It's been a real long while so here are some post-Christmas bullets

Well, as per usual, I've been a lazy bum when it comes to posting.

I spent two awesome weeks in Florida and have been back in the city for a week now... which means it's time for bullets! Hooray...

* Florida was a blast. I got to see a lot of family and friends and do a lot of catching up... and I got some good D-Rays stuff to bring back to the city.

* Myself, my brother/sister, Lisa and Emacy played the third annual Hangover Cup (our traditional New Year's Day golf tournament.) Sadly, my brother won... because she's been taking lessons! That's so not fair and we're considering officially disqualifying him/her in the future so we'll see what happens with that.

I would have come in second, except I had a Phil Mickelsonesque collapse on the last hole that turned a four into a 9 giving Emacy a one stroke lead over me at the end of the day. I was like 20 feet from the green (it was on a little hill) and for whatever reason it took me like four tries with my wedge to get onto the green. It was fugly and I think Emacy may have peed himself he was laughing so hard.

Lisa came in fourth, despite being tied for the lead after the front nine with like a 63... he shot like a 78 on the back nine, we're all still a little confused...

* I'm officially addicted to "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." I watched copious amounts with Emacy down in Florida and I've been watching it kind of non-stop since.

Here's a few fun clips...

When the gang makes a band and is a little weirded out by Charlie's lyrics:



Sweet Dee's trip to the shoe store:



Some of the fun from when the gang has to coach basketball as community service:



Anywho...

* It was in the 70's and 80's for most of the time while I was there... It was actually like 85 degrees when I flew out of Tampa. New York, however, was in the 40's. My coworker told me that on Thursday it may go below zero here (for the first time here since 1994...)

* I'm also addicted to a weird little MC Frontalot song I heard when I was hanging out with a friend at NYU after I got back...



The same day I heard that song we went to Brooklyn to see this free variety/comedy show which was pretty fun. The funniest part was the last comedian, Baron Vaughn.

Here's a random clip from a different show of his...



* After the show, we wandered over the the Trash Bar, with the free tater tots... which is always awesome.

* The other night I headed over to Revival and learned that science can be fun. One of the regulars taught everyone how to shotgun beer straight from the bottle in seconds. The trick is to stick a straw in with a bend at the end, and to seal your lips around the mouth of the bottle and have the end of the straw sticking out. Then as you chug, the air that goes into the straw and pushes the beer out allowing you to drink the whole bottle in about two or three seconds once you get good. So that made for an interesting evening to say the least. He said he learned it from some homeless drug addict, which tells me it might not be something to make a habit of, hmm...

* So last night I went with my roommate to a fancy night club in midtown near Times Square called Opera. A friend of hers got us on the VIP list so we skipped the line and didn't pay the cover, which was cool. Though we didn't wait in line, we still had to empty the pockets and get full pat down once inside, seriously full. I was thinking the guy owed me at least breakfast or something after he was finished. As for the free cover, the money saved went straight to the drinks though... $11 cocktails plus an automatic $2.50 tip on top = ouch at the end of the night, seriously. The people we met there were cool and I even got to shake my groove thing for a while on the floor.

I didn't spend the whole night on the dance floor though because I didn't want to show up the other dudes in the club and make them jealous, especially when I was doing the Margaret Thatcher a la MC Frontalot.

Oddly enough I didn't bump into a group of girls there like these ones from Sunny...



* Also, it snowed about half a foot yesterday, so that's fun.

I'm sure I missed a lot of things because I'm a bad person, but that should essentially catch things up since I'm so awful about updating.

P.S. Happy New Year!

Quick update on Lisa's visit...

So after work today, Lisa and I went to the bar with the nipple burgers... that bartender wasn't there, but we still had a good time shooting pool and playing darts.

Speaking of darts... I totally owned Lisa...

Mmmm... take that!

That sums up today's post since it's about bedtime... I just figured it would only be appropriate to announce Lisa's shame... and now the deed is done.

Not-so-open house and some fun museums...

So... anyone want to guess how many neighbors came to the open house?

I'll give you a hint... zero. Yes, zero, which is kind of weak, but what are you going to do?

Lisa and I had a blast anyway. Also, an old friend from high school who is going to Columbia now came by and we basically all just hang out and drank all night... it was tons of fun.

Some highlights from the evening include:

* repairing the Atari and rocking some insane Warlords and Combat action
* calling my friend in Colorado and asking him to pretend he was Meatloaf on speaker phone to help me win some sort of bet... he was pretty darned confused
* Watched Captain EO, of course (Part 1 on YouTube, Part 2 on YouTube)
* Rocked to the soundtracks from both Dirty Dancing and Footloose

Those are just a few of the random highlights from the well-behaved evening that lacked debauchery of all kinds. I swear it.

After waking up Sunday, none to early I assure you, Lisa and I walked to The Cloisters which is right near my apartment.

Put simply, it is a museum focused on medieval art... but the twist is that the museum itself is built from parts of monasteries torn down in France (and I think one in Austria too). Yup, J.D. Rockefeller Jr. was just plain rich enough that in the '30s he was able to afford to tear down precious history in France, ship it to Manhattan, harvest his favorite parts and have his own monastery built.

It gave me a special sense of pride to know that the museum I was enjoying in my neighborhood was built at the expense of history elsewhere.

Also, many of the sculptures and statues are missing arms and forearms, like the "Figure of a King" below. All I could think of when I saw each one was "they could rectify the situation with some chainsaws, a la Ash in Army of Darkness. Word?...


"Say hello to the twenty-first century!"

I bet if that king had chainsaws for arms, nobody would give him crap for being a cheapskate and bringing Myrrh anymore... nobody would mess with him at all.

Maybe they could put him at the entrance of the museum to scare people into donating more money on the way in. The admission is a "suggested" donation of $20... but thats of course suggested, right? As we were paying, a guy tried to walk in without a donation and he was accosted by the guards who curtly explained that he had better pay some sort of donation or go back from whence he came.

So after the Cloisters, we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they're doing this crazy special exhibition - Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy. It was pretty strange to say the least. They took classic superheroes, like Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, The Incredible Hulk, etc... and had crazy designers make outfits "inspired" by each hero. You know, the kind of designer clothes that nobody could ever possibly wear... at least not since the '80s.

This stuff was just off the wall... but it was vaguely entertaining and pretty funny to stroll through the exhibit. Plus, they did have some original costumes on display too, like a Batman costume from The Dark Knight and a Spider-Man costume from the recent movies.

They didn't allow pictures at all (the guards seemed angry to be there), so these are taken from around the Internet.

Spidey's outfits were some of the less ridiculous of the bunch.

These are a couple of the outfits "inspired" by Wonder Woman's costume (the Lynda Carter one from the '70s). In case you were wondering, yes - those are indeed Coke cans on tops of the heads. I actually burst out laughing when I saw these ones. I shouldn't be allowed in some museums.

Iron Man was another who got the fashion treatment. I swear, apparently all of these outfits were worn by models on the runway at some point... weird.

Imagine wearing this Batman-inspired gem to a job interview... or maybe the airport?...

Who needs hands anyway, right?

This Hulk-inspired mess would turn some heads...

Apparently Hulk symbolizes masculinity in its purest form, so the designer figured he would add a big protruding penis to the outfit. I might try this one on a casual Friday at the office.
If you follow this link and look around, you can actually click on the comic book covers and look at a whole lot more of the crazy outfits.

I'm in NYC now, plus some little things...

First, in the interest of full disclosure, I just got in from a fun night on the town... So let's begin :)

I made it to New York City and am ready to start getting settled in.

One administrative note: "Princeton" made fun of his name and said it was generic and not creative enough. So from here on out he will be "Lisa." There is no real reason for this, but I figure if he wants something more "creative," he can have a girl's name. Word.

So anyway... I am in New York at my temporary quarters hotel I found where I'll be staying until I find an apartment... which is still kind of up in the air. So I am officially in the city now... just still looking for somewhere to actually live.

So I flew into D.C. from Alabama and then drove to Lisa's place in New Jersey to meet with him and figure out a place to leave my car and then we headed into Manhattan.

Those of you who know me best know I have an innate ability to get lost no matter where I am or where I am going.

I ended up lost on the beltway around Trenton, NJ, today. No, Trenton was not even close to on the way to Lisa's place. Not even by a longshot. Ridiculous... driving around the "Garden State" and praying... I have no idea how I ended up in Trenton, and I kind of don't want to know.

So on a more positive note, Lisa and I found a Scottish bar called St. Andrews. According to the bartender, they had about 295 kinds of single malt scotch available there. Awesome, to say the least. They even had Penderyn, the lone Welsh Whisky in the world. I have always wanted to try it, and this place had it. It was alright, a little harsh. They served it neat. It reminded me of something between a Highland tasting scotch and an Orkney scotch.

Oh yeah... I'd like to offer a not-so-sincere apology to my friend Big T to the C for all the trash I've talked about Staten Island. Apparently her family is from there. She always smelled nice at work, so how could I have known? Oh well, she probably won't ever see this anyway.

Well, I'm going to do some apartment hunting Sunday, so we'll see what happens with that... then Monday is my first day of work... so that should be neat. I'll probably offer up a much more sober/awake entry tomorrow.

Well, g'night!

"Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

Despite the relatively negative post title, this is actually about a success! Many of you may have heard me rant and rave about a seemingly mythical restaurant with perhaps the greatest General Tso's Chicken this world has ever known.

Some of you may have even wandered the streets of Chinatown dodging fireworks and throngs of asians and tourists alike during Chinese New Year's celebrations searching for the restaurant for hours with no luck. You know who you are.

It all started in the summer of 2005 with a trip to New Jersey to visit a friend at Princeton (we'll call him "Princeton," makes sense, right?) and some family spread around the "Garden State" (refer to last post where it refers to the potentially misleading titles of "monster island" and "Hell's Kitchen").

My friend and I decided to take the train into Manhattan and by chance came upon a restaurant that happened to have some of the most amazing General Tso's Chicken I'd ever had. Over time I forgot the name and location of the place, but I never forgot the chicken. Never.

I was back in Manhattan recently (to secure the apartment that ended up falling through) and I was with Princeton again. We set out to find the place, and were not going to accept failure as an option.

We were like police dogs hunting for a body in the woods, and after probably a couple of hours, we could sense we were closing in on the right part of Chinatown. Then... success! There it was, like it had been waiting for us there for years.

We had found the place and had our victory General Tso's! and believe me, it was good...

(Side note... the jelly fish was not good... at all. Yes, I realize that is one of those things most people can figure out without having to order it. Even the waiter told us we were dumb.)

The restaurant is called O.K. 218 Restaurant (real easy name to remember years down the road, right?) and it is near the corner of Elizabeth Street and Grand Street in Chinatown. If you visit me and you like General Tso's, then you know where one stop will be while you're in town.

After all that, it is going to be funny if I find some better General Tso's once I move to the city. I'll be working right near Chinatown and I'll probably end up eating in Chinatown often, so I'll keep you all up to date.

Apartment update:

The Hell's Kitchen apartment looks like it was indeed a scam. Also, for those wondering that's Hell's Kitchen the neighborhood and not the reality show about the crazy chefs, since some people were a bit confused today at lunch.

I'm still very much considering the Staten Island apartment... I just need to gauge how the ferries are.

I do have a solid lead on a possible two-bedroom apartment in Washington Heights, which could be interesting. That's the way-way-way Upper West Side for those wondering. It's still on the island of Manhattan, but is actually like west of the Bronx. I could use the money I'd save to buy some ticket packages for the new Yankee Stadium (which I'd live relatively near) and consistently root for the away teams. Sounds like a way not to get shot, right?

There are also several other random potentials to consider. Apartment hunting is so very exciting.

In honor of the topic of this post, here's a related Overheard in New York post:

"Asian guy #1: Yeah, but I've only been to Chinatown like...once or twice.
Asian guy #2: Still, it's like Muslims. You only have to go to Mecca once, but you still went."

P.S. I wonder how much the apartments with the red trim windows above O.K. 218 go for?