February 4th, 2003. Tuesday
I'm having a lot of trouble being around other people lately. Why, what an odd thing for someone who keeps an online journal to say! Trouble with people? Better get on the internet then, boy-o. Now that I've got that out of the way, I really don't like being around people at all. It's not that I dislike anyone, but lately being around people just gets me in a bad mood. Mostly because I can't control the environment, or how anyone else acts. This is, I think, an extension of the rage I was feelin last week from all the slow-walking, slow-talking, and generally slow people I had to deal with all over this goddam city. I was just walking around angry, wishing people would act differently. And now I find myself doing that with everyone I come into contact with. And of course, no one acts differently, so that puts me in said rotten mood.
Anyway, that said, I spent most of the weekend with a lot of different people. On Friday, James had a show down at Pete's Candy Store, so we all went to see that. His album was reviewed in Time Out, so that was pretty exciting. I took the picture they used, so I was particularly proud of that. Anyway, before the show I went with Miss Charming Melodee and her sister and her sister's boyfriend to Bahia, an El Salvadorian restaurant that PFC Katey and Kathy introduced me to over the summer. It's good food, and really cheap. MCM's sister's boyfriend is kind of a funny guy. In a movie, he would be played by Michael Rappaport. He seems like a no-nonsense, no-frills, blue collar 40-year-old man. He's very agreeable, and knows what he likes and what he wants. For instance, when we were ordering drinks, he said "You got any of that, whaddathey call it, sparkling wine? Like, what's it called, Andre?" He remarked how smooth it was to drink. Yessir, never afraid to order a festive sparkling wine on a whim. It's admirable, really. Anyway, the food was good as usual, and we filled up pretty quickly, at a reasonable price. And I didn't even mind being around people.
So then we walked a bit of the dinner off walking about ten blocks down to Pete's. The joint was packed when we got there. There were some annoying people, especially this creepy curly-haired guy who was hitting on these two girls sitting in front of me, but for the most part the show was pretty good. The band that played before James reminded me a lot of the music that James and I will sometimes play when we're just fooling around on our guitars in the living room. The difference was that we don't sit on a stage and play it. Cause that could be pretty boring for anyone that wasn't us. Such was mostly the case, I think, for that band. Sounded good, but not terribly interesting. Anyway, James sounded pretty good. Toward the end of the night, Matt and I noticed that a person sitting behind us had left, leaving completely untouched half of a mozzarella and prosciuto sandwich. We both contemplated eating it. They're really good. It was kind of like the Seinfeld where George grabs the eclair out of the garbage. It was a perfectly good sandwich, hot and tasty and untouched. But something about it just seemed wrogn. In the end, neither of us could do it. Though, when no one was looking, I opened it up and grabbed a piece of the salted, cured meat. and it was good. Afterwards, I felt somewhat dirty.On Saturday, I headed down to Park Slope to relive a few memories of the not-too-distant past. The first was a big ol' bagel from La Bagel Delight, my main weekend breakfast supplier for three years. Then the old roommates, myself, Jed, Dylan, and Josh, convened for a little Nintendo playing. It was a little surprising that after after Jed and Dylan put the nintendo away after Josh and I moved out, that it never came out again, considering we probably spent at least 60% of our waking time playing that when all four of us were home. Probably more than that. If there were three of us sitting in our separate rooms, and we heard the front door open and close, at least one of us to go around to gauge interest in 4-man gaming. And very, very rarely was it ever denied. So we hadn't played since August, and but after a few minutes, it was just the same again. Except we experience nintendo thumb for really the first time. After Josh left, Dylan, Jed, and I went down to Matt's place to play Halo on his Xbox. After Dylan left, the three of us were getting ready to go out, but first decided to have an impromptu athletic contest using matt's chin-up bar. No chin-ups were actually performed. I lost a buck betting Matt I could hang from my legs for 2 and a half minutes, but lasted less than a minute. Then we had a little competition to see who would run up to the bar, grab it, and swing the farthest. Matt ended up winning what became a two-man competition, after Jed ripped off a bunch of callouses on his hands. It was bloody and gross. Later, when the waitress at the 2nd Street Cafe asked what happened to his hand, he tried to tell her he got in a fight, but we quickly went into the story. This, after Matt and Jed had been going in and out of the place while i ordered a coffee, amending the order with hot chocolates. Anyway, after that, and after Jed's story about what happened to his hand, I'm pretty sure the waitress thought we were going to take our coffee home, then make out with each other furiously.
In reality, we went back to Jed's place, then upstairs to the second floor where there was a party going on. Miss Charming Melodee was already up there with her sister. She used to live there, and it was a little weird seeing her there again. The last time I saw her up there I was probaly hitting on her shamelessly. Or shamefully, I guess. The parties upstairs generally feature a wide assortment of food, most of it good. This time, there was a variety of vegan delights, which all tasted vaguely of cardboard mixed with chalk, and maybe some chocolate. the saving grace was an artichoke dip, fresh out of the oven. MCM said she could make that dip for me, but warned be that it consisted of "half parmesan cheese, half mayonnaise." I was like "Nearly everything I eat is either half cheese or half mayonnaise." As I said it, I felt kind of gross.
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