After the SPIN party, I walked over to C-Tav (that's Cherry Tavern to the rest of you) to meet up with my man Vin and hoist a few Tiajauan Specials (A can of Tecate and shot of bad bar tequilla for $4!) PS - Rarely do I point it out, but I'm really good at taking pictures where you totally can't tell that I took it. Let's hear it for my freakishly long arms!)
Speaking of pimping, this lady was walking around the party and people kept coming up to her and kissing her ass. After watching her run shit for like 20 minutes, I finally couldn't take the expense. I walked up to her and told her that I loved her outfit and asked if I could take a pic. She was like "But of course!" Afterwards, I was like, I hope this doesn't offend you, but who are you? She was like "Not at all, darling. I am Zelda. I'm a fashion designer." Does anyone out there know who this lady is? Or did someone's grandma get into some extra fabric and use it to escape a nearby nursing home?
After we got back to NYC and returned the rental car, I went home to take a nap (to sleep off the four straight hours of eating I'd done at the bat mitzvah). Later that night, I walked two blocks to M Bar to meet up with Bev Chase and her friend Jessica (who also went to our high school but was a few years younger and I didn't know her).
The lovely mohawked Daisy was the main chica promoting the gig and she made me look pimp by helping us cut the line and getting right on stage. Awww yeah, thanks mammacita!
When I was leaving Arelene's, Rina (who'd I'd met at the Stellastarr show a few weeks back) randomly called me and asked what I was up to. It turned out we were a few blocks from each other so we met up. When I told her that I'd just been at karaoke, she was like "Let's go sing karaoke!" And so we left Arlene's and went over to the karoake at Crash Mansion (that name is so gay I clench my ass every time I say it).
On Monday night I was walking home through the LES and remembered that Heavy Metal Karaoke was going on at Arlene's Grocery. I got there way to late to sing, but I watched a few people sing and ended up running into Matty - Tara's good friend who'd recently moved to NYC via Boston. We took this picture to send to Tara, but uh, I don't think I ever did. So hey Tara, check it out, I ran into Matty.
I have absolutely no recollection of where Vin and I went (and I don't recognize the place in the background) but apparently it was somewhere where in ran into sexy-ass Karen Marsala. I'm usually pretty good about remembering everything that happened on a certain night - maybe I should stop waiting more than seven months before I try to caption these, eh?
On Wednesday afternoon, Leah, who I'd met while out in Texas for SXSW, emailed me out of the blue and asked if I wanted to be her plus one for the Death Cab for Cutie show at Irving Plaza. I teased her about how when I'd first met her she walked into a tree...
Give them away to the lovely ladies after the open bar closes. Awwww, yeah. I was like the Robin Hood of Good Times when I delivered these two freebies to Julia and her friend. Fuck you, bar!
I ran into the lovely K.Marsala yet again. I explained to her that the open bar coming to an end wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It was just simply a matter of...
...she snuck me into the room above the stage where all the bands and cool kids get to hang out. (In TV this is called the green room, but I don't know if bands also call it that...whatever.) Anyway, back here I met Mandy's friend from high school and we talked about how we were both embarrassed by that fact that we were both so excited to be "backstage." Hahaha. Dorks.
Me, Jenny and Audrey. You may remember that Jenny was on my shit list for a while for bringing her coked-up friend into my bedroom at Sarah's birthday part and letting him steal my fucking sunglasses (DIE!). But she made up for it be giving me her VIP sticker so I could go back and forth from the balcony to the floor without getting hassled by the security dudes.
And then we went to some cool park to shoot the shit and catch up. After eating, we only had about ninety minutes to hang out before I had to head to the airport to catch my flight home.
After Emo's, we went down the street to some club that was having a werid dance party inside. Here's me posing with the place's creepy (yet artsy) naked chick wallpaper.
Later that night, Stephen and I headed out together and went to have some Sunday night drinks at Emo's where I ended up meeting Dan Sharky, who I'd been emailing with for years!
"Hey dude, that's a fresh hat! I've never seen a cowboy skull hat." "That's because I made it myself." "Wow! You made that? I can't believe it! It's like a work of art - that you can WEAR! Say, you wouldn't mind posing for a picture, would you?" Bwahahaha.
I studied the guy running this game for five minutes and watched him effortlessly climb the rope ladder without capsizing (the rope ladder is anchored on both ends by swivel joints. If you make any sudden moves, it's spins around and dumps you off). After I was confident I'd figured out the trick, I paid my $3 bucks and gave it a go.
Sarah was letting me stay in her room, I figured the least I could do in return would be win her a big stuffed panda or something. But to no avail. Shortly after she snapped this pic of my valiant attempt, I went down like a bag o' bricks. Damn you, you misleading (yet surprisingly nimble) Carny man!
This is Emily - she lives in Colorado now but is originally from Austin. She and I started emailing a while back through my website. She was in town visiting her friend...
(An overly excited) Me and Many at the show. Turned out the rumors were true, shortly after we'd gotten there (and shortly after I somehow convinced the nice bartender lady to fill my backpack with cans of free beer) we entered a huge airplane hangar and got to see...
...met up with Kim, a friend of Grant and Fatty's that now lives in Austin, to see Fatty's band play a quick set one of the SXSW venues. (I don't have any pictures of their show because I was taking pics of the band using Dan's camera).
My plane took off shortly after 9am. I was supposed to have a ninety minute layover in Chicago, and then I'd fly into Austin just in time to meet up with Sarah and company and see Mandy's band play.
As we were leaving, Fatty asked me to do my re-enactment of Grant Stoddard's brilliant mime of a girl he saw in a porno taking on two guys. I don't know if a picture does it justice, but the whole joke is that she doesn't know what to do with the 2nd guy's dick so she just hits herself in the head with it.
In order to move around in the game I was playing, you had to spin around with that thing on your had (which makes you look like a huge jackass - but hey, it's virtual fucking reality, dude! I might be a dork, but I'm a dork that just saved your palsy ass from INVADING GERMANS!). Unbeknownst to me at the time, Heather kept grabbing hold of the helmet and making it harder for me to move around. Very funny...YOU JERK! (Actually, it was really funny. I remember playing the game and almost breaking my neck trying to move the controller around thinking "Wow, this game is hard! It's like I'm actually having to move a real gun turret!)
We woke up early on Saturday morning, thought about skiing for a half-day, but when Fatty informed us that his pulled muscle still really hurt, it was the only excuse we needed to reset the alarm for noon and go back to sleep. We made it into the car a little before 1pm and started driving to Boston for Seth's surprise party.
After dinner, Liz left Fatty in the room to go make a phone call. We thought she would be gone longer and so when she came back early, she was given sneakpeek into what "macho" guys like Fatty and I do when there aren't ladies around we have to worry about showing off in front of.
First off, Friday was March 12th, so let me give a happy birthday shout out to little brother Brett! Happy TwoFour, playa! We got up a little before 8am and by 8:30 were were all dressed and ready for the mountain (PS - Hey Fatty, Captain Kirk just contacted me on his communicator - he wants his shirt back)
Here's me and the Fatster on the lift up for the first run. The first half of the day was great - but in the afternoon, the temperature dropped significantly and the mountain got super fogger. On one of his last runs, Fatty ate shit wicked hahd (that means he fell hard, for any of you not familiar with New England's quaint colloquialisms), and pulled a muscle pretty badly.
Check out my blinging imitation Oakley Blades. You're wet, aren't you? (PS - Sarah pointed out that my dad looks like the dad from the Family Guy and I haven't been able to look at him without smiling since).
After we were done clowning around, I got on the horn and started making arrangements to sell everything we'd just found to a "vintage boutique" in Williamsburg for $200,000.
...that's right. The one thing my mom forgot to mention was that all of the ski clothes that they had were purchased at the height of the eighties' fluorescent colors craze. Check us out! (You may need to dim your monitor's brightness setting in order to do so).
Now, neither Fatty or I had been skiing in several years and so we didn't have any ski gear. We were going to buy all new ski coats and gloves, but when I mentioned our upcoming trip to my mom she said "We have a whole trunk of ski gear - why don't you boys come out and visit and you can just borrow from us?" With Fatty recently having left his job as well, borrowing as opposed to buying made much more sense. So on Wednesday night, we took Fatty's car and drove out to my parents house in New Jersey. After we were done marveling at the veritable cornucopia that is my parent's well-stocked suburban fridge, it was time to get down to business. My mom took Fatty and I over to their trunk of ski clothes, but when she opened it, there was a horrifying blinding flash of light that seared our eyes and forced us to our knees...
Quicly became a duet. Er, sort of. This girl didn't sing with me, however, she did lay writing on the stage while I sang and did all sorts of crazy floor dancing. It significantly enhanced my performance.