The Big Vacation, Day Four

Billy cancelled his party on account of the transit strike, which sucks. I was kind of counting on having something to do, but can see why he'd wanna put it off. Now, as per Katharine's advice, I'm doing the vacation thing -- I bought some Doritos and a pint of Ben & Jerry's Peanut Butter Cup ice cream (as far as I can tell, no flavor is better than this) and I'm chilling out watching David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers, which, sad to say, is not quite as creepy as I'd hoped. There is, however, a pretty hot sex scene involving rubber tubing and various types of calipers in the gynecologist's office. Okay, I finished watching the movie -- depression-city, and not quite the body-horror diddle-fest I was hoping for. Turns out it's based on a real set of gynecologist twins named Steven and Cyril Marcus who totally went bananas and killed themselves with barbituates.

Here's an interesting thing: The saga of tuffytuffins. The other day I got an IM from somebody I'd never heard of before, but whose screen name I kind of thought I recognized on account of it reminding me of this joke that Tom and Maggie used to use to "wind me up" -- so I sort of played along, thinking that the person would eventually reveal themselves to one of my friends (or one of their friends). That's not quite what happened (edited for the salient points):

(23:13:16) tuffytuffins: Hello.
(23:14:24) Nintendo Julian: hello

(23:14:52) tuffytuffins: Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?
(23:15:25) Nintendo Julian: is that the same thing as...
(23:15:27) Nintendo Julian: ...no
(23:16:04) tuffytuffins: Well, I have.
(23:16:21) Nintendo Julian: how was that
(23:16:32) Nintendo Julian: you find out what you need to find out about yourself?
(23:16:33) tuffytuffins: He looked like the blond guy from Queer Eye
(23:17:06) tuffytuffins: Is that what I was supposed to be doing? Finding out about myself? Because I was just kind of dancing.

Ted and I saw King Kong last night after finishing up our Christmas shopping. The theater -- and Times Square -- was practically deserted, or at least as empty as I'd ever seen it except maybe for that dumb movie Vanilla Sky. It took me more than two hours to get into Manhattan, thanks to the strike -- I was worried that by staying at home I was missing out on the official "transit strike" experience, but no longer. The transit strike experience is basically all about sitting in traffic for two hours. So I was late meeting Ted, but he was gracious in his irritation. We went shopping at the Virgin Mega-store, which, did you know, has this weird little movie theater in the basement that plays strange foreign short films? We didn't see any of them. I bought a present for The Rase and Ted picked up some stuff for his family, and then we went to go see King Kong at the big AMC 25-screen theater around the corner, stuffing some contraband McDonalds hamburgers into Ted's messenger bag before going in.

The theater was practically empty, which seemed to give the impression to the two latin types sitting next to me that it was totally cool to talk the whole time, literally. Also, there was a real live homeless person sleeping across the three seats behind us, and during the opening credits he kept sort of wheezing and snuffling, which made me think, before I turned around and realized he was a homelo, that it was some funny person making monkey noises for a laugh. The movie was okay -- Andy Serkis did a great job with the monkey poses and facial expressions, but Jack Black... he's no Laurence Olivier. And the whole thing is 90 minutes too long. And what the fuck does it mean?

(23:20:09) tuffytuffins: Do you believe stuffed animals can be art?
(23:20:48) Nintendo Julian: Yes, of course. Case in point: The beanie-baby named Pinchers The Crab
(23:21:07) tuffytuffins: Exactly my point. Beanie Babies were my inspiration.
(23:21:15) tuffytuffins: That's what I do. I create stuffed animals
(23:21:24) Nintendo Julian: Out of what do you create them>
(23:22:21) tuffytuffins: Whatever materials are laying around. Maybe orange peels for stuffing. Maybe old underwear for lining. Once, I used cat hair.
(23:22:52) Nintendo Julian: Because, you know, whatever.
(23:23:05) Nintendo Julian: The orange peels keep the stuffed animal "moist" inside
(23:23:19) tuffytuffins: You have to give them souls. Otherwise they won't be art. Then they're just stuffed animals.
(23:23:31) Nintendo Julian: And the souls have to be gross is the other thing.

The cabbie for the ride home I shared with Ted was real talkative. After Ted got out of the cab, he asked me where I was from. I told him I grew up on the Bowery, and he said I had a strange accent, one that he couldn't place. "You go to school in California or something?" he asked. Then he asked what I do for a living, and when I told him I'm a programmer, he said, "I got a thing I want to sell on eBay -- I collect stamps, and I got $500,000 worth of stamps, you know from like 100 years ago, in an album at home. You could help me sell that?" That sounds like a lot of money, I said. I don't now if I can help you with that -- maybe you should go to eBay's web site and talk to one of the staff. "No, no, where do you live? I live in Williamsburg -- you could come to my house on Sunday and help me take a picture of the stamps and make a web site?"

(23:29:14) tuffytuffins: Would you like to subscribe to any magazines?
(23:29:21) tuffytuffins: I can get you a discount.
(23:29:42) Nintendo Julian: Which is your least popular magazine? I like to go my own way.
(23:30:17) tuffytuffins: People don't like the gardening ones. Do you have a "green thumb?"
(23:31:11) tuffytuffins: I also sell porn.
(23:31:19) Nintendo Julian: No thanks, Internet person.
(23:31:21) Nintendo Julian: None of that for me.
(23:31:31) tuffytuffins: There's lots to choose from.
(23:32:03) tuffytuffins: Do you want to know our least popular porn?
(23:32:21) tuffytuffins: Hold on. I'm checking
(23:32:56) tuffytuffins: Not child porn. That's pretty popular.
(23:33:11) tuffytuffins: Not midget porn. That gets a good college student following.
(23:34:00) Nintendo Julian: That's one of the roots of townie-student strife; a college moves into town and pretty soon the place is stinking with drifts of dead, naked midgets.
(23:34:14) tuffytuffins: Oh, the worst-selling category is "Tragedy Porn." Like sex in the aftermath of hurricanes and things.
(23:34:28) Nintendo Julian: I'd imagine most of that sex is pretty great, though.
(23:34:37) Nintendo Julian: Maybe it's the kind of thing that doesn't photograph well

So who is this person? She's got a sense of humor, I'll grant you, but boy does she not want to say who she is. I'll put the rest of our conversation into a separate entry. The transit strike is over!