May 6th, 2002. Monday

 
    I would really like to take a vacation. But like all things, the possibilty of something great in the future prevents me from doing something in the present. I don't want to use my vacation days now in case I really want to go somewhere later in the year. So I'll be staying put for now.

    I spent a lot of time since thursday night pondering my self-centered nature. Which put me in a pretty bad mood. I've always know that I'm extremely self-centered, but lately I'm beginngin to wonder if it's actually worse than I'd imagined. Which left me feeling like a pretty awful person. Jen and I had a little conversation at Great Lakes on Thursday night, which is what got me thinking about. I've been making a conscious effort in the past few months to try to care more about other people, or at least give the appearance of doing so. I thought I'd been making improvement, but I guess not as much as I thought. A few weeks ago I was talking to my upstairs neighbor Rachel, and in the middle of our conversation she said, out of the blue, "Now, do you care about what anyone else has to say?" She said this as casually as one might say "One lump or two?" In that case, however, it was due to the fact that I often do not make eye contact when talking to people. I think. Anyway, this trend/development/realiztion is somewhat disturbing. And I guess talking about it anymore just sort of proves the point.

    Moving on, on Saturday, Jed and I decided we weren't going to do our laundry, but drop it off at the laundromat and pick it up later. This is a luxury I don't normally indulge in, particularly when i have time on the weekends. It's ludicrious to pay three times as much to do get the laundry done. And the clothes always comes back ina sort of rough condtion. Plus, I just can't afford it. However, on this particular saturday we were pressed for time. The Kentucky Derby was run on Saturday, and a group of us decided that we absolutely had to go to the Off Track Betting center in Park Slope. A few weeks ago, I was very proud to have taken part in that great American tradition of going to the sketchy check-cashing center and then directly to the liquor store. On Saturday, I got to participate in the variant of that activity, which was to go to the check cashing center and then to the OTB. So we all placed about 20 dollars worth of bets on various horses. There were probably only 4 horses out of the 18 running that none of us had any money on. Then we- Matt, Jed, Josh, and I- headed to Great Lakes for their Kentucky Derby party. They've been running this for a number of years now, mostly because the bartender Ray is a Kentucky native, but this was the first time we've actually gone. Great Lakes usually isn't even open until 6, and it was pretty weird to be in there in the middle of the day. The place looked much more like a cruddy dive-bar under the harsh scrutiny of mid-afternoon sunlight. But they had little sandwiches to eat and mint juleps to drink, so all was well. I'd never actually had a mint julep before, and i must say, they're damn good. I think I will write my next drink review on the mint julep. Matt had run into Susannah earlier that day, and she and her roommate came down to join us at the Lakes. They hate that bar, and seeing it in the daylight didn't make them like it any better. But their company is usually enjoyed, and it was a nice day, so all was fine.

    Anyway, there was also a little Derby pool going on at the Lakes, and for two dollars you could pick a horse's name out of an envelope, and the winner took all. I drew the horse War Emblem, one of the few horses we didn't have any money on. We'd all placed small-money bets on big-odd outcomes, but we were still hoping that we'd all somehow win. We didn't all win, but the next-best thing happened: I won. War Emblem, the 20-1 longshot, went wire-to-wire and won the Derby. So a horse I hadn't even bet on won me a modest 36 dollars. Not a lot of money, but it at least covered the 28 dollars I'd spent at the OTB, plus one mint julep. Which woulda been good enough. But the horse that came in second, Proud Citizen, also made me a little money. I had a 5 dollar bet on that horse to finish 3rd, and accidentally put a 2 dollar bet on it to finish second. I meant to bet on Perfect Drift, who finished third. So another 55 dollars to me. At this point I was feeling a little guilty about being the only one to win. I did rub it in Josh's face a little, because I only bet on Proud Citizen because he didn't. He said he was going to, which sounded like a great idea to me, but then he backed off. Had he placed his 5 dollar bet on that horse, he'd've walked away with a cool 60 bucks. Anyway, we were ready to go somewhere else, and decided to go back to Susannah's place up the street. So I offered to take the money from the Great Lakes pool and buy pizza and a bottle of Wild Turkey. So at the end of the day, after the the pizza and alcohol and drinks and picking up the laundry- whose expenditure I included in the gambling because I only dropped it off so I could make the OTB in time- I actually only made about 13 dollars. Oh well. Everyone else lost money, so I's ain't complainin'.

    At Susannah's we sat for a long while on her back porch and drank and ate pizza. We also filled the time with conversations. Then we moved inside once it got too cold. Matt at one point went back to his apartment to retrieve Trivial Pursuit. I'd lodged complaints about playing because of how dated it was, being the first edition and all. I loudly protested the potential debates that would ensue should we get the inevitable questions about which president did this or that, or which country was the world's largest, etc. We only got one of these questions, however, and as it turned out, that questions- which asked what country was home to the Serbians, Croatians, etc.- probably wouldn't have been common knowledge if hadn't Yugoslavia split up and made the question dated in the first place.

    Lately whenever we play boardgames Jed likes to boast that he hadn't lost this or that game in 14 years or whatever. So it's pleased me greatly that I've personally ended his streak. Susannah and I won fairly handily, with her complementing my knowledge superbly. I'd say I answered about 80 percent of the questions, but the ones she answered, I had absolutely no idea on. So it worked out well. Though I think Jed and I are fairly equal, I think the only person around these parts that could best me would be Geoff. Matt complained the whole time that we were getting easy questions, but his selective memory forgets our early round nightmares of questions like "What did so-and-so call just another dusty delta day" or something like that. No one makes victory less satisfying than Matthew E. O'Brien.

    Matt also brought with him the game of Jenga. And Susannah cracked a cheap bottle of champagne she'd had for a while. And then Dylan topped the Jenga tower, extending my non-losing streak for the day. All in all, it was a modest big red letter day for me. I felt like I should gone to Atlantic City or played the lottery, or at the very least gone out and hit the bars and gone wenching. I was feeling pretty lucky. Instead, I just went home, had a bite to eat, and went to bed.

    On Sunday, I made my usual trip down to the 7th ave. flea market and looked for records. For one dollar, I picked up a record of German beerhaus songs. The literature on the back of the cover would've been worth the dollar alone. It's first sentence read "In Germany, beer isn't a beverage-- it's a food." It then went on to say something like "From minors to decrepits, every German averages at least a glass of beer a day." I didn't know they still let decrepits live in Germany.

    After that, I accompanied Jen to look at some apartments in the Slope. The one I looked at with her was definitely not worth the money, although it was on President Street, between 7th and 8th Aves., what many would call the most desireable street in all of Park Slope. Not me though. Then we sat in the Purity Diner while Jen had an obscenely large chef salad and I had a piece of blueberry pie that was 92% pie filling.

    And then off to the city. The event for the evening was to see Belle and Sebastian play the at the Hammerstein Ballroom. I took the F and walked into Soho to pick up Rodzilla from work. I had to wait for a few minutes, so I sat out on Broome Street. There, the bald man with the orange pants and wicker shoes and sweater draped over his back who walked by cyrstallized my hatred for the people of Soho. God, I hate them. I really, really hate them. I never really thought about or realized how much I hate the people around Soho until yesterday. Now it's like I can't even remember what it was like not to hate them. I've just never had the hate localized so much. I've always hated that typical chic, stylish New Yorker, the kind who's in Time Out New York saying they spent 1000 dollars on their pants, but I always just thought it was a problem all around the city. It probably is, but it all starts in Soho. They're just awful, awful people. I'm sure most of them have good qualities to them, and sure I'm making crass generalizations, but I'm sure, just judging by their 800 t-shirts- I'm not kidding, 800 bucks- these people surely aren't interested in their inner good qualities and are quite prone to their own stylish breed of crassness. Fuckers. All of them. Just walk around the city and you can tell who they are. Half-tinted brown sunglasses are an excellent place to start.

    Anyway, Rodzilla and I walked around for a good while trying to find a place to eat. Maybe due to my sudden Soho-hatred realization, really wanted to avoid any place that looked to stylish. But mostly I was looking to eat for cheap, but not in some shithole. This is virtually impossible in Manhattan, let alone Soho. So we walked around aimlessly, Rodzilla huffing and puffing all the way, until we finally just gave up and went to the Noho Star. I've passed this restaurant on Bleeker St. countless times, and always thought it looked really uppity and expensive. I was right. The wait staff was also snooty. One might even go so far as to call them "bitches." Everytime this one waitress would turn her back to a table, she roll her eyes and make faces to the hostess. I haven't spent a lot of time in the food service or hospitality industries, but that doesn't seem like something you should do in full view of the other customers you wait on. But that's just me. Anyway, the salmon sandwich was ok, Rodzilla's potato pancakes were good, and the homemade ginger ale was excellent. Running late to meet Geoff, we took a cab to the Hammerstein Ballroom.

    I'd never seen a show at the Hammerstein, and only been in the building once. It'd been four days short of a year since I'd had my NYU graduation ceremony there. The concert was more enjoyable, and about $55,000 cheaper to attend. And I still had friends and relatives there with me. I wasn't really feeling like going to the show the past few days, but Belle and Sebastian almost never tour, so I felt obligated to go. And it was a fine show. Live, they come across like a 60's pop band. At times there were as many as 13 people on stage, which consisted of the core six or seven members, and various string and horn players. The minimal lighting effects matched the music really well. Anyway, I thought the sound was great, but Geoff thought it was awful. I just thought the music translated really well live. Soft but never too quiet, and energetic without being too loud. They played a cover of "Stayin' Alive" that was pretty dead on. So dead on, that it wasn't even that interesting. The only real thing I got from it was a newfound appreciation of the main guitar line. I'd never heard it played live, and for some reason I was marvelling at how catchy it was. During the encore, Rodzilla and I went up to the first balcony level to see what we could see. It was a pretty cool sight, looking down at all those heads, some bobbing, some moving left to right. But pretty much all moving as one. It looked particularly cool in the purple lights. Other notes from the show: I was very glad there was no opening band. Very, very, very glad. Also, I couldn't understand a goddam word Stuart Murdoch said through the whole show. Thickest Scottish brogue I've ever heard. I just ran into James while getting off the elevator here at work. He's shaved his beard again. When he first started wearing the beard, I didn't like it. Now I find beardless James a bit disconcerting. The beard really smooths out his features, particularly the corners of his mouth. Without it, when he smiles it looks more like a smirk, and he looks like he's laughing at you. It's no wonder that most people I know at some point have said "I think James hates me."

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