Time is on my side, or else…

 

MY JOB IN A NUTSHELL

 

 

And to think that I missed out on so many things because I was so busy.  

Or was I?

I currently have over 900 emails in my Inbox -not from fans, but from work.  I’m awake, home on a Friday night and ready to go back to the office tomorrow, Saturday, to attempt to get that number down, while people in China struggle to get it up (the number of emails, I mean).

In the bathroom tonight, I thought twice about throwing away a Home Catalog because I suddenly found reading about the thread counts in towels and sheets fascinating.  And I wondered how the cotton yarn gets woven into sheets, but also gets knit into stretchy shirts like a white tee (I actually think I know this).  

I’m shocked that I’m even writing right now, at 20 to 2 in the morning, but A. Rebecca’s away in Vegas, and B. Work breeds work.  Hate admitting that, but it’s the only way I can explain why I’m still awake, doing the things I deem ”working”, like writing this blog, or reading about what a stock is, or  drawing a picture.

I don’t know how I feel about it yet and It’s a sick and twisted logic.  The more I work, the more tired I should be.  But instead, I’ve worked more this week than I have in the past 7 years at my company and yet I’m not yet tired cause all I’ve been doing is working.  

But oh how bad it is!  Days disappear and I haven’t written a book, or drawn a collage.  Weather changes and I hope for rain because it’s easier to be in during the rain.  And my girlfriend is the toughest part, because no one wants to hear that you can’t be home because you need to read a bunch of emails.  

It’s still too early to tell.  I’ll crash very hard after I publish this.  

Meanwhile, I watched Will Ferrel on Man vs. Wild yesterday -THAT WAS GREAT!  I now feel every celebrity should do this to plug a movie (especially those based on campy 70’s television).  

 

Will all this work do this to me?

The Great Wide Way

 

Who are all these people in my yard?

 

 

Psh, I read today on Gothamist, that the NY Post, is not a lover of the new move in the city to to block traffic on Broadway, between 47th and 42nd Street.  If you’re not familiar with the move, basically Bloomberg wants more pedestrians, less cars in this great city of ours, and I, for one, fully agree.  I’ll make my sacrifice (as this affects me too, as the occasional driver and relative of drivers (thanks dad)), I fully feel that cars, especially in Manhattan, kill certain characteristics of the city and the less cars, the better.  

I saw it for the first time today and thought it was great.  Everyone’s out in the street and the street feels more like it’s namesake “SQUARE”, than two streets colliding to form a Crossroads of The Taxi World.  It reminded me of all those European cities, with their central meeting squares.  I mentioned this to my friends who I travelled with to Europe and just this one line sold them.  Why?  Because when you’re traveling, those squares ground you.  You stand there and say to yourself, Here I am, and then you go from there.

Screw the Post.  They don’t know squat.  

This has, and always will be a walking city.  The car thing is relatively new.  And in the past two decades, the sidewalks have become unbearably crowded.  Opening up Broadway to pedestrians will only add more character to the city (as the picture above shows).  And the people and the tourists especially love it.  So if the tourists, with their money like this more than 6 blocks of taxi’s, I say give it to them because we like their money.

Back To The Future: The Taxi

Will this make me a happier taxi rider?

 

My Uncle once told me that the best taxi drivers the city had were the blacks.  Then the Russians came and they were okay too.  Not as good, but okay.  Nowadays, the Indians, Pakistani, Middle Eastern drivers, and other such drivers dominate the New York City taxi driving community.  But they’re crap and probably not much worth third in this category.  Alot -not all, but alot- plug in their phones and treat you and driving like a complete afterthought.  They drive slow (which is my main complaint), and don’t seem to care much about getting you to your destination.  It’s like life in mediocrity.  Feh, I’m on the phone.  What is it that they talk about all the time?  Who knows.  The cabs smell sometimes.  The music is loud sometimes too.  I mean, the whole thing is just kinda depressing.  I get into a cab instead of taking a subway and I’m already paying about 4 times as much.  I want to either be treated like the most important person in that car, or like my destination is the most important place to be.  Preferably both.  

I rarely take taxis, but as i’m getting older and as the service in the subway deteriorates while the fare goes up, I try sometimes to treat myself to a taxi ride if it’s late and the subway’s too much work.   And so I just say this because tonight I got a ride home with Jamal from Guinea.  And I can see he’s driving fast (but smart), no music on, no phone plugged into his ear.  I like this and tell him so and I ask him where he’s from and we get to talking about this subject and he pretty much agrees: This is not your living room!  He says.  You need to eat, you pull over for 15 minutes and eat!  And goes on…The customer is the reason you are working and you should be thanking him!  Well, Jamal, I couldn’t agree more, and as a result of your fast driving, proving my Uncle right (yet again) and determination to get me to my destination, I will give you an extra dollar (it’s all I have).

And if you think I’m full of shit, think about this:  Jamal was a driver in Guinea to the diplomat of Yemen.  He takes driving seriously.  He tells me how he knows what’s going on two blocks ahead.  He tells me that in order to do his job, he has to know everything about every street and how to handle it.  16 years and no accident, he tells me.  Maybe.  It’s the other drivers in the world you gotta look out for after all.

I don’t mean to come off racist or anything, but I’m just telling you what I see.  For now, I don’t love cabs so much anyway (esp. for the price), and the subway has been desperately depressing to me as well lately.  But for the treat I give myself every once in a while, I hope they do, in fact, feel like it.   

Notes:

I couldn’t turn that tv off in the back seat.  Jamal said most people don’t like them.  I hate them.  I believe it was one of the worst things to be added to taxis mandatorily.  

However the credit card machines are pretty much brilliant.  Very Back To The Future: Part II, when Biff takes the taxi to Hilldale and pays with his thumbprint.

Ford Supermodel Search @ Terminal 5

Yo Yo Scottie came through in spades yesterday, scoring us spots on the list to the Ford Supermodel search of 2007/8.

Looking Back to 2007: No Country For Old Men

No Country For Old Men, the latest film by the Coen Brothers (Joel & Ethan) is a fantastic thriller by two of the most versatile directors we have working today. They’re like authors that can tackle any subject, spinning it with their particular tastes and flavors and making it their own, which is quite a feat as anyone who likes a particular author should know. Seeing their take on any subject is at the very least intelligent and interesting, but it’s never the ‘very least’ with them. They work hard on their films and think alot about their subjects, do their research, and work meticulously as a team. All this shows in the final product.

The movie feels like a book, with chapters ending in fade outs, and soft spoken dialogue. I liked the way this method was used by the Cohen brothers, though they never lacked for directing originality.

Tommy Lee Jones is the best actor in the film, and gives one of his finest performances as he becomes a more and more haunted man as the film moves on.

Spanish guy (Javier Bardem) is equally as good as he is scary, his ghostly presence like death itself is almost as mesmerizing as his 80’s haircut and tight blue trousers. And while he seems to hold all the cards by being the man willing to go to all lengths, one does get the feeling that he can be outsmarted by his own psychopathy or by something else.

Cormac McCarthy also wrote All The Pretty Horses, which also became a movie, but I’ve never seen it. (Nor will I probably ever, (the word ‘pretty’ makes it sound unappealing.))

My personal favorite Cohen Brothers film is O Brother Where Art Thou. It still is. The direction, the sharp wit, characters, and the music above all else, gives that movie, to me, a beating heart.

There’s a shift in the ending for NCFOM. Though I won’t ruin it for you, I will say that I like it. Alot. It has a great affect, and my only dissappointment is that it took to the third act for this to start to really come into focus. If there’s one thing in this film that holds it from being the Best Picture of the year, it’s that the theme of the final 15 minutes doesn’t fully make itself known until then. This, to me, is the difference. I want the Coen Brothers here the whole time, with the rest of the film going on along with it. Unfortunately it shows up a little late. No consilation because the film is still incredible the way it is. However, the last of it is even more incredible.

One thing to think about that I don’t think ruins it is that the Coen Brothers often use a guy in their films -a specter of death/evil, if you will- that pervades and tracks the main protagonists (O’Brother had the guy in the glasses with the dog, Raising Arizona had that biker guy, Millers Crossing had one too). So in the case of this film, there’s no doubt in my mind that Bardem is this character and I think it’s safe to say he’s as ambiguous and unpredictable in the role here as any of the other ones before him. In fact, he’s probably the most perfect of these characters the Coens have realized.

Notes:

The title comes from the poem “Sailing to Byzantium” by William Butler Yeats.

March Wrapup

 

Ye Noble Knight of the Land of Knightbridge

 

 

Last month I moved into my new apartment.  I bought a tv, and had it installed on the wall.  I bought a shoe rack for Starr’s shoes, and put up shelves in my bathroom.  I did my darnedest to get the place to be mine, though I had a basil plant that could not adapt to my new apartment, and the light in the bathroom, it seems, needs a cover.  It’s not Apartment 2, but hopefully with some love, care, and a little bit of elbow grease, it’ll be an oasis in the middle of Midtown.  

I have four neighbors.  Four.  That means if one dies, 25% of the buildings occupants were wiped out.  The hallway is clean, much cleaner than my old place with Jeff, and it kind of  feels like a doctors office.  For some reason when you walk up the stairs, there’s a point in the middle where a wave of heat hits you.  Very strange.  I’ve also noticed that my walls are hot in certain places.  The radiator is not hot, but the wall, in certain spots, is warm.  

My landlord is English -My checks go to Knightsbridge, LLC.  This makes me feel good because a landlord should be English by the sheer roots of the word.  They should make the best landlords.  But if not, at least I’ll know my getting screwed would be a sort of tradition.  Me and the other three tenants -Rodney, Girl-Who-Drinks-Upstairs, and Other Person would all drink at the local tavern and curse our Land’s Lord.  Then I’ll have that deep emotional connection to Feudal England that I’ve always yearned for.

Despite my connections to Verizon, I had to go with Time Warner cable.  They came at the inconvenient time of 12pm last Wednesday.  Their phone reps are assholes who try not to be assholes according to the rules of their Employee Behavior Manuals -This is the worst kind of asshole.  I hate Time Warner.  I hate them so much.  The other day they prank called me to say they were coming, but they really weren’t.  Then when it was time for them to come, they didn’t arrive til 15 minutes before 4pm.  Starr waited around all day for them and it nearly ruined Passover.  I hate you Time Warner.

My new apartment looks at an office building.  Dead on.  A big, huge skyscraper.  It sorta gives me vertigo sometimes because I’m looking at the offices and it could be the 3rd floor or it could be the 30th.  There are always people there (like tonight), working late.  I don’t care if they see me naked, or sittin’ on the couch.  Their office is so ugly.  My office has coats, but their office has cubicles.  That’s very cliche’.  I’ve been thinking about going over to the front desk and find out what they do there.

Board Hard

This is what I looked like, only not asian

 

I fell on my ass alot this weekend.  My ass, my side, my front.  Not on my head though in extra sad recent events, and let it be known, after not-so-tough negotiations, my sister is buying me a helmet for next season (well, I will buy it, she’ll pay me back).  Jeff (as in Apt 2 Jeff) and I went up to Okemo this weekend on one of those Get On The Bus trips (this always makes me think of the Million Man March (not the real march, though, just the Spike Lee version)).  This was through Emilio’s Ski Shop, and what they have you do is you get up before the bars close and you get on the bus at 4:30am and head up to Vermont (you sleep the whole way, though it’s really not comfortable).  You get there right when the place opens, which is great because it’s pretty surreal to be in Vermont at 9:30am when you were watching Siena beat Ohio State in New Jersey 12 hours earlier (so that’s two pretty surreal things).  Then, if it’s the second to last weekend in March, you proceed to fall on your thighs and chest and knees and you slide 16 feet every fall, at least, because the mountain is covered in ice.  At some point my right thigh always stops working.  It just quits.  And so I go down the mountain and try and do these turns but my thigh doesn’t respond and so my board just scrapes across the ice.  I also burned my face off.  It had to’ve been 40+ degrees and really quite gorgeous, beautiful blue skies, nice air, etc. But at some point I’m touching my face and it just feels tender.  So I’m falling and burning and I can’t get off the lift without falling, but I look good because I finally got a snowboarding jacket ($150 bucks at Macy’s, yeah!).  

Saturday was one of those snowboarding days that make you feel like you’ve learned nothing and that you’re not very good.  But at the end of the day, you always get a run in where everything (or at least a few things) click, and you get a glimpse of how to ride on the snow.  You carry that with you more than you carry all the falls.  That’s why I can’t wait to get out again next season.  And I’m pissed the season’s over.

Some other highlights:

Having gloves instead of no gloves.

Eating my quota of Chili in a bread bowl on the mountain.  I think chili just tastes better on a snowy mountain.

Jeff and I drinkin’ a beer after a full day of boarding (falling) before getting on the bus to head home.

Seeing McHale randomly after eating my chili in a bread bowl.  It’s strange to think that I’ve seen him at least one more time this month than his actual roommate, and it was 5 hours away in another state.

Stopping into PC Richards and Son after the bus dropped me off and using their bathroom without them complaining.  Then learning all about HD TV’s from Marc Anthony (very knowledgeable).

Some lowlights:

My gloves were my girlfriend’s (I lost mine). 

Watching Rise on the bus ride home.  Jeff was most disappointed in the editing.  I think he was very upset about the ‘bad cuts’.

Crawling up the mountain on my belly to get my sunglasses that fell off on one of my wipeouts

Inserting  my body into a bus seat for 8 hours in one day

Don’t Cheap Out

In this tough economy, some of us would like to cut our budgets in any way we can.

But there are some things ;in this life we can not cut out.  

There are a few things not to cheap out on in life:

Ice trays – Stinky ice cubes?  No way!  Don’t get soft when it comes to creating ice from your tap water.  Nothing will turn you off to a cup of water more than turning it into a cup of Ass-Freezer-Smell.  Be sure to get a solid, dependable, ice tray that will somehow keep ice from not smelling by using science.

Toilet paper – I hate going to people’s houses that I like and finding their toilet paper is so damn cheap.  Seriously?  You use cheap toilet paper?  You try to save money on your ass?  The one thing people always try to protect?  ’I gotta save my ass!’, ‘You’re not gonna find my ass in there.’ and, ‘I gotta get my ass to the gym.’   And then you’re gonna wipe it down with the next level up after newspaper?  I can recommend Cottenelle Blue.  Really make the effort here though.  I’m still waiting for the next best thing (a puppy dog?)    

Can Opener – There’s nothing worse than having a can opener that doesn’t work.  It’s so brilliant that they haven’t improved on it (except for all the improvements) for a hundred years.  It’s really the can though.  So impenetrable…unless you have a special weapon.  You can’t write this stuff!

That’s my list so far… It’s important to keep these things short.

 

Some tricks:

-Be a man and get a tray that requires the traditional practice of balance.  Be a bigger man and get an ice pick. Be a woman and kill someone with it.

-I always try to use two squares at a time (unlimited times).  I’ve been known to jump in the shower if paper up my butt is just not working.  Really?  But why wouldn’t paper work? Why would science figure out how to turn water into ice, but not how to clean my but without any effort?

-A good can opener is so great relative to a bad can opener.  You only know this if you’ve had a bad can opener.

 

"We sure did nail that account today! See you guys tomorrow!"

 

Today at work I discussed with a twin how she would name her baby only once she saw it.  That way she could name the baby appropriately based on what the baby looked like.  I suggested the name ‘Baby’ for the baby, since the baby would look like a Baby.  She found that amusing but thought the baby may look like something else.  I then suggested that people named ‘Tod’ must have looked like toddlers when they were born, to which I received less of a response.  My own name is Adam, but sometimes my family calls me ‘Ad’.  This could be because when I was a baby I looked like an ADult (though I doubt this.  Even now I don’t look like an adult.)  

The twin doesn’t work because she is having a baby.  Lucky.  I would give birth to have a few weeks off of work.  At work, I haven’t been able to get the song from Groundhog Day out of my head so I sing it at my desk.  ‘…why couldn’t I have had that day.’  Eventually I left at 7:30 pm.  

I wish I could have a zipline installed from my office window to my apartment building.  It sounds crazy, but that might be a selling point for me for whether I would leave my job or not, ‘hmmmm…..this job has better benefits, but my current job has a zipline to my apartment….hmmmm….’

If only ‘Naked’ was an outfit…

A miserable necessity is trying to edit ones clothes.  It involves going through each item in your wardrobe and deciding if and when you would wear every item.  The problem is, who knows how many outfits you need, how many varieties of shirts are enough that people won’t think that you’re dirty.  What the hell.  I don’t care if people think I’m dirty.  Even yesterday I went to a friends 30th birthday party wearing the same outfit I wore on Friday without a shower either.  But work wants me to dress up.  And I like it when my shirts say things more cleverly than I can, so my piles of clothing don’t shrink enough.

I make a pile of tshirts, a pile of underwear, a pile of “performance” (though that’s just a theoretical pile (as if I go to the gym), a pile of things to try on, and things to give away.  You also have to face up to certain things about yourself when sorting through clothes.  You have to admit that you bought those pants only cause it was a designer label, or that you’re not so young to wear some of the plaids you swore to yourself that your wardrobe would only consist of.  It’s like going through a mini biography of your life, I wore that when we went to Coney Island or I hooked up with so-and-so wearing that.  There’s the items of clothes that at one time held the title of Your Best Shirt that have now shirked down to the pile of ‘Salvation Army’.  

And those clothes that make it to the Second Hand Store, well, you hope some young kid picks it up and it becomes their best, their number one go to, their Yes-Pile.  

With that said, it takes two or three edits to really get down to the core, the juiciest of your stuff that you hope will give off the right impression of your personality and how you feel about yourself, and no matter what, there will always be a night when you think ‘Jeez!  I can’t believe I threw that out, it’d be perfect to wear tonight.’  But you need to accept that as a necessary evil, because now you have some room to go shopping with an excuse -yes, now you actually need to buy that shirt.

Meanwhile, a big thanks to UL, who has easily become the best commenter on abzme.com (No shock there since I don’t write enough and so new readers fall off pretty quickly.)