January 13th, 2002.
Sunday
Every weekend seems to get more expensive than the last. This is no good. Though I do seem to be having more fun lately. I was supposed to go see Mulholland Drive with Caryn and crew after work on Friday, but I was still reeling from the night before so i decided I couldn't watch a David Lynch movie in my bogged down state of mind. Instead, I went with Jed down to Matt's and down to Long Tan, where Jed was meeting a few friends from his hometown of Wheeling, West Virginia. I'm liking Long Tan more than I used to, but it's still too expensive. Jed's friend Julie was already there when we got there, and some weird looking guy was chatting her up at the bar. So we rescued her from that. Then our friend Susannah, who we went to college with and see there often, walked in with her roommate Christy. We hadn't seen Christy for a few months, which was good, because after hanging out with her a few times in the fall, i could never remember her name. So given a few months, it was much more acceptable to tell her that we'd forgotten her name. She said she didn't remember ours either.So we sat around and drank relatively inexpensive drinks from the specials board. The waitress told us how predictable we all were in our drink orders. So I had a lychee martini, but made the waitress bring it in a highball glass. She seemed sympathetic to this. I hate martinis, but this was actually pretty good. Julie seemed like a nice girl. All my conversations with her involved name-dropping people and places from her hometown. It was fairly superficial, but lively conversation. So eventually we moved on down the road to Great Lakes. Shortly after getting there, I think I made a small ass of myself talking to this girl at the jukebox. Something about Guided by Voices. I get too chatty and enthusiastic when I'm drunk, as most people do, and though it often works, when it fails it's fairly embarrassing. Anyway, so after this I talked a bit with Julie and her friend Liz, mostly telling them stories about Jed and people she knew. I think I probably told them stuff Jed wouldn't want them to know, but I didn't feel too bad about it since they seemed to find it amusing. Somehow toward the end of the night I ended up with half a bagel with bacon and onion cream cheese and found my way to a car and came home. Jed, Matt, Susannah, and Christy went back to Matt's and continued the hilarity.
On Saturday my only plan was to kill time until the Eagles' game at 4:30. So I met Caryn for coffee in the East Village in the mid afternoon. I'm really enjoying New York more and more, and just sitting there and talking made me feel pretty good. Caryn had with her a copy of the new cd by Bad Religion. They were one of my favorite bands back in the day. I've been resurrecting a of mid-90's music into my cd player lately. Over christmas I dug out Helmet's Betty. Hard rock. We like it. I was talking to Caryn's friend Phoebe on thursday, and she'd said she had that album, but only bought it too be cool. I had to admit the same, but I ended up really liking it. I've also been listening a lot to the Lemonheads' It's a Shame About Ray. I recently discovered that the disc I now own is not the same as the cd my brother Garrick bought me for Christmas in 1992. My copy did not have "Mrs. Robinson" on it, and the song "My Drug Buddy" has been mysteriously renamed simply "Buddy." This bothers me. Anyway, so as I was walking with Caryn down Ave. A to the subway, I got a call from Rodzilla, who was working on her grad school applications at her school right off Ave. A. She was feeling a bit frazzled from the applications, and from the fact that she just realized she'd submitted the application with a rather glaring typo. The spellcheck had changed "Fulbright" to "Florite." So she was wondering just what to do about that. So we went out for a drink and a bite to eat at some Latin restuarant on Ludlow and sat around for a few hours. She said one of her friends was putting on a play at Collective Unconscious later that evening, so I decided to go along. It was a few hours off though, so we went back to my apartment so she could take a nap. I was pretty fucking tired, but I knew at that point, after a few beers, that an hour nap would probably do more harm than good, so i just watched tv for an hour and a half. Someone drank all my instant coffee, which enraged me. but I was too lazy to go get more, so I just sat around all groggy. I got a battery-acid-esque coffee from Dizzy's on the way back into the city, but that didn't help to do much of anything at all. We ended up having to stand outside for quite some time before being let into the small, cramped theatre. Naturally, the large, annoying, possibly crazy mand Rodzilla and I were laughing at outside sat his largeness right next to me. So I only really had half a seat, while Rodzilla was pressed against the wall. This dude wouldn't stop stomping his feet and huffing and puffing, annoyed as he was that the play was starting late. Anyway, the play itself was about women who goes through a video dating service in Tucson, AZ, in 1990. Why it was set in 1990 I don't know. There wasn't anything particularly 1990 anywhere in the plot. Maybe Tucson is currently going through some sort of renaissance right now and was a much more pathetic place in 1990. Throughout the play, whenever there was music playing or some reference made, I kept trying to figure out whether these songs or references existed in 1990. This is the sort of thing that often keeps me from enjoying art or literature. Anyway, I wasn't terribly impressed with the play itself. The acting wasn't so hot, and the plot and script were kind of sloppy, and the last scene was completely unecessary. But Rodzilla's friend was really quite good. Without her, I would be much more harsh on it. But she provided a lot of legitmate laughs, and acted really well. I was trying to imagine her in a movie or on TV, and had no problem doing so. The other actors I imagined in bad off-broadway plays, and I also had no trouble doing that either.
So after the show we went next door to the bar called Barramundi. I thought i'd been there before, but if I had i was at the tail end of a long drunken night. The only thing I remembered were the ineffiecient round booths, that could seat about six, but were largely occupied by couples. I was having a fairly good time though, considering how tired I was. I do enjoy going out with Rodzilla. There's a certain amount of vitriol she has that I miss. Awareness as well. For the most part. So then her friend showed up with the rest of the cast. I don't enjoy seeing people after seeing them perform. I'm absolutely terrible at bullshitting to someone whose performance I found pretty much underwhelming all around. Even if I like it I have trouble coming up with a complement that I find genuine. I can't just say some generic comment, I have to make it unique somehow and specific to what I just. Unless I can come up with one example of something I really like, I just won't say anything. So we talked to them for a while and finished our beers and then went back to her school so she could pick up her things. Then back to the F Train. I called Caryn, who was hanging out at Nate's apartment, so I rode with Rodzilla for one stop, then went over to Nate's.
They were ordering a pizza when I got there. With meatballs. Anyway, besides Caryn and Nate, Nate's roommate and Caryn's friend Phoebe were also present. Apparently I'd stumbled into the middle of some Madonna-thon. I don't know why I didn't just go home. I was beat, and the last thing I wanted to do was watch the Madonna concert. Plus, their tv was all fucked up and the upper portion squished all the images down into little flat projections, which made it all look very fucked up. I guess I was too tired to resist. So I stayed and watched the whole thing. After playing the guitars for a while, around 4 someone said they weren't tired, then someone else said they weren't tired either, then someone else said let's go get a drink then. None of these "someone"s was me. but I just went along for the ride. We took a cab down Houston to the Parkside Lounge, only to find it closed. So we continued on to Caryn's place further east. There were hung out, drank, and tried to play Crazy 8's. But everyone besides Caryn seemed too tired and out of it. And I really didn't want to get on the subway. The F wasn't even running to Brooklyn between midnight adn 5, so that wasn't an option. Caryn's place was opressively hot, and Phoebe had the only seat by the one open window. Around 6:00 AM, I had to go. Luckily, Phobe lives in Carol Gardens in Brooklyn, so we split the cab back. A much fuller day than I'd anticipated, and I didn't even do the one thing I'd planned on doing, which was to watch the football game. So I slept till about 3 today, leaving the house only to get a bagel and some groceries. Matt and Jed went to see Ocean's 11 up the street, but I was too tired and had spent too much money, so I stayed here and ate Crackerjacks and played a bit of guitar. The other night, I was playing loudly, when I heard someone tapping on my bedroom window. This concerned me a bit. I opened the window, and saw nothing, and cried out in a French accent " 'allo?" nothing. So now I'm wondering who was out there, and why they were bothering to rap on my bedroom window. I'm assuming it was the cooky girls who live upstairss. I really need to go out there one night and do some investigating as to how much you can see into my room. Anyway, I'm surprisingly tired despite only being awake for 9 hours. On a mental health note, I think I seem to be in a pretty stable state of mind. Most of my priorities seem to be in order, little things aren't enraging me the way they used to, and I'm much less contemplative than I was a few months ago. And my social group is expanding. Still, I am sort of waiting for that other shoe to drop.
Oh, here's funny little thing:
http://gregchow.tripod.com/pictures/tapdance1.avi
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