TWO FOR TUESDAY

I have recently discovered the beauty of listening to the radio over the internet, and because it is TWO FOR TUESDAY, I am currently listening to a SECOND Black Sabbath song on Q104.3! Generally I am fine with change, but as far as my radio stations go, I only really ever want Q104.3 from home. There are other New York channels that will do as well, like PLJ, HOT97, but I never quite adjusted to the Boston ones.

I used to refer to Two for Tuesday as my favorite day of the week, and I stand by that.

Tonight I got thai for dinner. I have an angry heart right now, and usually thai settles that. I reached into my fridge, and grabbed an opened bottle of OJ to wash down the pad thai. It tasted funny, I assumed it was the weird mix of the thai and the juice, then I realized that more specifically, it tasted kind of like a funky creamsicle...

yeah. I washed down my thai with someones half drank, two-week-old screwdriver.

Aiight. That is enough sharing for now.

MEMO TO: Sperm Bank RE: Drinking SIGNED: Rehab

Figure 1: The first text I received from REHAB after Catie's number became REHAB

Figure 2: Catie had texted me this the day before as herself; the name on all her texts changed the following day

Oh my, your face is looking rather scaly

I recently dug this one out of the vault during a conversation with my parents, and I've been just itching to write about it.

In 1998, the first commercials for Viagra started to appear on TV. There was the famous Bob Dole one, but then there was another one that just featured men going about their daily activities, and then the camera would zoom a little closer and a voice would go "He has ED."

Now, I was generally a little fucker of a kid. There is no other way to put it. I was the one telling the other kids there was no Santa, asking my friends if they knew what exactly sex was (and if the answer was no, I'd gladly explain it) but for some reason this was the commercial that left me dumbfounded. The conversation went something like this:

9 year old me: I don't get it, Mom, their faces don't look scaly to me

Mom: What are you talking about?



That's right. I thought that the voice over said that these men had Ereptile Dysfunction, and in my little smartass head, I assumed that meant these men had something in common with reptiles. They kept zooming in on the men's faces, so the obvious conclusion was that these men had skin like reptiles.



Yeah. Don't worry, my mom cleared that one up for me. And then I presumably told every one of my friends.



Figure 1: You've been looking a little lizardish lately. Just take one Viagra and those scales should clear right up.

Summer Camp

Recently, I have been pestering my roommate about what's Kosher and what isn't. The other night we had a conversation that went something like this:

"What about eels?"
"No, because they don't have scales."

"But they don't have scales because they aren't evolved enough, so that shouldn't count....so no lamprey, either?"

"I don't even know what a lamprey is."

"I went through a fish phase."

Figure 1: Lamprey! mmmmmmmm.

The topic of Kosherness brings me to another topic that is fairly foreign to me: sleep-away camp. During my youth I did not know a single person who went to sleep away camp. It was only a concept on TV shows ("Salute Your Shorts" anybody?)

I can only speak from my own experience, and there were two predominant reasons for not sending the kiddies away:

1. Sleep away camp costs money

(Solution: An above ground pool and dumping your kids for "sleepovers" at their friend's houses)

AND/OR

2. The attachment factor

I've told you about the Long Island Mix before, and again, I can only really speak from experience, but if one generalization can be made about Italians on a whole, it's not that they are all great cooks, or hairy, or loud, or affectionate (although, I could make a case for those in another post) it is that they do not know how to separate from their offspring. You know "Everybody Loves Raymond"? Not an exaggeration. The idea of not seeing your child for two whole weeks? (two months? I have no idea how long summer camps are) is simply horrifying to an Italian parent.

I did go to Bible Camp, though, for either two or three summers (two weeks, 3 hours a day haha.) And I was a Bible camp counselor for two years. I should put that on my resume.

Insert your Bible pun here but make no mistakes about it...

...we're going.

http://www.holylandexperience.com/

Such stuff dreams are made on

I would give you bonus points for getting the reference in the title, but I'm about to talk about where it comes from, so it would sort of be cheating.

During my four years of high school, I was forced to memorize three different Shakespearean soliloquies: Freshman year- Cassius and the whole "Friends, Romans, Countrymen," bit, Junior year-- Lady Macbeth goes all "Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow," and then Senior year, Prospero laments with the "Such stuff dreams are made on" speech.

As I sat in English today, we started on Virginia Woolf's "Orlando," and I smiled inwardly at the memory of immediately switching out of a "Madness in Literature" course freshman year. On the first day, the professor, who was the wife of the professor I thought I was going to have, talked about her self for about 45 minutes and spent the last 30 going over the syllabus. First up, the Baccache. Then? King Lear! Followed by a little Nietzsche, and coming up the rear with "Mrs. Dalloway."

I literally ran from that classroom like it was on fire and switched out immediately.

Now, over the years I have been forced to read enough Hemingway that I have overcome my initial dislike of his works, and dare I say it, I actually have grown to like his writing quite a bit.

See, that doesn't work with everything, though.
2003 -"Cesar" - hated it.
2006- "Macbeth"- loved playing dress-up in Huggard's class, but ultimately hated it.
2006- "Othello"- hated it
2007- "The Tempest"- hated it

I do not care if that makes me intrinsically a piece of trash, but I can't help it. I have never, and will never, like anything ol' Willy turned out.

Which brings me to another little conversation that, if you don't grimace from it, you'll at least have to smile a little.

I met this guy a few months back, and as we talked about our schooling over the years, he said that his senior year of college was the most difficult of his life, and that when it was finally over, he was left reeling. He said he felt so intellectually stimulated still that he went to a bookstore and purchased the complete works of William Shakespeare and decided to read them on his own.

While I reacted as though I was mildly impressed, I felt as though I should physically cover my mouth to make sure my horror didn't spew all over him. I guess reading the collective works of William Shakespeare through one's own volition is objectively impressive, but, uh, subjectively?

Yeah. I should have known then it was not going to work. Honestly, I would have been more impressed if he told me he ran out and purchased the collective works of Steven King. Now that guy knows how to spin a tale.

Figure 1: I guess not all Shakespeare is bad:

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

I hope I haven't lost you

So it has been a bit longer than usual between blog posts. The truth is, nothing has happened that I could write about here. Stuff has gone on, but some things you wouldn't be interested in (although that has rarely stopped me in the past,) some things are entirely inappropriate (that has never stopped me in the past, but I'm trying to come across as wholesome these days,) and other things just really aren't mine to tell.

I do not want to lose you, dear reader, so I'll give you another beauty tip!

Friday night, as I prepared for bed, I realized that my room smelled terrible. I whipped out the febreeze and went nuts.

But then, I realized that not just my room stunk, but my hair did, too. Febreeze gets rid of odors, my hair had an odor, so I did the logical thing.

I would say that my hair felt like straw the following day, but that would imply that it felt like something remotely natural. It took about handful of conditioner just to get my fingers through it, but I must say, maybe it was the conditioner alone, or maybe it was some sort of magical combination of the febreeze with the conditioner, but my roommate complimented me on how shiny my hair was, and actually it looked like I had straightened it. So next time you are feeling, uh, daring (cough) and want to try something new with your hair, go for some febreeze.

Irish Whiskey Makes Me Frisky

Heyyy happy St. Patrick's Day!

I'm listening to U2 (like I needed an excuse) to celebrate. In an effort to make this a more family friendly blog (see note), I'm not going to say how I would really like to celebrate today (it rhymes with...uhh...whiskey. Okay, its whiskey.)

So, lets see. It's St. Patrick's day... this seems like an appropriate time to do a slightly obligatory middle-schoolesque essay, "What Being Irish Means to Me."

My great-great uncle founded the IRA, so I am required to have at least some Irish-American pride.

Hmmm...I think my first favorite thing about being Irish would be my iron-clad liver. My Italian mother can only have one or two drinks before she is sick, and my brother is the same. My father, on the other hand, is and always has been a tank, and I inherited some of that tankliness from him.

Or maybe my first favorite thing would be our sense of humor. While some groups freak out from the tiniest joke, Irish-Catholics handle jokes like champs, and more often than not are the ones cracking them. (Although, if there is malice with these jokes, you'll get the shit beat out of you, so watch yourself.)

So, being Irish is cool. I am glad that I am half Irish (the other half, of course, being Italian. The Long Island Mix)

OH! My number one favorite thing about being Irish? That I come from a group of people that were convinced to change from paganism to Christianity by a three-leaf clover. Really think about that one.

Note: Both of my brothers are on facebook; it is only matter of time before they somehow find this, too. I have to comb through and get rid of some stuff as it is.

Update

Last fall I offered you this depiction of my life:

Here is the Spring '09 update:

There will be absinthe

I can tell already, this is going to be a convoluted one. I was trying to think of how to cut the fat and make a concise post, but it will be significantly easier to just type and see if I can get to my point.

This morning, I finished my applications for Queens College and Hunter College. Despite the fact that I put Hunter as my first choice, I realized that I had never actually seen it. It was a beautiful day, and I needed an excuse not to do any homework, so I decided to take the subway in and check it out.

I was set to take the bus to the F train, but it turned out Catie was driving toward the Briarwood F stop. Before we left, we talked to her mom for a bit, who gave me some magazines and papers to read while I was on the train.

The train ride in was a bit long, and coming out of the F stop at 63st and Lexington felt like climbing out of the depths of hell. Seriously. It was two escalators and three flights of stairs underground. Climbing that twice a day would be some workout. That area of the city is gorgeous, but Hunter itself was unimpressive; two or three large buildings. I decided to wander around like I knew where I was. I took the escalators up a few flights. In retrospect, they kind of reminded me of the Warren Towers escalators, but at that point I was just curious what was on the next floor.

It was so crowded. I get it, its a college, whatever--but I'm talking packed. Every seat I passed was occupied, every table surrounded, and every stretch of undisturbed ground had students sitting around. I didn't want anybody to see me walk directly off the up escalator and onto the down one, so I wandered around until I hit a Career Expo.

The Career Expo was enough--it was time to go. I headed out, and decided to walk over to the NY Presbyterian hospital to ask for a volunteer application. Long story short, I walked in the wrong direction, hit Central Park, turned around, made it there, got intimidated by the tremendous size, and settled for some McDonalds instead.

I walked back to the subway, and decided to see what Catie's mom had passed along to me. Now, I don't know if this was intentional or not, but the first paper read "The 3rd Annual Bar Awards: Winners and Losers." Sounded good to me! I browsed through--and there it was (wait, I have to find the exact title for you)---Best Bar At Which To Realize That Absinthe Kind of Tastes Like Cough Medicine. Apparently, I don't have to go to Europe to get my hands on the stuff, just a subway over to Chinatown.

I want to scope it out and see if it looks ligit or not (i.e., if it looks like a craphole that won't card.)

So I read the magazine the rest of the way to Jamaica. For whatever reason, I was a tad nervous to switch from the subway to the bus, but then I got out at 179th street and remembered that I'm from Queens and that I didn't actually give two shits about taking the bus. The only thing that was bit sketchy was that the Q46 stop was directly in front of a rather crowded OTB.

Hollis never seemed so huge, but I got to see where the nearest Popeyes is located, so the bus ride wasn't a total wash (it's in Queens Village by Van Buren. My girls from home--WE ARE GOING SOON.)

I got back to Bellerose, and I must say, it looked rather nice with the sun shining.

So that was my day. And the point was that eventually, I will get my hands on absinthe...and Popeyes (?)


If this was a paper, I don't know what the thesis would be.

watching LIFE

Literally.

Along with pasty white skin and a hatred of pudding, I inherited from my dad a love of crime dramas. Although I got more than my usual dose last night, with both the usual SVU and my parent's favorite, NCIS, ("everybody loves Mark Harmon! Especially your father. He has a man crush on him") I am currently watching Life. It's even crappier than it sounds, but what can I say, I need my gun fix for the evening.

My last post was rather gloomy, and even though the sun has yet to show itself while I've been home, things have been fine. I've been working on my college applications, shopping, and repeatidly dying my hair.

I have been thinking a great deal about next year. I really don't want to leave Boston. Whatever, though. Things will be fine-- I want to stay in Boston, but I don't need to stay in Boston to be happy. I'm actually getting kind of curious to see where things are going. I would say hopeful, but I've had a nasty habit of screwing things up, so I'm going to roll with curious.

Sorry, We're CLOSED.

It Tuesday of spring break. I've seen all of my immediate family, had a couple drinks with friends, watched movies, gone to the diner, watched TV, etc. It has been nice to relax and see everybody, but all and all this will be remembered as a rather troubling spring break.

For the past few months, I've been hearing bad economy this and bad economy that. Up in Boston, we seem to be living in a bubble--where the stores generally stay open and the restaurants still have weekend crowds. In a way, coming home has been coming back to a reality that I wasn't aware of. My mom told me the day I got home that "the entire Island is depressed." Bellerose itself, my little town in Queens, has its own troubles with a disturbing amount break-ins and muggings. My mom said that the whole island is depressed, though, and so far that seems as though it is a pretty accurate description. Everywhere we go, there are vacant store fronts and restaurants.

Fortuneoff is closing. I always forget whether this is a national chain, so a quick clarification--Fortuneoff is the store where every decent couple from Long Island and Queens registers for their wedding. It is a huge department store with everything you can imagine for the home. The store had an air about it that said You just stepped into Fortuneoff. We're better than Macys and Bloomingdales combined.

My original title for this post was going to be "Where am I supposed to register for my wedding?"

My other title for the post was going to steal a title from a David Gray song: "Everybody's Leaving Town." The thing is, nobody is actually leaving town. Instead, everybody is returning to their homes jobless.

Fortunoff has closed, along with the Circuit City next to it, and presumably "The Fortuneoff Mall" will follow.

My mom and I had this conversation yesterday:

"Mom, you're really old. Do you ever remember things getting like this?"
"Actually, no. You're father and I are kind of scared that this is just the beginning."

So that was uplifting.

My mother and I also discussed, though, that the sun has not shown itself for more than 5 minutes since I have been home, making everything not only look desolate, but haunted. Ah well.

So I packed it up and brought it back to the crib

Even though I hate song lyric titles, I couldn't help that one.

Some odds and ends:

-My parents do not want to pay for one of those digital converters for the TVs, so they are now switching the cable box from room to room.

-My mom and I watched one of her new favorite movies yesterday morning, "Beauty Shop," featuring none other than Queen Latifa. I really want to go to that beauty show the next time I need my weave fixed.

-I tried to dye my hair this morning; I thought almond meant it would be light brown like the inside of an almond; it was actually dark brown like the outside...so it was about as effective as the food color dye.

Not much else to say :)

The distance made my heart grow fonder.

I know it sounds dumb, cliched, etc., but after orgo lab today, I actually felt lighter. I turned in the last of my assignments this morning, and from here on out, it's smooth sailing to Bellerose.

We had a three day weekend mid-Feb, and I opted not to go home for a variety of reasons. My main reason was that I had no desire to go to my nephew's birthday party. Shoot me, I am a terrible person.

I regretted not going home that weekend initially, but now I'm glad I stayed in Boston. I wasn't ready to go home then. I had an overdose of my family and my town and whatnot over break, and it still wasn't completely out of my system in February. I love my family, I love my friends, and Bellerose is okay, but sometimes I just need to distance myself from it for a while.

It has definitely been longer than necessary, though. Almost two full months, actually. I'm ready. I am ready to argue with my parents over car insurance and with my mom over stupid shit like how I over pluck my eyebrows. I'm ready to try and sneak in some daytime drinking with my friends. I'm ready for movies at Movieworld and mid-day trips to Met Food. I'm ready to endure a night long family party that nobody really wants to go to. Bring it on, because honestly, I cannot wait.

Figure 1: During a "walk" this summer; Jess and Kelly in front of the 99cents plus or less.

Maybe someday I will win some sort of award

Recently, for no reason, I was wondering what my number one favorite recipe for entertaining purposes is.
And then I remembered a recipe my mother once brought to a family block party that had everybody raving! It was for a very special fried chicken dish…everybody kept asking her for the recipe, and she just kept telling them that it was a secret. When Cousin Barbara asked my mother how she prepared it, she quite simply replied, “Old Fashioned.” Today, I will divulge only to you, dear readers, this very recipe:
1. Buy a large tin with a cover.

2. Go to your local KFC

3. Order two buckets of 12 pc. Family Style chicken (order extra crispy—that’s the secret ingredient!!)

4. Dump into large tin

5. Dispose of evidence

Goals for the mediocre

[Edited 3/4/09 for general boringness]

This morning, I made a new list [of goals.] This new list also includes fun and exciting things that are just a bit more realistic than the last one [previously this post included my old, unrealistic goals.] Such new, less demanding goals include traveling to any state west of Wisconsin and getting drunk at the movie theaters. Notice that I don't put time stamps on these ones; no need for pressure. There is plenty of time for me to get myself and my friends kicked out of a movie theater.

Figure 1: Although my friends usually go along with my plans, for whatever reason, most of them seem to have drawn the line at getting drunk at the movies. I had a startling revelation earlier today--I distinctly remember this summer, after seeing "WALL-E" alerting Kelly, Catie, and Jess that I had a stroke of genius and that we had to go see a movie on Wacky Wednesday while completely wasted (Wacky Wednesday= $5 movies at Douglaston Movie World, the crappiest theater on the planet. We love it dearly.) I know that I also wanted to see the movie "THE WATERHORSE" while under the influence and everybody said no...I assumed these were the same instance, but upon seeing the "Christmas" realease date on the photo above, I realized that I have actually requested drunk movie going not once, but twice, and been shut down both times.

Some people are constantly plagued by bad ideas.

Let’s start a few weeks back. I blame all of this on wikihow. They featured a post on how to dye hair using koolaid and conditioner. I read the article and turned to my roommate and told her she was going to have to help me try this on my hair. She told me that it wasn’t a good idea. Because she was probably right, I did the natural thing and asked somebody else.
Sarah immediately agreed that it was a great idea. We got Edyna on board, too, and the next thing I knew we were in the grocery store at 11pm, trying to find koolaid. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any. I decided that jello would work just as well as koolaid, which spawned this conversation:
Sarah: I think I want to dye my hair with blackberry
Me (impatiently): Are you picking the color based on which flavor you like best? Go with grape or cherry.
Sarah: I’m not going for the Fulbright scholarship- I’m dying my hair with Jello
After purchasing a few boxes of purple and blue jello, as well as a box of food coloring, we headed back to try the dyes. We left the homemade dyes in for 30 minutes, and none worked.

Which brings me to last night.
My roommate got snowed in at home, leaving me to my own devices for another night. As I brushed my teeth, I marveled at how silly it was that I had bought a box of gel food color tubes by accident (I thought they were tubes of icing.) I wondered when I would possibly need those again.

And then, it struck me.

Even though the food coloring didn’t work the first time, maybe it would work on the second try! (Functioning definition of insanity [can’t remember who told me this anymore]: trying the exact same thing multiple times, expecting different results.) I rushed back to my room and dumped the contents of the blue tube into the palm of my hand. I rubbed it through a large chunk of hair. Using a zip lock bag and a rubber band I found on the floor, I secured the dye into a neat little package. Unsure what to do next, I pulled the rest of my hair into a braid, and then tucked the braid and the zip lock wrapped piece into a pair of underwear.
It didn’t work. Again. Surprised?




Figure 1: Sarah and Edyna, during attempt #1 using grape jello

First in the Series: Class Acts

I've always enjoyed that phrase-- "First in the Series"-- usually seen on an ad in "Women's World" magazine for some sort of collector's plate.

Earlier this week, I was facebook creeping and came across an album of photos taken at a party. I only knew one person in the album, but I looked through all 30 pictures anyway. The party did not look like anything spectacular, but oddly enough, the photos were. Whoever took them must have at least a little experience with a camera. The lighting in each picture was gorgeous; the "candid" shots were somehow perfect.

I was inspired. I went through my photos, and after considering how my friends and I are altered in about 50% of the pictures I have taken over the last year, I decided to put together an album.

My creative muse was: Maybe these would look classier in black and white.


So, I made a series. Some I changed into black and white, some I just messed with the colors. Someday I hope to have my work matted and presented in a museum, but until that day arrives, I figured I would post one or two photos when I had nothing else to say.

BANDITA PICTURE 1:

Figure 1: Me, feeling warm after 4 or 5 martini glasses of "Banditas" (cheap wine, simple syrup, and grenadine.) I know this picture isn't that funny, but I started with it because I realized that I need to ask everybody's permission before posting anything else--unless you want to make this easy and comment whether or not I have your permission; it is totally cool if you don't want me to put up a picture of you in your finest hour, but it is even cooler if you are okay with it. Nobody reads this except you (i.e., none of my family reads this or anybody else who would care that you are shitfaced.)

Jealousy does not quite cover it

http://blogs.courant.com/eric_danton_sound_check/2009/02/u2-plays-secret-gig-march-6-at.html