So what's happening...

    Let's start on, oh, Tuesday.

    On Tuesday, I was all pissed off at work.  You know, the no pay, no respect blah blah blah.  So I took off early, as was the plan, and met up with Rodzilla.  Even though i left early, I was still late getting to the West 4th st. subway station. So was she.  so it all worked out. Anyhow, we were going up to 54th st. to meet Ben and Johanna from work to see a taping of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  We called under the auspices of the magazine, so we got VIP tickets, which basically meant we didn't have to wait in the snow and cold with everyone else, and we got seated first.  I think this was the first time I was ever in the studio audience of a tv show.  The set was much smaller in real life than it looks like on tv.  It was weird, because a lot of the time I was there, i wasn't watching the set, but the monitors that were showing how it'd look on tv.  The show itself was really good.  To me, it's one of the funnier shows out there.  Dennis Leary and Ed Burns were the guest.  The Leary bit was taped for a different show.  I was wondering if Jon Stewart would have to change clothes between guests, so when the taped segment aired for a different show, the clothes would match up.  but there was no quick change.  Anyhow, lotsa funny bits, and a good time was had by all.
    So after that, Rodzilla and I took a cab down to Yama at Irving Pl.  I was thinking earlier in the day that I couldn't even remember the last time I was with rodzilla and we took the subway somewhere. we took it to the Daily Show, but I take more cab rides with her than anybody else.  it's always too cold, or too far, or something.  Which is fine by me.  It usually is too cold or too far.  Anyway, just a thought. The sushi was good, and worth the wait. If I had to eat only one kind of food for the rest of my life, sushi'd be it.  I think I could pull a salmon out of a river and just bite into it. Like butta.  If there's something in this world more satisfying than a tummy full of raw fish and beer, I don't know what it is.  Anyway, a nice sort of New York night.  Just what I needed after a shitty day.

    So last night, I left work a bit late and met Rachel at the Tea Lounge on 7th ave here in Park Slope.  When I arrived she was reading Slapstick, but kurt vonnegut, which was notable because I was just thinking on the train how I wanted to talk to her about that book. I'd recommended it to her a few weeks ago, and she just started it.  Anyway, i was thinking about race and culture and stuff like that, how it relates to me, and how I've been yearning more lately to be "more" Chinese.  And I remembered that I've always felt that cultural kinship was some sort of weakness, like it was a cop out.  It's like, oh, i have nothing else to relate to people with, so i'll use the fact that we happen to be of the same ethnic background.  I know that's a totally simplictic view, but deep down i've always felt that.  I'm not explaining it very well.  Anyway, so I started to think that maybe lately I have little else really going for me, and I've just fallen back to the thing that's easiest to get interested in.  To try and find some sort of bond with someone.  So that got me thinking about Slapstick, because one of the parts that stick out to me most is when he says something like, no crime against humanity was ever committed out of any particular love of crime, but out of loneliness.  it's why people are always forming clubs or teams or organized crime families.  Just to feel like you belong to something.  So that immediately bumped Slapstick way up on my list of books.  Just that idea alone.  The subtitle of the book is "Lonesome No More."  Anyway, so i was pleased that Rachel was reading the book when I arrived.  By the way, I hate when I go to the Tea Lounge and there's a big group of people sitting around and having their little book discussion group.  Hate it.  So rachel and I sat around and talked about books at length.  it's ok if it's just a few people. I dunno. More intimate. It's talking instead of espousing.  Anyhow, the line of thought in slapstick also reminded me of Cat's Cradle, and the "granfalloons," the "false" associations, like the woman from Indiana who says "we Hoosiers have to look out for each other," and shit like that.  There really needs to be a word for bullshit associations and feelings of kinship.  Anyway.
    I do enjoy meeting rachel at the coffee shop.  I've been thinking about living in Manhattan lately, but I really like the coffee shop on 7th in Brooklyn.  If the same place were in Manhattan, it'd be a mob scene every day and at every hour.  And if some place in Manhattan were actually that empty, it'd be closed in a month.  Anyway, I'm sad that she's leaving for good in 5 days.  It's been nice having someone in the neighborhood to meet up with and sit around and talk with.  It's what I've been wanting since I moved to Brooklyn, just someone to meet me at the coffee shop down the street. And I really enjoy talking about books, which I never thought I'd say. I'm a late bloomer.  What my mom always told me.  Anywa, Rachel just finished Catcher in the Rye for the first time.  There are certain things that I always feel cheesy reading or discussing, and that book is one of them.  Which is a shame, because I really liked it. Though i can't put my finger on exactly why.  Just the feeling it evokes.  I'm being horribly imprecise, and terribly verbose. the combination is not good.  Anyway, rachel just thought she needed to read that book because she was supposed to read it in highschool, and I guess she never really absorbed it.  That was the same reason I read the Great Gatsby last year, and it actually made me enjoy reading for the first time in my life.  How nice.  Right now I'm reading a book I borrowed from Rodzilla, called Paris to the Moon.  It's written by a guy who writes for the New Yorker who moved to Paris for five years.  I'm finding it really intriguing and frustrating at the same time.  Flat out, it makes me want to go to Paris, if only to actually see what he's talking about.  And for the last few years I've had this thing with france and the french.  Since my brief trip there, I guess, which coincidentally was a year ago tomorrow.  It's much tougher to read than the stuff I've been reading lately. Not really a subway kind of book. But I think i need that right now.  While it's still cold.
    So anyway, after the coffee shop, I came up here to find Matt and Jed. Then Jen came, then rachel joined us, and we just hung out here all night and watched TV and chatted and did math problems and logic games.  One scene in jed's room was particularly harrowing, for the sheer dorkiness of it all.  I had it all plotted out as a movie. "so, what'd you do last night?" And then it'd zoom in on me, then flash back to last night in jed's room, where we were all watching him do his faux magician act of holding a coin out with his thumg and index finger, then "grabbing" it with his other hand, then making us guess which hand it was in. Then it'd flash back to me in the present, and I'd reply "uh... nothing.  So let's talk about something else."
    I was showing Jen some pictures, mostly from the fall on 1999.  It was weird that the sight of the pictures was making me remember the smell of New York at the time the pictures were taken.  Some up at Lincoln Center, or at the Met, or at the TWA terminal at JFK.  No other pictures really do that to me. Maybe New York's just really smelly. but not all in a bad way it seems.

    So tonight, Kathy had a little birthday hoe-down at the Peculiar Pub on Bleeker st.  Twas a fun night.  Jed and James were there, as were Katey and Caryn.  Caryn's begun to complain that i don't mention her enough, especially since I talk to her every day.  So there.  Anyway, there was this Asian girl there that I was stuck talking to, who was, I'm told, at NYU journalism school the same time I was.  we never met.  Anyway, she seemed nice enough, and this other girl was asking me all these questions about NYU and journalism school.  And this Asian girl wouldn't cut me any slack. I was jus being shy and lassaiz care.  The inquisitive girl asked me if it was tough interviewing people, and I was like "interview...?"  I didn't do a lot of that, I explained.  Mostly because of shyness.  At this she said she found that tough to believe because she thought I had this certain quality that would make someone want to open up to me.  I wasn't sure where she was getting this, because at the time I was feeling really awkward.  but it was nice to hear. It's a nice quality to be told you have.  Anyway, so this Asian girl starts talking about how she was networking within her field and getting published and how she loved all her classes and all her professors and blah blah blah.  So I just sit there and smile at her.  I actually don't think i was, but she said I was, and told me to stop it.  I guess she thought I was mocking her or something. Which i wasn't. Anyway, within 15 minutes of meeting this girl, she was throwing candy wrappers and napkins and all sorts of refuse at me.  I have to say, that doesn't usually happen. I wasn't even aware of what I was doing that was so annoying to her.  Anyway, she split soon after that.  Her husband works at the same investment bank my brother Geoff works at, and he actually got out before midnight tonight, so they had a little qt planned.  Anyway, it's obvious she's the one with the problem.  My age and married.  Gotta be something wrong with her.
 

    And so here I am.  Big day tomorrow. Supposed to get paid.  Only reason I'm going in to work, and leaving soon as I get it.  Hoo-a.
 

By the way, Jen from On My Turf just added a little message board on her site. I've long thought about doing that, but I wouldn't like not being able to control what gets revealed and what doesn't, and I'm afraid people would just start telling all my secrets. Not that I have any. Anyway, just my thoughts on that.

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