I want this to be written, but I don't want to write it. I'd really enjoy reading it though. I just hope i do it justice. but i'm not holding my breath. This is going to suck, I can feel it. so, here's the weekend, not in chronological order, at least, not deliberately.On Friday, I rode the bus across town to Jen's place, where she was having some sort of trauma with several phone companies. I was feeling like I should go out and celebrate my finishing grad school. So after some shepard's pie and sweet potato fries, we headed down to the Sidewalk to meet James, Jed and Rodzilla, who had called and said her plans for the evening fell through, and met James and Jed there as well, seeing as she lives two blocks away. I can't recall the last time the five of us all hung out. I was actually a bit nervous about it. Anyway, it was fine. We had a few drinks at the Sidewalk, then walked down to Tonic, where we once again sat around in old wine vats and drank and drank. The mood changed significantly from the Sidewalk to Tonic, but I wasn't feeling to talkative in either setting. So I spent most of the night sitting there and talking occasionally. Still, a fun evening.
So on Saturday, I had to go to a Christmas party that my Parks boss Kate was having at her paren'ts house up in Inwood Hills. If you're not familiar with Manhattan, it's northernmost street is about 220th. Kate's house is on 217th. So it took me about an hour and a half to go from Park Slope, which is about 16 miles away. Anyhow, it was a pot-luck, and I told Kate I'd make a pie or something. I got sort of a late start on the day, so any sort of baking was out of the question. I made plans to meet one of the other interns at Parks, Jen K, and we'd go up together, since she'd been to Kate's house before. By the time I got back into manhattan, around 3, it was misting rain, and we still had to buy our food items. After an annoying trek up and down 6th Ave., we finally hit the 2-3 train and headed up to Kate's.It was raining a lot harder 45 minutes later when we got out at 215th st., the last stop on the line. It wasn't a terrible ride up. I'm beginnig to enjoy Jen K's company more lately. I'm not particularly close to anyone at Parks, but she's probably the person I've spoken with the most in the last few weeks there. And she has interesting perspectives on things and doesn't act all stupid, which is sort of rare. We ran into this girl Christiana, who also works at parks and was going to the party. Neither of them, both who'd been to Kate's before, seemed certain where we were going. So we walked around in the rain until Christian got her bearings, and eventually found kate's house. It was weird to be in a house in manhattan. Anyway, we walked in, and met Kate's dad at the door. An affable gentleman probably in his mid-50s. I introduced myself, and he said "Oh yes, I know who you are," or something like that, which sort of surprised me. The Parks Commissioner was also there. I'd never met the man, and was curious about him after hearing a lot of weird things. He's the guy who insists on Parks employings having "Parks names," nicknames that they're addressed by. Even the nametags say the nicknames. Commissioner Stern's nickname is "Starquest." It's sort of weird. When he was leaving, everyone said "Bye, Starquest!"
Anyway, Kate's home was lovely. Lots of dark wood panelling and a very homey feeling overall. Over the next few hours, lots of different people, some of whom were actually sort of interesting, showed up. Actually, I must say, almost everyone I talked to was sort of fascinating. I didn't really plan on staying all that long, but at one point, I thought to myself, "Yeah, I'm going to be here for a while." I actually stopped and thought that, because I knew that's how I'd write it later. I'm not sure what I was doing at the time. Anyway, one of Kate's dad's friends who was there is the man who runs the Denver Film Festival, so we talked with him for a good while. Apparently, according to kate, he'd won some sort of award in the past for bring the movies Red, White, and Blue to the States. I also talked to these people that Kate's mom met on the subway platform a few days ago and invited to the party. Pam and Robert, I think. Kate suggested I talk to them because Robert did Tai Chi, and me being asian and all thought maybe we'd have some common ground to talk about. And they really weren't doing much, so I figured I'd help her out and talk to these guys. They were quite nice, and fairly interesting. Just your average, friendly young New York couple. the conversation started when he was telling Christiana about the Onion, and I jumped in and she escaped. She too had been recruited by Kate to talk to people who weren't talking to anybody else. Normally, I'm the guy sitting there not talking to anyone, but after a few glasses of wine I was feeling more gregarious.
So anyway, the party itself turned out to be sort of fun. It was nice to be someplace different with people I'd never hung out with before, talking about things I've never talked about before. When I was talking to the film guy, I wished I'd read more film criticism in class, because I could have had a more interesting conversation with him I think. Not in a pretentious way, I just feel like that was an opportunity missed, to talk about films with someone who obviously has a deep passion for them. My small talk skills were unusually deft last night I think. I also enjoyed talking to kate's dad. He's a psychologist, so I basically just tried talked to him about a lot of psych stuff I got from Jen. Kate's friend monica was there, and her boyfriend reminded me a whole lot of the guy on Seinfeld who played Puddy. The way he looked and acted. Very non-chalant and calm. There was also this guy there that Kate thought was hitting on me. I was sort of getting that feeling as well. Actually, there were two guys that I thought might be hitting on me. But I couldn't really say for sure. The whole thing was sort of interesting/disturbing. Anyway, that was the party. Nobody ate my apple crumb pie, by the way. A lot of thought went into that. And 13 bucks. I'm billing parks for that pie.
So after helping them clean up, Kate wanted to go out. Most everyone of the kids there wanted to go out too, and I though I was sort of pooped, i didn't want to ride home all alone or be a party-pooper, so I went to. We ended up at Siberia, the bar that's in the 50th st. subway station. Kate particularly likes that bar. It's ok. It's sort of a dive, and not all in a good way. Things got sort of weird at Siberia. I spent most of the time talking with Jen K and occasionally kate. the weirdness culminated at the point, around 2am, that Kate's friends decided they wanted to get married and were going to fly to las vegas to do so. a short digression- isn't it odd that you can do just about anything in New York, but you can't get married here 24-hours a day? Anyway, so kate and her friends left, and shortly there after I rounded up the posse to leave as well. We met Kate outside, where her friend Monica was on the phone with her parents, trying to convince them about what a great idea it was to get married. her mom seemed ok, but the dad wasn't having it. He wanted to talk to her now-fiance, Dan (Puddy). On the phone with Monica's parents, at the corner of 50th st., at 2 in the morning on a rainy december night, Dan was at his Puddiest. "yes sir. I understand. Yes. I'm ready to go right now." So he hangs up, and says "We're going to wait for your parents. We're going to wait for my parents." Very puddyesque. and that was it. So then kate and them and one of the other guys with us took off, and Jen and I and this guy eric started heading home. Jen K wanted to go through Times Square to see "all the pretty shiny things," so we did that and eric took off. I'm sure ten years ago the prospect of walking through Times Square at 2 am would've been a dangerous move. but if there's one common complaint i always hear from New Yorkers, it's "they've turned Times Square into Disney Land." And it really is. but it's safer now too.So that was a boring account of a generally interesting weekend. I have a lot of pictures. I went to the Central Park zoo during lunch on Friday. I get in free because I work for parks. lotsa pictures of that. Also, while Jen and I were walking back from brunch this afternoon, the most amazing rainbow we'd ever seen was sitting in the northern sky. There were actually two of them. So i ran inside and grabbed my cameras to document the event. I didn't think it'd come out too well on my digital camera, and it didn't. But here they are:
This doesn't do justice to what it actually looked like. My camera was fogging up. But it was really amazing. It sort of brought the neighborhood together for a few minutes, as everyone ran out of their houses or stopped on the street and marvelled at the sky. nice to see strangers talking and smiling at each other. sort of touching to see the parents and the little kids, and sort of dispirting to see how many of the parents couldn't answer the "Mommy, what causes rainbows" questions. But all in all, a very pleasant afternoon after the sky opened up like that. As Jed and Jen and I stood out on the sidewalk, i said "let's stand here until it disappears and we can watch this wonderful sight slowly and painfully fade away to nothingness." but it was beautiful nonetheless.
