July 1st, 2002. Monday
 

 
    An eventful weekend was had, but I also got a boatload of sleep.  So we are happy.

    On Friday, I had no plans.  A few possible courses of action were discussed with first Jen, then Matt, but nothing came of those.  So instead I just rented a movie, sat in my air conditioned room, and drank Coronas.  I rented Cinema Paradiso.  This is one of Rodzilla's favorite movies, and I had discussed it with her the other night, as well as on many other occasions.  A new version was just released, so I figured now would be a good time to see the original, since I'd been meaning to for years now.  After the first third or so of the movie, I could already see why it was one of Rodzilla's favorite movies. It had everything- a cute little boy, an adorable and comically frustrated wise old man, romance, a good soundtrack, and Italians.  The only real problem I had with the movie was that I wasn't really in a reading mode on Friday night, and the subtitles were kind of a chore.  This was mainly because of my obsessive compulsive need to know what every single word of dialogue was.  So I spent a lot of time rewinding the movie.  I found myself cursing myself out loud at times when I would be mindlessly repeating the dialogue to myself, then forget what the exact line was, and therefore had to rewind the movie as much as five minutes.  This was a little easier since I had the movie on DVD, but it still makes me hate my mind.  Other than that, the movie was pretty enjoyable.  It dragged at moments, but I'm still curious to see the new cut, which adds 50 minutes. That pretty much makes it an entirely different movie.

    Saturday morning I woke up later than I had planned, around 10.  Jen, Matt, Jed and I had made plans to hit the beach, and we wanted to get an early start.  We managed to leave shortly before 11, I think, and got to the beach around noon.  We didn't really know where we were going. We had planned on going to Tobay beach, but it's closed to non-residents on weekends.  We ended up on Long Beach, which ended up being a good call. It was fairly empty, and the sand was unusually clean. There weren't even the usual broken up shards of shells in the surf that we ran into on Tobay.  Besides the normal nuisance of sand getting everywhere, the major annoyances of the day were the unusually hot sand and the absolutely frigid water.  The sand was so hot we couldn't even bear to stand on it in bare feet.  I ventured into the water first, and it took me a good 20 minutes to get up the nerve to submerge my whole self.  Normally you get used to cold water, but there was no getting used to this.  Matt and I ended up playing football with a bunch of random guys, which was unexpectedly fun.  I must say, I had two fairly impressive catches.  Also of note was one of our endzone markers. Only after picking a red towel as a marker did we notice the two topless women on the towel, one of whom was actually fairly attractive. But it was more of a curiosity than anything. Just seemed weird to be sunbathing topless on Long Island.
    Also noteworthy was Jed's ridiculous sun burn.  I saw him put on sun tan lotion, but for some reason part of him were still red as a lobster, while other parts were inexplicably pale.  Together with his brown shorts, he looked a lot like a box of Neopolitan ice cream.  When we got home, he slathered on a bunch of vanilla-scented moisturizer, which increased the ice-cream comparison.

    Then I ran off into the city.  Rodzilla had mentioned a mild desire to see the Luna show on Saturday.  So we thought maybe we'd do that.  Instead, we just went for a drink at the bar 2A.  Summer is passing me by. I was reminded so by the seasonal Sam Adams beer on tap.  The whole job thing real spoils summer.  So I had a few Sam Adams Summer brews, and Rodzilla nursed a single beer.  After leaving the, on our way to get Belgian fries, I for some reason thought it'd be good to stop off at this pyshic.  She was sitting in her storefront, as psychics do, watching tv.  She appeared to be mordidly obese, which lead me to the conclusions "Look at her.  She has to have wisdom."  Ten minutes later, I was out twenty bucks.  The readings were bullshit, though I think mine was slightly more satisfying than Rodzilla's.  Then we got our fries, which were quite good.  Continuing the night of extravagance, I decided to take a cab home as well, making a slight detour to drop Rodzilla off at the Prince St. station.  I couldn't afford it, but whenever I take a car, and I'm riding with the windows down over the Manhattan Bridge, everything seems ok.  Especially when I look over at the Brooklyn Bridge and see traffic at a full stop and know I made the right call when the cabbie asked me which bridge to take.
    When I got home, it only about 12:30, but I went right to bed, and slept nearly a full twelve hours.  Though for some reason I still woke up exhausted.  In the afternoon, Jed and I thought we might try to check out the McSweeney's store on 7th ave.  I'd only recently heard about the store's existence, and we were sort of curious as to what the store might sell.  For some reason we neglected to find the exact address, and I just guessed that the address was 424 7th ave.  I was wrong, and we never found it.  But I was close. The address is 429.  So we were on the wrong side of the street. It was unbearably hot, and all I could think about doing was going home, taking my pants off, and sitting in my air-conditioned room, reading comic books in my underwear.  We made a brief stop at the used book store, where I picked up yet another Vonnegut book, Palm Sunday, in hardcover for about 5 bucks.  That seemed reasonable to me.

    Shortly after that, while sitting in my air-conditioned room reading comic books in my underwear, I heard my name called in the hallway, saying someone was at the door for me. I knew it was, one of the upstairs neighbors, who I will call Miss Charming Melodee.  We had plans to go to a bbq later in the day.  So I was forced to put some pants on.  For some reason I felt as if I were doing something wrong.  Anyway, she just got back to Brooklyn and we decided on a time to leave.

    So about half an hour later, we left.  The bbq was in Brooklyn, which was a mild relief, since last time we went out, it was all the way past Newark, NJ.  However, it was in the non-convenient section of Williamsburg.  Getting to Williamsburg is no chore at all from Manhattan. It's just a short trip on the L train. But if you're already in Brooklyn, it can be a mighty pain in the ass.  It required taking the G train, the most hated train in the 5 boroughs.  We often just go into Manhattan and ride the L instead of waiting for the G.  Not only are the trains shorter, but the wait can be interminable.  We lucked out though, and our wait was minimal.  Plus, when you're not travelling alone the waits usually seem shorter.
    The barbecue was at a friend of a friend's house. Well, for me it was a friend of a friend of a friend.  Actually, I don't think she even knew the girl whose boyfriend's apt. was throwing the party very well.  But whatever. The apartment was huge.  Like most hip spaces in Williamsburg, it was an apartment converted from something else, in this case a Jewish school.  So that explained the gigantic wall-sized map of the world on one wall.  The living area was huge, with a pool table in the middle of the room.  There was a sizeable back yard, and the remains of what were apparently horse stables.  When we got there, Miss Charming Melodee didn't know a soul.  Eventually we ran into someone she sort of knew, and she talked to her for a while while I stood there nodding and occasionally smiling.  It was that closed-mouth kind of "So..." smile.  Eventually another of Miss Charming Melodee's friends showed up, and by then there were people to talk to and drinks to drink.  The music was blaring and horrible.  One of the residents of the apartment was very vocal about how much the music sucked, saying "This music is fucking driving me crazy, and it's too early for this kind of music."  He was right.  No one really wants to listen to techno or drum and bass at a mid-afternoon bbq.  Even when the guy running the music changed the songs, it was still shit like System of a Down.  No one wants to listen to hardcore at a midafteroon bbq.  Then when we decided on something more mellow, he played Massive Attack's "Inertia Creeps."  I really like that song, but no one really wants to listen to that at a mid-afternoon bbq.  Anyway, I managed to scrounge some food, though at first I was hestitant to eat anything since I didn't know anyone there. I'd even stuck mostly to drinking the beer Miss Charming Melodee had brought.
    So around seven or so Miss Charming Melodee, her friend, and I took of to their friend's place in Greenpoint.  There was some sort of street carnival going on, and we thought we'd check it out.  For some reason the streets of Greenpoint and Williamsburg were kind of doing it for me on Sunday.  When compared to the polish of Park Slope, it somehow seemed a lot more fun.  Though I doubt I would really want to live there.  Anyway, the carnival was a dinky little affair, with a few rides and a few games and food stands.  We rode a few rides that churned out stomachs though, and left after we'd used all our ride tickets.  If you're ever at a carnival and are tempted to check out any sort of haunted house, don't. It's more like a haunted hallway.  By "haunted" the apparently just meant "dark."  What a crock of shit.  I know it's a crappy street fair thing, but I don't even see why they bother with that.
    We went back to the friend's apartment, and sat on the roof for a while.  Miss Charming Melodee was feeling weird and woozy, and excused herself for a while. When she came back up she informed us that she'd just vomitted.  We left shortly after that.
    We considered stopping in Caroll Gardens for food, but at that point she felt worse, and I was feeling kind of poopy myself, so we just headed for home.  I got a lot of sleep, but still woke up exhausted.  I hadn't really been to a carnival in some time, and I had definitely never ridden on g-force increasing rides after drinking a good amount of beer.  But at least it felt like summer.

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