Well, not quite yet. But I did buy Kitty a leash and collar today at Petland Discounts. In a fit of pre-commute boredom -- and at Nina's repeat urging -- I did some Googling of Kitty's... condition. You know, the stomach thing. The Internet said that she was probably bored and depressed, and that getting her outside might help with that. Now, don't get me wrong, I done knew Kitty's emotions were in a tangle, but I guess I didn't think there was much to be done about it. The Internet said, though, that it might help to let her go outside, attached to a leash, maybe. So on Saturday I hoofed it over to Petland and got a leash and collar, a cute little red nylon dealie with a tiny bell on it. After fretting about the exertions that would be necessary to get her into it, I tried a little test run, slipping the thing over her head. To my surprise, it worked -- I got the leash on on my first try, tightened it, the works, and Kitty wasn't bothered at all. Until she got up and started walking around, that is, and couldn't figure out where the tinkle-tinkle of the bell was coming from. It drove her nuts! She was chasing her tail and pawing at invisible things in the air and seemed generally miserable. So I cornered her in the bedroom and slipped the collar off. And now she won't go near it.
To the extent possible, I kicked off my summer on Friday by heading down to South Street Seaport to go see Wire with my friend Peter from work. It was Friday, we were still there at 9 o'clock, so I just stood up and said, hey, who wants to go see Wire? It was a beautiful night, and even though we go there basically at the end, we were able to get pretty close. Unfortunately, Wire wasn't really that good. I'm not super familiar with their ouvre, but I'd liked the stuff of theirs they'd put on their MySpace, and, live, they just seemed kind of sloppy and over the hill. The lead singer had this laptop he was using for something on stage, and we knew that the concert was over -- after the second encore -- because he kind of snuck back up to collect it.
I've been working real late lately, babies, and it's been making me kind of miserable. I guess experiencing a game industry "crunch" is something I wanted to try -- I mean, this whole job is kind of like Internet startup fantasy camp for me -- but when it goes on for a month or more, it's just... unpleasant. Like, there's this persistent, dull discomfort, and you're tired all the time. But, yeah, so I was getting home around 12:30 the other night, and as I was walking across the Burger King parking lot, I saw these three guys kind of circling each other. Two of them had their fists raised, and the other one was kind of refereeing and giving color commentary. And then they started throwing punches. I wasn't sure quite what to do -- the Burger King was full of patrons, there was even a fourth guy who was leaning in the exit, smoking a cigarette and observing the whole scene. But one of the fighters seemed like he was overmatched, and started really getting pummeled up against the side of a car, while the hovering commentator yelled, "Choke him! Choke the fuck out of him!" It occurred to me that this wasn't a friendly round of midnight street boxing, and I debated calling 911. Was it the kind of affair the cops should get involved in? If they took one or both of the kids off to jail, would that ultimately be for the best? The matter was sort of resolved for me by the sound of sirens on 4th Ave. as I headed up 41st.
When I got home, I popped in Marathon Man -- part of my new watch-it-in-four-weeks-no-matter-what Netflix policy -- and allowed myself to get freaked out by the Laurence Olivier character. The Netflix blurb says that the movie follows Dustin Hoffman's character as he "turns from pacifist to street-smart cynic" -- which one am I? That's not what the movie is about, anyway.
I told Eve about the experience the next evening over drinks and mutton at Sheep Station. Was I too old, I wondered, to let some teenagers settle their grievances in peace? Turns out she'd witnessed a knife fight over a bicycle on the subway ride down to meet me, during that long bit before any station after the D gets into Brooklyn over the bridge. So my story was sort of tame by comparison.
The previous Friday I'd gone over to Aanie's house after work to play Wii with Nina and her and Brooke. Aanie and Brooke have a copy of Wii Fit, and they created Miis for me and Nina, so we spent a while getting in shape. My "Wii Fit Age," as determined by my ability to balance on the stupid plastic pad, is 43! We tried out some skiing games and the hula hoop game and I kind of sucked at all of them, so then I was like, let me take a crack at the push-up activity, I'll rock at that. It turns out the push-up mode is fucking brutal! You have to do them extra slow, with your hands unnaturally close together, and in between repetitions you have to sort of twist yourself around and balance on a single hand. I made it through all six reps, but it was really hard!
And the next evening I was so sore that I couldn't sleep at all! Everything hurt, and I just tossed and turned all night. The next day I couldn't really muster the energy or enthusiasm to do anything, so Nina and I made a pilgrimage over to Brooklyn Bridge Park to take a look at the Telectroscope. It's a faux-implementation of a hoax that some guy was pushing around the turn of the century for making a mirrored tunnel from New York to London to foster camaraderie and understanding between Americans and Brit-Faces. This version works via some kind of digital video hookup, but the whole thing is molded to look like an industrial-age brass telescope exploding up out of the pier. It was around midnight in London by the time we got to the head of the line. A cheeky, sotted limey kept threatening to moon us, eliciting titters from all the girls.
After that we ate dinner.
I'm just re-reading this entry and it's not that exciting.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
The Ice Saints
Last Saturday, as I was returning home from picking up some dry cleaning, a fire truck passed me on 5th Avenue. When I got to the corner of my block, I saw why -- there was a guy collapsed on the street right smack in front of Super Pollo Latino II. He was a well-dressed dude, with a dark shirt and a black sports jacket on. He was out cold. A small crowd had gathered around him, and the firemen were sort of prodding him. I'd been planning to go for a run, and it seemed like a poor omen for a guy to have what looked like an ataque de corazón a hundred feet from my front door, but I put on the old track pants, running shoes, knee braces, and boxer briefs (for my cojones, you know) anyway and headed out. When I got back to the corner five minutes later, the guy and the firemen and the gawking multitude were gone, as the thing had never happened. Across the street in Sunset Park, though, there was a small-scale festival going on -- a small cohort of Latin dancers wearing long, flowing skirts and these enormous, fluttering, disc-shaped hats made out bright feathers in a bunch of different colors were doing their thing on the promenade. They danced non-stop for four of my circuits around the park. Probably longer than that, too, but that was when my stomach started doing a thing and I had to go home and sweat and shiver on the toilet.
The folks at 680 Degraw St. threw, as planned, their final BBQ. I think the idea was for it to be a rager, a house party to end all house parties (and to at least spoil the property value a tad for the gimlet-eyed landlord), but it ended up being a rather sedate affair, just sitting around on what remained of the sod and schmoozing over Tedburgers. Maybe we're getting too old to rage? To his credit, Ted did put on his hat. I cooked a variation on Jurney's famous enchilada casserole -- a variation because I lost the original recipe and went with the one I found here. Despite my misgivings about the authenticity of "Mexican Tomato Sauce," it came out really tasty, although, as Eve pointed out, the blue corn tortillas I made it with turned a sort of icky gray color when I baked them. The one weird thing that happened was that a friend of a friend, so to speak, of one of the hosts showed up and got kind of... I don't know, crazy. This person, well, we couldn't tell if she'd simply had too much to drink (she wasn't really drunking it up) or if she was actually emotionally disturbed, but she was saying strange, aggressive things to people she'd barely met, and we didn't really know what to do with her. Eventually, she was escorted home by an acquaintance, but it sort of left an odd taste in everyone's mouth. It also reminded me this game that I and my freshman year floormates at Wesleyan used to play when we got high, in which the group would confront a single target and attempt to talk him down from a ledge he wasn't standing on: "Dude, are you okay? You are creeping everyone out. Look, just calm down, we'll get you to the Health Center." Great game.
On a whim at work I shelled the twenty bucks to download a copy of the Penny Arcade video game, On The Rain Slick Precipice Of Darkness. It's actually pretty good! It plays a lot like one of those old Tim Schafer / Ron Gilbert adventure games, except that there's a combat / role-playing component. The dialogue is funny, the art is swell, and there's this small-scale avatar customization system that kind of surprised me with how well it worked. The characters (and game) are a combination of 3-D and line art. You customize your character in 3-D at the beginning -- facial features, body shape, clothes, etc. -- and your choices are reflected in the line art cut scenes as well as the 3-D gameplay. It looks really sweet. That being said, there are a few frustrating, technical gameplay issues -- most of which I would probably be unaware of were I not in the middle of implementing this kind of thing right now -- such as not being sure where you're supposed to click to pathfind to a particular part of the screen and not always walking closer to an object before examining it. Overall, though, it's swell. I'm about three hours in and I've already collected like 14 pounds of hobo meat. That's a thing you do.
I spent hours today lazing around in Sunset Park, laptopping some Free Software documentation and enjoying the wonderful weather. Oh yeah, and this is after I woke up at two in the afternoon. It's been one of those days: Resty. Nina went to pick up some laundry after dark, though, and there was a guy passed out on the street -- possibly dead, she thinks -- people screaming and hooting outside La Campesina, a woman throwing up ("Like, a constant flow") between two parked cars. It gets wild out here.
Started reading, at Tom's behest, the first book in that George R. R. Martin series. I like it, but -- and maybe this is like the time I was disappointed that my archeology class wasn't going to cover dinosaurs -- I thought there'd be more elves and, you know, spells and shit. There is a dwarf, and, yeah, he's kind of the coolest character, but he's just a plain old little handicapped, no magic involved.
The folks at 680 Degraw St. threw, as planned, their final BBQ. I think the idea was for it to be a rager, a house party to end all house parties (and to at least spoil the property value a tad for the gimlet-eyed landlord), but it ended up being a rather sedate affair, just sitting around on what remained of the sod and schmoozing over Tedburgers. Maybe we're getting too old to rage? To his credit, Ted did put on his hat. I cooked a variation on Jurney's famous enchilada casserole -- a variation because I lost the original recipe and went with the one I found here. Despite my misgivings about the authenticity of "Mexican Tomato Sauce," it came out really tasty, although, as Eve pointed out, the blue corn tortillas I made it with turned a sort of icky gray color when I baked them. The one weird thing that happened was that a friend of a friend, so to speak, of one of the hosts showed up and got kind of... I don't know, crazy. This person, well, we couldn't tell if she'd simply had too much to drink (she wasn't really drunking it up) or if she was actually emotionally disturbed, but she was saying strange, aggressive things to people she'd barely met, and we didn't really know what to do with her. Eventually, she was escorted home by an acquaintance, but it sort of left an odd taste in everyone's mouth. It also reminded me this game that I and my freshman year floormates at Wesleyan used to play when we got high, in which the group would confront a single target and attempt to talk him down from a ledge he wasn't standing on: "Dude, are you okay? You are creeping everyone out. Look, just calm down, we'll get you to the Health Center." Great game.
On a whim at work I shelled the twenty bucks to download a copy of the Penny Arcade video game, On The Rain Slick Precipice Of Darkness. It's actually pretty good! It plays a lot like one of those old Tim Schafer / Ron Gilbert adventure games, except that there's a combat / role-playing component. The dialogue is funny, the art is swell, and there's this small-scale avatar customization system that kind of surprised me with how well it worked. The characters (and game) are a combination of 3-D and line art. You customize your character in 3-D at the beginning -- facial features, body shape, clothes, etc. -- and your choices are reflected in the line art cut scenes as well as the 3-D gameplay. It looks really sweet. That being said, there are a few frustrating, technical gameplay issues -- most of which I would probably be unaware of were I not in the middle of implementing this kind of thing right now -- such as not being sure where you're supposed to click to pathfind to a particular part of the screen and not always walking closer to an object before examining it. Overall, though, it's swell. I'm about three hours in and I've already collected like 14 pounds of hobo meat. That's a thing you do.
I spent hours today lazing around in Sunset Park, laptopping some Free Software documentation and enjoying the wonderful weather. Oh yeah, and this is after I woke up at two in the afternoon. It's been one of those days: Resty. Nina went to pick up some laundry after dark, though, and there was a guy passed out on the street -- possibly dead, she thinks -- people screaming and hooting outside La Campesina, a woman throwing up ("Like, a constant flow") between two parked cars. It gets wild out here.
Started reading, at Tom's behest, the first book in that George R. R. Martin series. I like it, but -- and maybe this is like the time I was disappointed that my archeology class wasn't going to cover dinosaurs -- I thought there'd be more elves and, you know, spells and shit. There is a dwarf, and, yeah, he's kind of the coolest character, but he's just a plain old little handicapped, no magic involved.
Friday, May 02, 2008
World Have Your Say
Round-up of available Chelsea-area breakfast sandwiches:
When we entered, crossing the colonnade to the orchard, there were DJs spinning "Anime-themed J-Pop and J-Rock" -- at the moment we showed up they were playing a song that I recognized as being by Maximum The Hormone called "What's up, people?!" which I recognized because it's the theme song to Death Note on Adult Swim.
Yeah, so I watch that show sometimes. Can I take a second to say what a creepy, mean little wallow it is? In principle, I guess you could take it as a sort of dramatic experiment in telling a story about a protagonist who's utterly, inhumanly loathsome, but that doesn't make it any easier or less icky to watch. Plus, as M-Biddy warned me when he visited a few months ago, something happens part-way through the series (i.e., the episodes that Adult Swim just put up) that kind of snuffs out whatever joy remained in the exercise of watching it. Am I going to stop watching? I, uh... probably not.
But, yeah, so we bought some hot dogs and a Sapporo and then we ran into Eve's roommate Alicia and her friend, who reminded us that there was a koi pond full of turtles. So we hurried off to go look at and take pictures of the turtles. There were a bunch of them, prostrate on the rocks, stretching their little heads up at the sun. I knelt down to get a good shot of one of them with the ol' SD450, and a wasp landed on my shutter finger. I tried to blow it off, but it seemed oblivious -- even when I tried to kind of rotate my finger to wipe it off onto the camera body it hung on, like a lazy cat being dislodged from a lap -- and so I had to wait while it gave itself a short bath, its weird little vertical beak opening and closing as it scrubbed its head and thorax. And then it flew off. As I mentioned to Nina, I had resigned myself to getting stung, but I'm glad I didn't.
Later on, the hot dogs started to bother us... internally, so we went home. I was exhausted! And my calves were sore for a couple days afterwards. Looks like I've got some "body work" to do before summer.
- 23rd & 6th - There's a guy with one of those bagel carts that also has a small grill, there. One egg on a small Portuguese-style roll with salt, pepper, and a liberal amount of butter runs you $1.25 and tastes pretty good. Hard to beat.
- 666 6th Ave. - They probably make plain egg sandwiches, but if you're going to a deli, I feel like you should go with some kind of meat topping (bacon costs $2.50, I think; with sausage it's $2.75). Too pricey to have every day, but everything is cooked well and doled out in generous helpings (ketchup included, unfortunately, even when you ask for just a little bit), so it's perfect when you feel like you deserve a treat just for coming into work.
- Coffee Shop - This place is a little hole in the wall -- really! It's practically a closet -- on 21st St. near 6th Ave. I think it's run by Indian people, but they make conventional diner-y grill food. Two eggs on a roll costs $2.00, which is a little bit rich for my blood, but the atmosphere of the place is kind of homey and the eggs were scrambled just so. So.
- 17th & 7th - Another guy in a propane-fueled bagel wagon. Joe Stroll turned me onto him -- "He makes a sausage, egg, and cheese with real sausage for only $2.00!" -- so I checked it out. It ended up being $2.50, and the sausage was actually pretty much a hot dog, but I managed to keep it down, so it gets points for that?
When we entered, crossing the colonnade to the orchard, there were DJs spinning "Anime-themed J-Pop and J-Rock" -- at the moment we showed up they were playing a song that I recognized as being by Maximum The Hormone called "What's up, people?!" which I recognized because it's the theme song to Death Note on Adult Swim.
Yeah, so I watch that show sometimes. Can I take a second to say what a creepy, mean little wallow it is? In principle, I guess you could take it as a sort of dramatic experiment in telling a story about a protagonist who's utterly, inhumanly loathsome, but that doesn't make it any easier or less icky to watch. Plus, as M-Biddy warned me when he visited a few months ago, something happens part-way through the series (i.e., the episodes that Adult Swim just put up) that kind of snuffs out whatever joy remained in the exercise of watching it. Am I going to stop watching? I, uh... probably not.
But, yeah, so we bought some hot dogs and a Sapporo and then we ran into Eve's roommate Alicia and her friend, who reminded us that there was a koi pond full of turtles. So we hurried off to go look at and take pictures of the turtles. There were a bunch of them, prostrate on the rocks, stretching their little heads up at the sun. I knelt down to get a good shot of one of them with the ol' SD450, and a wasp landed on my shutter finger. I tried to blow it off, but it seemed oblivious -- even when I tried to kind of rotate my finger to wipe it off onto the camera body it hung on, like a lazy cat being dislodged from a lap -- and so I had to wait while it gave itself a short bath, its weird little vertical beak opening and closing as it scrubbed its head and thorax. And then it flew off. As I mentioned to Nina, I had resigned myself to getting stung, but I'm glad I didn't.
Later on, the hot dogs started to bother us... internally, so we went home. I was exhausted! And my calves were sore for a couple days afterwards. Looks like I've got some "body work" to do before summer.
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