had to high-tail it out of there before consumating our relationship. But I remember thinking, in the dream, that I'd have a lot of sweet pictures to post in my 'blog. But I don't.

A couple of restaurants:
  • Melt (not Milt, which would be pretty funny), over on Bergen and 5th was supposed to be great, according to my boss, who is an incorrigible "foodie," but the pistachio-encrusted cod drizzled with minty pea puree that I ordered kind of made me want to puke on Friday.
  • Bogota, on the other hand, on 5th and Degraw, is pretty goddamn great. My entree came with a side of cilantro-garlic mashed potatoes, which I'm pretty sure I want to eat every day.

Last week, K-Flo got me and some others into this movie premiere party for Jenny McCarthy's new movie, Dirty Love. The movie is apparently loathsome, but the party was fun and the drinks were free. And the venerable Gawker photog, Nikola Tamindzic, was there to take these pictures! We are not in any of them, but basically everyone who was sitting near us got snapped. Insider info: Jenny McCarthy is shorter in real life.

Yeah, so in my ongoing efforts to be more spontaneous, yesterday I was walking by the Prospect Park Green Market, and decided to take a stroll through the baked goods section. All of the stuff was pretty warm -- I'm thinking it was baked that morning -- and this peach pie with a cool vine-and-leaf dough filigree caught my eye, so I bought it. Well, Tom et. al. didn't seem that interested, so I brought it home to Sophie, and we had some with our evening tea. It fuckin' sucked! Very bitter and un-peachy and swarming with cloves and cinnamon. Sophie reckons whoever baked it used an apple pie recipe and just swapped in the peaches, and I reckon she's right.

I played a bunch of Sid Meier's Pirates! over at T's place -- Captain Jerk Jenkins managed to rescue his long-lost sister and uncle who'd been sold into slavery by the Marquis de Montalban, but then he got bored.

Sunday, September 18, 2005

The Five Points

So yesterday I went to -- or attempted to make it to -- five fuckin' parties. The schedule, in brief:
  • 2:00 PM: Chrissy Rodney's going off to UCLA for grad school, so his dad threw a goodbye / birthday party for him
  • 4:00 PM: My boss's engagement / housewarming party
  • 6:00 PM Dinner party at my friend Asta's house
  • Later: BBQ at Degraw St.
  • Later: Gabi's birthday party, more or less around the corner from the Degraw St. residence
Here's what actually happened: Got up to Chris' at around 3:00. There was a nice spread from Fairway, including that ketchup-and-mayo macaroni salad that Chris fell in love with on the trip to Newport. I had a whole bunch of that stuff. I left Chris' at 4:30ish, intending to take the 2/3 down to Borough Hall to walk to my boss's house. Unfortunately, the U.N. assembly had basically ruined all downtown train service in Manhattan, so I hitched the 1 to Chambers and then took a cab the rest of the way. When I got to my boss's place, I started feeling like that macaroni salad was going to come up on me. I pinched a startlingly large loaf, but it didn't seem to help. Around 6:30, I excused myself and left for Asta's in Astoria. By a stroke of good fortune, the G was just pulling in at Bergen St., and I took it to the end of the line, which, as bad luck would have it on the weekends, was three stops short of 36th St., where I needed to go. I waited for about 20 minutes for the V, which should have gotten me the rest of the way, except that there is no V service on the weekends at all. So I left the station, still feeling like I was going to puke, and wandered around the vicinity of Court Sq. looking for a car service in the rain. That place is a fucking wasteland! I pretty much gave up after about 10 minutes, since I was already practically 2 hours late, and turned right around and took the G all the way back to Smith and 9th, and walked from there to The Friends' place. I walked over the Gowanus Canal, which stinks, even in the rain. Got there at around 9:00 and called Razor to get Gabi's address. He was still at Pizza Box, but gave me her number, which I promptly forgot. I did have a great time at Degraw St., until Drunk Ted showed up. Jesus.

The Rase is here to stay! She moved in the weekend before last and promptly left for a week. But we are having a fun time, and she is a great roommate -- cleans, cooks, etc. -- except that she is replacing all of my comfy (but, yes, ugly) furniture with stuff she buys at IKEA. We watch a lot of movies, free rentals of which are provided by Luisa, a friend Tom made for me at the video store with the simple donation of a Rockstar Warriors t-shirt. Hook-up for life, she says. I'm married, but can I give you a hug, she also says.

So last weekend Katharine, Tom, Ted, Emma, Don, and I went on a pretty spontaneous road trip up to this cabin that Katharine's dad owns in Cape Cod, and I had a totally wonderful time. I ate a whole bunch of fried seafood, bacon and delicious grilled hamburgers; drank beers and blender drinks; and actually swam a fair amount. Even the drives up and down were fun (granted, Ted had to do literally all of the driving, everywhere -- we all just got to look out the window and sing along with the stereo). I think some photos are in order:

The cabin, starring Katharine and Tom


This is the first beach we went to; the water was stultifyingly frigid, but Tom and Ted managed to get themselves submerged for a few seconds


Out by the bay, found this dead horseshoe crab that, by some miracle, had not been picked clean of its legs and insides and stuff. So of course I had to lick it.


Another one of the crab, because you really care.


Most of the actual beach beaches on the Cape have these huge sand dunes (not sure if they're man-made or not) leading down to them


The beach we went to on the last day (Monday -- I took a long weekend) had a bit of a red tide problem, which I think you should be able to see here. Stank. I maintain that you're not supposed to get that seaweed on you, seeing as how it, oh, I don't know, exterminates all life, but Tom was chugging it down by the bucket


Sadly, on the last day, Ted died.

Ouch, the pizza I was eating burned my mouth. So what happened on the cape... there was some barfing, a little moaning; a big fat toothless dude with the demeanor of a 5-year-old came up to us while we were waiting for some clam chowder at P.J.'s and said that he'd driven 10,000 miles for their lobster rolls and couldn't believe the prices were so high this year. He'd have gotten two, he said, but now he'd just have to settle for one. Oh yeah, and I also went running in my new ASICS running shoes that I bought. T, T, and I ran about 5 miles up and back this lakeside road, the most I've ever run before, though I did have to stop a few times. The shoes are great -- they totally put a spring in my step, but the left one is still pinching the fuck out of my ankle.

Friday, September 02, 2005

The Weekend Web

Inspired by Maggles, here's what was going on on my 'blog a year ago (though this fucker is way more than a year old):
  • I was still doing "quality assurance."
  • I had just marched in the NYC protest of the 2004 RNC.
  • I had a girlfriend.
  • The Distillers were still together.
  • I still talked about boring computer shit all the time.
So.

I've been talking less political shit up on this piece over this last year. Mostly this is because the news is all so bad that it just makes me upset to write about it, but: Am I alone in feeling indignant about being asked to give money to a relief effort that should be shouldered primarily by the fucking government to which we pay our tax money? And furthermore to a relief effort that gives comfort to a gaggle of red states that voted in this government and thus deserve nothing but contempt as far as I'm concerned? It's time their citizens learned what it means to vote Republican in this day and age -- it's death, man. Politics is life and death. (And that's why I don't write about it in my 'blog.)

The Rase is moving in tomorrow, she says, around 1:30 PM. The apartment is not 100% ready, but nearly so -- I just have to finish cleaning grease off of some of the more grease-absorbent surfaces in the kitchen. I've put a lot of work into tidying this place up over the last few weeks. It's going to be weird sharing this space with another person again. Hopefully I can be a grown-up and not freak out about it.

Had a relatively crappy run tonight. My chest is still sort of tight from being sick earlier this week.

Last night I went up to visit Bill in his new apartment up on 105th St. The place is definitely nice, and they're getting a good deal on it, I can't remember how much. But he made me a delicious dinner and we played some Crash Bandicoot on the X-Box, which was awful. Billy kept saying he was impressed with the production, given that it had obviously been developed by some kind of bargain-bin company who'd acquired the rights to the character at a police auction or something, but maybe he's got a different definition of the word than I do, 'cuz every level looked like a gay disco with a particle effect infection. Lizards and wizards, don't you know. Saturday The Abyss play possibly their last show, as Chris is heading off to UCLA to run scam on their PhD program.