January 8th, 2009
The bus ride itself, to my brother’s place in North Bergen NJ, was only about 25 minutes (which I guess isn’t exactly quick considering it’s only a few miles away). But taking a subway to get to the Port Authority, then fighting through the rush hour crowds, then waiting in line to buy a ticket (and switching lines because a ticket machine breaks), then waiting in line for the bus, and then finally crowding onto the bus, every seat taken and people standing in the aisle. Aaarrgghhh!!! It just makes you insane.
People who visit New York City and people who live in New Jersey or Long Island (and occasionally come into the City), always ask me, “How can you live there, it’s so hectic and chaotic? I can never do that.” And the answer is: It’s a lot less hectic and chaotic if you actually live here. My commute to work is 25 minutes door-to-door. I don’t have to drive a car or sit in traffic. I walk to a subway, bring a book with me (or grab a free newspaper) and read on the train. I can order delivery from literally hundreds of restaurants (actually, one of the more stressful parts of my day is figuring out what to eat for dinner every night). It’s something that I noticed about a month after I first moved to the City. Everything slows down once you live here.
What most people don’t realize is that a large portion of the exhaustion, stress, and frustration of “Visiting New York City” comes from the “Visiting” aspect and not the “New York City” aspect. When you just visit/commute here, everything is hectic because:
- It’s a pain to get in and out of Manhattan.
- You don’t have a place to relax nearby, so you’re constantly on your feet, walking around.
- You tend to go to annoyingly-crowded tourist areas such as Times Square and Rockefeller Center (either by choice, in the case of tourists, or as part of your commute).
When you actually live here, all 3 of those things go away. Everything slows down. If you’re in a stressful situation, you’re only a few minutes away from sitting on your couch and watching bad TV.
I’m not going to say that New York City life is without stress (it’s alarming how much less patient I am since I moved here), but it’s a great place to live once you get here.
Plus, New Jersey smells.
Tags: 07047, bus, Commute, New Jersey, stress
Posted in Ramblings | No Comments »
January 7th, 2009
Is it a sign I am ordering too much sushi at once when they give me three (3!) sets of chopsticks when I order by myself. I think the delivery guy was secretly laughing at me and calling me a fat American. For the record, I only ordered two rolls - one large, one regular - so it’s a little insane they gave me three sets. It must have been a mistake. Although, I must admit that the rolls at Yuka are so ginormous, that I always feel like I’m getting ripped off when I order from somewhere else (What? You mean I can fit the whole roll in my mouth? That’s bullshit, send it back!). Yuka . . . good enough to be programmed in my cellphone.
Mmmmm . . . Hiro Maki Roll (Also, weird side note, if you google “Hiro Maki Roll“, the first four choices are all Yuka. I guess the secret’s out).
Tags: 10021, Delivery, Fatty, Hiro Maki Roll, Sushi, Yuka
Posted in Mmmm . . . Food | No Comments »
January 6th, 2009
Yeah, so I manged to lose my new wool hat somewhere in my travels today (which for my rockstar lifestyle entails: apartment, subway,work, subway, apartment). This marks the third time in about 4 weeks I lost a hat, scarf, or gloves for no apparent reason. It’s getting to the point that I should just buy them in bulk from Costco. I can put a hat dispenser near my front door and just wear each one until I lose it.
Or maybe I need to start pinning them to my jacket with directions to my house, like a developmentally-challenged child. At this point, these are my only options. The life-span of a hat in my possession is about 2 weeks and dropping.
I thought I hit a low point three weeks ago when I managed to accidentally leave my scarf in Burlington Coat Factory while coat shopping (it was too cold and I was too lazy to go back and get it). And I didn’t even buy a coat! So my net output for my shopping trip was negative-1 scarf. Although I do wonder what happened to the scarf. Do you think they tried to re-sell it? Burlington Coat Factory does sell random items it buys in bulk from other stores, and it’s the kind of place that could have one of something. I like to think the mimimum-wage stockboy wandered around in confusion for about 45 minutes trying to figure out what to do with the scarf, then just hid it somewhere so he didn’t have to deal with it (and this will go on and on for eternity).
Tags: 10001, 11215, Burlington Coat Factory, Losing things, shopping, winter
Posted in I am dumb | No Comments »
January 5th, 2009
Let’s start with Vision Quest, the homoerotic journey of a wrestler and his balls trying to beat the 3-time state champ from a rival high school. There must be about 45 shots of “packages” in the climatic wrestling match alone (seriously, are high school wrestlers barred from wearing underwear? Is that in the rulebook? Is there a competitive advantage to going commando?). I can’t get the images out of my head. There were balls everywhere. Everyone in the room watching the movie was either doubled-over laughing, or had a blank, “I can’t believe this is happening / Are we really watching this?” expression on their face. If only the attention put into the ball shots went into character development. We learn the main character’s best friend is an American Indian, then we learn he’s just pretending to be an American Indian (who knows why?), then we learn the fake American Indian’s dad is a drunk, all in about a 45-second period. None of these topics is ever brought up again for the rest of the movie. Well done.
As for Casino Royale, in a climatic torture scene, James Bond has his balls repeatedly whipped with what can only be described as an anatomically-correct dildo attached to a long rope. I really didn’t see that one coming. I guess in an attempt to make the James Bond series, “more realistic” the filmmakers decided to trade “comically-easy-to-escape situations” for “borderline S&M ball-whipping scenes”. I’m not so sure that was a trade up. Do we really want to watch James Bond sit though an extended ball-rehab while his love-interest has to wait for him to recover (and yes, this actually happens in the movie)? Well, anyway, after sitting through Vision Quest, the ball jokes were flying from all angles, and this scene just couldn’t be taken seriously.
Okay, I’m gonna go gouge my eyes out (and put on a cup, because apparantly, you never know what might happen).
Tags: balls, Bond, Movies, reviews
Posted in Movie Reviews | No Comments »
January 4th, 2009
I think I reached a new TV lowpoint in my life when I recorded the reunion episode of The Real Housewives of New York City. That show is a complete train wreck and I actively dislike every character on the show (actually, the square-faced-one is pretty funny with her random sarcastic comments) . The women on the show represent everything I hate about New York: Annoying people with too much money, acting like they are superior to us commoners.
And yet, like viewing an actual train wreck, I can’t seem to divert my eyes. I just sit there and focus my hate at the TV, getting angrier by the minute, until I end up yelling random expletives. My girlfriend kept ducking her head into the room and asking, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you what you said?”
“No, I wasn’t talking to you, I was just yelling at the people in the TV.”
This can’t be healthy.
Tags: Bravo, New York City, Real Housewives, Reality TV, TV
Posted in Pop Culture | No Comments »
December 28th, 2008
I’m sure there are some people who might think this is a regular sighting for us living in the liberal/sodomite/crackden that is New York City, but this is the first person I’ve ever seen someone smoking crack in person (Of course, I have seen it in movies/TV and home videos of Amy Winehouse).
The guy was standing on the end of the subway platform, hiding behind a garbage container, sparking away on his crack pipe (I’m assuming it was crack, because I was pretty close to him at first, and it didn’t smell like marijuana. It could have been something like PCP or some other random drug, but i didn’t stop to ask him, so we’re sticking with the crack assumption). Unfortunately, although he thought he had chosen an inconspicuous hiding place, he chose to “hide” during rush hour on the end of the platform where the train enters. So there were about 50 people standing on the platform facing his direction (and the direction of the incoming train), watching this guy smoke crack. Lesson: Crackheads are terrible at hide ‘n’ seek.
I should also note, he was also rotating the crackpipe with a beer and a cigarette, since it’s always best to attack sobriety from all angles.
Tags: 10001, crackhead, drugs, subway
Posted in Only in New York City | No Comments »
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