I headed toward Rockaway/Canarsie on the L on purpose this time...

So Friday night I went to an all-night party in this massive loft apartment in the Bushwick part of Brooklyn, which is a little ways out in the east via my old friend the L Train - toward Canarsie and Rockaway.

It was a lot of fun and when I left the sun was out and they were still going strong, but it was also one of the weirdest parties I've ever been to. I was definitely sort of an oddball out for a couple of reasons at least. First of all, I'm a gentile, hehe. As I would meet more people, a lot of them were actually from Israel, which was interesting. Also, I wasn't smoking anything there.

There was actually a decent sized open floor area where folks were dancing and doing whatever. At first the music was sort of slowed down, euro techno club music... until some of the guys busted out their instruments and starting playing - one had a fiddle, one had a banjo and the other had one of those large double basses you stand up on the ground. They basically turned the thing into a big drunken hoe down, which was hilarious and fun.

They played plenty of simple songs that everyone could sing along with and dance to and it was great.

It was definitely a little different than the Ham Festival in Cadiz, Ky., especially since I remember when I lived in the larger-than-Cadiz Hopkinsville, Ky., one of my coworkers casually mentioned in passing that while Hoptown didn't have a mosque, they at least at some point used to have a synagogue.

I also don't think they often lift folks up on chairs in Cadiz parties, like at Jewish weddings. Last night people were regularly lifted up on a chair and hoisted up and down and spun around... during both the "O Brother Where Art Thou"esque songs and the slowed down euro techno.

You might ask, wouldn't this be dangerous at an all night drunken party where some of the guests are also clearly enjoying more than just alcohol? You'd be right. After one solid face plant the chair pretty much stayed on the ground for the rest of the night.

Also interesting was around 5 in the morning someone brought out some incense and then some chanting and other odd stuff commenced, but it was all in good fun.

All in all it was definitely one of the weirder nights I've had in the city, but it was definitely a lot of fun and all the people were great and friendly as could be.

Oh yeah, I'm also going back to Texas again for a real quick Ike-related trip for the beginning of this week. It should be interesting. I'll be back to the city by Tuesday night.

I'm alive... I swear

Well, I know it's been like forever, but I am alive, hehe.

I've been keeping crazy busy lately (so busy I haven't really been able to blog much in fact, as you might have been able to tell...). So, here's some quick bullets, and yes I'm aware that I'll likely be skipping tons and tons of stuff.

* I spent a week in LA for a conference, which was a lot of fun. I got to hang out with an old roommate from college and see all the important spots, like the Rainbow Room and the Whiskey A Go Go and other great '80s metal hot spots. We also went to a Lakers game, where I managed not to get beat up even though I wasn't rooting for the Gay-kers at all during their double-overtime loss to the cellar-dweller Bobcats. We also did the touristy Hollywood things, like seeing some of the more important stars on the walk of stars...



And they have a mini-handprint place in front of a guitar shop on Sunset Strip with metal band handprints which was really cool (Iron Maiden's is pictured above, including Eddie!).

Sidenote on the LA subway... WTF. I know I'm spoiled with the NYC subway being 24 hours and tons and tons of stops all over, but the LA one was interesting. It closed really early, like 1ish, maybe 1:30... right before the bars close. It's also more of a commuter system it seems, for connecting suburbs to middle parts of the city. So the stations were all very, very spread out. LA was definitely not a walkable city, though that wasn't much of a surprise.

Also, the system is on an honor system... seriously. It's a $1.25 per ticket and you get it from the vending machine and keep it on you. You have to have it on you in case they check for tickets... I never saw a ticket checker the whole week. In fact, I was talking to a local who said he's been riding for years and has never been asked for a ticket and stopped by them two years ago.

Why ever is California is even worse off than a lot of other places budgetwise?... and LA might have to close down one of it's main jails freeing thousands of inmates... spectacular.

* We had a housewarming party take 2, which was a lot of fun. A handful of people did come and it was a fun night of drinking games and such.

* NYU recently hosted the saddest example of student activism the world may have ever seen. Some random students decided to occupy one of the food courts in one of the NYU buildings (as opposed to like the administration building like is normally the case) and started making random demands ranging from more budget transparency to off the wall demands related to the fashionable issue de jure - the Gaza Strip.

It was pretty fun to follow the "occupation" online.

My favorite part was when they started getting hungry because they apparently didn't plan ahead and the administration actually offered them food, but they wouldn't accept it unless it was vegan... then the administration agreed and then they wouldn't accept it because they were morally opposed to Aramark. Of course, they eventually did cave, on the food and overall.

After a couple days the admin turned off their free internet and a lot of people left. Then they went in and basically came in and kicked everyone out. The whole thing was hilarious, and the comments on the sites made it even better.

* I've started following failblog.org, which is a hilarious collection of pictures of people failing. Just check it out, which will be better than me trying to explain it further. Here's a couple fun examples...


see more pwn and owned pictures


see more pwn and owned pictures


see more pwn and owned pictures

* I absolutely love the Metropolitan Museum of Art and try to swing by there whenever I can. Last time I was there, I even got to overhear something to add to Overheard in New York around the medieval art:

Girlfriend: Spanish art is weird.
Boyfriend: Yeah.
Girlfriend: Those were some macabre motherfuckers.
Boyfriend: Yeah.

It hasn't made it on the site yet, but we'll see...

* I just found a little tandoori place by work with cheap "samosas," which I'd never heard of before. They were absolutely delicious and I'll be back. Looks like the dumpling folks might have some competition... especially since I found out my coworkers don't like the smell of the dumplings. Hopefully they'll prefer the smell of Indian food, hmmm... I guess we'll see.

It was so good I think I need to check out the Murray Hill neighborhood in Manhattan, which is apparently filled with Indian folk and often referred to as Curry Hill, which sounds delicious to me.

* It's freaking cold. I think I'm actually starting to get a little sick... hence me being in on Fat Tuesday :( I don't want to push my luck and try to nip this in the bud.

* So last night at Revival we got to see a real live hobbit! Frodo Baggins was rocking it with his posse... Elijah Wood popped in with some friends and chilled for a while, which was kind of random and kind of neat.

So, I'm actually keeping pretty busy causing trouble around here, but I'll try to post a little more often than every other month or so. G'night!

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!

R-E-A-D-A-B-O-OK?

So I've been getting my read on a lot more since moving to the city, thanks to the whole subway commute thing. I even just finished reading a book on the history of cannibalism, Flesh and Blood: A History of the Cannibal Complex, that I got as a sort of oddball/gag gift in college... though I did go through that cannibalism phase for a bit there, hmm...

The first chapter conveniently reminds the reader that, according to the snooty and judgmental author, eating people is wrong. I think she's British.

I've read most all the books I had brought from home. I even bought a book (it was a really cool financial history of the world). Hell... I've even been reading from the library! The next book I'll read is call "Black and Tans." I bought it a long time ago for real cheap... I'm not sure why I bought it, it's not actually about booze.

Oh wait, it's about the British Special police in Ireland, so it's presumably about abusing Irish folk - Micks and Paddies and such. Now it all makes sense.

Now that I'm starting to get the reading thing down I think I'm going to try to incorporate all the life lessons in this video my buddy Emacy Gay, we just shorten it to Emacy, in Florida told me to check out. (NSFW... and apparently some people found this video made by BET to be shown on BET offensive :( some people are just no fun)




Oh man, some guy on the train last night obviously missed the part about deodorant. I think he was Eastern European or something. Holy crap, he smelled so bad my roommate and I actually got up and moved to the end of the train. We could only go one direction though because on the other side of the train was a ranting crazy hobo yelling gibberish and I think yelling that someone needed to be arrested, I'm not sure, but he pretty much cleared out his half of the train. As a fun bonus, he would yell out the doors to all people waiting on the platforms.

As for the whole reading thing... I even read a whole biography of Jack Daniel, which was pretty interesting - and leads nicely into my next point... apparently I can do shots again, which is probably not a good thing. The other night I went to Revival and learned that I could indeed down Jack Daniel's shots if the cute girls next me at the bar challenged me to do one with them. All down hill from there... then I took my roommate the wrong way on the subway and we ended up in Brooklyn.

Fast forward to Friday night where the shots were flowing all night (my roommate reminded me Saturday that it had been one of the bartenders' birthdays...)

I ended up staying longer than the roomie and ended up going the wrong way on the L train again... basically all night. I woke up in Canarsie at least twice. I kept falling asleep on the train and ending up in kind of the far east side of Brooklyn. Then I would say to myself I need to stay awake this time, then I'd wake up again at Canarsie (the last stop). It's a bad sign on the subway to wake up and see open space and trees out the window instead of subway walls (which tends to be indicative of being far from Manhattan) and an even worse sign to wake up and see sunlight out the train window...



I eventually got home around 9:30 Saturday morning. I found out later, that it was my luck that the train was under construction that night and wasn't even going my direction from Revival at all, so the whole thing was a measure in futility. Luckily, by the morning when I did stay awake enough to get all the way home, the late night construction messing up the L train was done for the night and they were back on the day schedule. So it was just all part of my plan.

I told Emacy about it and he was kind of enough to wonder aloud the next day that he bets hobos and other folks teabagged my sleeping self. :( I hadn't thought of that...

Also, I've been watching a lot of Hulu lately. It's pretty much like my new favorite site. I can watch all the Simpsons, Galactica 1980 (the awesome but short-lived sequel to Battlestar Galactica after they've found Earth, word), Charlie's Angels, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and whatever else I want!

They also have random clips, and I came across this random old Simpsons clip which is one of my all-time favorites...



And of course (especially for Crazy Carl), some Overheard, L train style...

Homey #1: Yo, hold up...Jesus was a virgin?! He went from 12 to 33 with nothing?
Homey #2: Fuck that shit. He definitely got his dick sucked or buttfucked some bitches.

--L Train, 8th Avenue


Black guy opening engineer's door after 15 minutes of standstill: Yo, move this shit, or I'll drive it myself!

--Canarsie-bound L train

Who knows, maybe a few weeks from now they'll be one looking like this:

Drunk guy wakes up: Canarsie, again!? Shit!

-- L Train

A Kennedyless Senate in the near future? Not if my state has anything to say about it.

I hadn't imagined that moving to New York might put me on the cusp of being indirectly part of the Kennedy dynasty. Exciting stuff.

With all the talk of war and the economy, sometimes the most dire situation facing our nation gets overlooked. As Sen. Ted Kennedy gets older and his health wanes, the U.S. faces the grim spectre of a Kennedyless Senate.

You heard right, a Kennedyless Senate. It's been 56 years since America suffered such grim, grim days (except a brief period when JFK was pres and Teddy was too young to claim his hand-me-down spot, yet).

Luckily, it looks like New York's favorite celebrity carpetbagger legislator, Hillary Clinton, is heading back to Washington. Maybe her and Bill can now save a little money by not paying for their fake residence here in the Empire State that kept her eligible for the position.

With that free spot, Gov. David Paterson has the unique opportunity to rescue the country from the impending Senatorial quandary. All signs seem to be pointing to Caroline Kennedy. (At least she's a New Yorker, so she's got Hillary beaten on that front.)

Unfortunately, there are some troublemakers out there who feel that Senate seats should be given based on qualifications rather than famous last names... thankfully though, those naysayers will likely be overruled.

Oddly enough, Caroline Kennedy hasn't really shown much interest in holding any public office until now. Maybe she accidentally killed someone like her Uncle Teddy (and chose not to seek out aid) and needs to have that Senate immunity that helped him out back then...

On the bright side, at least our Senate replacement process here is just plain stupid (but not surprising), whereas Illinois' process is stupid, corrupt, dirty and just plain illegal (but alas, also not surprising).

I do love American politics.

Side note on the Illinois Senator issues... recent news of Gov. Blagojevich's wife and her potential involvement spawned one of my new favorite Post headlines... "She's One Nasty Blagoje-Bitch" Stay classy Post, stay classy.

Watch a football game at the Meadowlands... check.

In a random turn of events, I ended up scoring a ticket to Sunday's Sheagles vs. Giants game at the Meadowlands.

All I had to do was be the designated driver, which suited me fine since a bottle of beer went for $7.75 in the stadium, which is insane. I just drank during the tailgate and not during the game and the post-game tailgate. The first tailgate was lunch, and the second one was dinner.

The folks I was with take their tailgating seriously.


We weren't the only ones who brought supplies, and pictured above is the full backyard grill, a case or two of beer, 15 bottles of wine and a veritable smorgasboard of all kinds of food that we brought.

And yes, that's snow on the truck (In Pennsylvania near Trenton, N.J.). There wasn't too much snow at the Meadowlands though... but I assure you it was freezing (literally) and there were some snow flurries. I'm still waiting for some real snow to hit the city, though some are forecasting for some real snow here later this week.

Being outside from about 10 a.m. until the evening, I got my fair share of freezing cold, and stinging winds.

Some folks were wandering the parking lot selling gloves and Giants stocking caps (and probably making a mint). Though the Giants (and Sheagles) gear they were selling was totally unlicensed, so one of the nearby salesfolk actually got taken away and cuffed by security. Don't mess with NFL infringement rights... apparently they take that shit seriously, word.

Despite the freezing and the game technically being in New Jersey and the Giants playing some fugly looking football (we lost 20-14), it was a lot of fun.

On a fun side note, each week the tickets to the games feature a picture of a different Giants star, and in a wonderful coincidence the tickets for this week's game all had last week's proud titleholder NFL's "Thug of the Week" - Plaxico Burress! Unfortunately, it can be a fairly competitive title to earn...

So while his recent trouble with the law and his accidentally shooting himself in the leg kept him from joining the Giants in their ugly on-field performance, at least he was there in spirit.

Here's a fun (and sad) team-by-team look at the widespread criminal issues that have been ongoing in the NFL since 2000. That might make for a fun blog to keep up... Hmmm...

Apparently, the MTA wants my opinion...

Earlier this week on the way to work, a Metropolitan Transit Authority worker handed me an official MTA report card to fill out regarding the A train.

They asked all kinds of fun questions about things like delays, cleanliness and security and you rate them from unsatisfactory to excellent.


Apparently you can fill it out online like pictured above, but I filled out my paper one and mailed it (pre-paid postage) to the MTA folks... though the actual mailing address was some contractor/consultant in Maryland, since apparently New York City and state have nobody who can analyze surveys.

I'm sure some school, and we have plenty around here, would love to analyze the info for the MTA at a rock bottom price. I wonder how much they're paying for the surveys to be analyzed in Maryland, especially since the MTA is apparently beyond broke (facing a 2009 budget deficit of around $1.2 billion). It looks like they're going to be raising fares, making a lot of service cuts and adding some new tolls and such in the near future. Awesome...

As for the survey, it conveniently avoided any of the topics that are the biggest issues with the A train, like constant service changes and disruptions on the weekend and unreliability late at night.

Seriously, nearly every weekend the line is always whacked out, especially seemingly always having to take a shuttle bus instead of the train for part of the route (and the buses rarely show up). One time, we had been waiting a good while (and some angry other people had already been waiting a while when we got there) at the stop near my apartment, and the shuttle bus stopped a little before us and the driver got a hot dog from a vendor and just chilled there... 15 minutes later another shuttle bus came and stopped at the same hot dog vendor and had a little pow-wow with the other driver. The second bus eventually came and picked us up. It was a special kind of ridiculous.

The paper version of the survey was obviously not going through a scantron or anything, so I made sure to write my thoughts, in depth, on those issues in any white space I could find on the form... who knows, maybe I'll go ahead and write a letter about them to the MTA folks. Customer letters are always fun.

Also, one of the recent news stories around here is like a little taste of home - a teacher allegedly slept with her student somewhere in Jersey.

I know that teacher-student sex scandals happen everywhere (heck, I covered part of the trial for one that happened in a town of like 2,000), but the Tampa Bay area does seem to have more than its fair share. The Tampa Tribune has a fun little special section on the issue... though sadly I'm sure there are many, many incidents not listed...


We're just proud as punch...

And for the heck of it... some Overheard in New York from the A train:

Chick #1: What is your middle name?
Chick #2: I don't want to tell you.
Chick #1: Why won't you tell me what your middle name is? I showed you a picture of me naked!
Chick #2: That is so not the same. Your naked picture is on the Internet. Anyone can see it!
Mid-30s guy two seats away: I'm sorry, but what's the address of that website?

--A train

Conductor: This is West Fourth Street. Transfer is available to the A, C, E, F, and V trains.
Four-year-old girl: Mommy, he doesn't sing his ABCs right.
Mom: That's because he didn't go to college.

--A train