So I'm all moved in to my new apartment. Not nearly all unpacked, but everything's there. The move went pretty well, save for the landlord neglecting to tell me that the wood floors were refinished. They look nice and new and shiny, but unfortunately, there are a good amount of footprints stuck permanently in the finish now. Matt and I didn't notice that the floor was still wet until we'd walked all over. Bummer.
If there was only one item I could move from my old apartment to my new one, it'd probably would've been the air conditioner. It's a life saver. I can't imagine trying to sleep without it right now. It's in the 90s everyday, and nothing makes it tougher to sleep than being hot and sticky. God, I love that thing. And in general, I love my apartment. When I imagined living in New York, this is exactly the kind of apartment I'd always imagined living in. It's huge, it's got 10-foot ceilings, three 7-foot windows in the living room, a dishwasher, and two bedrooms. I'm still trying to find a subletter for the second bedroom until Miss Charming Melodee moves in, but besides that it's smooth sailing. Don't know when I'll find time to unpack though.
The long weekend was possibly one of my most enjoyable 4th of July weekends ever. A level of contentedness and peace and satisfaction unseen up until now. Miss CM and I attended a barbecue at Jen's place in Park Slope on Friday afternoon. Much good food was had. Sausages, chipwiches, ambrosia (a personal favorite), lots to drink, and some second-rate fireworks. And it was hot as Hades, I tell you. You could barely notice the heat standing right by the grill, it was so hot. But a good time had by one and all. I think.
In the evening, Miss CM and I went back up to Greenpoint for another party at one of her friend's apartments in the neighborhood. We sat on the roof and watched the fireworks display. From the vantage point in Greenpoint, we could see four of the displays, and see the upper half of the fireworks from lower manhattan. I must say, the fireworks display was visually thrilling. I missed them last year, but these were so much more impressive than two years ago. Perhaps because up in Greenpoint we were much closer to where the fireworks were launched. The four displays took up most of our field of vision. And it seems to me that they're really made some nice advances in the field of fireworks. Besides the heart shapes and smiley faces, there were a lot of other noticeable effects that I hadn't seen much before. A lot of the fireworks had secondary explosions, where the lit up pieces accelerated after the initial burst, which made for a really interesting effect. Other times they just stayed in the air for a long time, glittering as they slowly descended. On the whole, it was really quite stunning. One effect I haven't seen in a long time is the one where, after the initial explosion, a few pieces light up and kind of twirl and zigzag down through the sky, and make a sort of loud whistling effect while doing so. The kind of noise you'd hear in a cartoon as a bomb dropped. It's been so long since I've seen this I'm starting to wonder if maybe I'd imagined the whole thing. Maybe they just didn't want anything that sounded like bombs.
After the fireworks, miss CM and I went back to her apartment down the street to rest for a while before the evening's party, and to shower yet again. It's so hot and unpleasant that I'm averaging more than two showers a day. I've basically become amphibious. Plus, in this humidity, towels never really dry, so you're always trying to dry yourself with a damp towel. And that's probably somewhere in my top ten list of most-unpleasant non-life-threatening experiences. Speaking of unpleasant, we also had to break into her apartment since she forgot her keys.
So after a long delay, we met up with her friends at a newly christened studio space in Williamsburg, right off the BQE. Apparently, one of the people there broke into this abandoned, gutted and beat up space, decided they wanted it, and left a note for the landlord saying they wanted to rent it. So they cleaned it up and turned it into a studio I guess. They had it decked out with disco ball and turntables for the party, though. It was one of Miss CM's friend's birthday party. I didn't think they were the type to celebrate Independence Day with two parties. It was fun, but it was also a long fucking day, and by three am I was pretty goddam pooped.
I slept late on Saturday, then actually got my ass to the gym and ran two and half miles. Unheard of on the weekends. Then I went down to the less than posh Atlantic Avenue mall. Miss CM wanted me to check out a blender/food processor combo at Macy's since they're having a going-out-of-bidness sale. I ended up leaving with one and a sandwich maker as well. Both have already nearly paid for themselves. For the rest of the summer, I'm only drinking beverages if they're in smoothie form. Last week, I had a Starbucks chocolate malt frappuccino, which I'd never had before. I never go to Starbucks. But now I can't stop drinking them. They're so goddam tasty. And now, I'm drinking everything as a smoothie. Everything really does taste better with crushed ice, I tell you. My only regret is that I didn't buy more at the Macy's close-out sale. I'm getting so domesticated it hurts.
On Sunday, Miss CM and I met up with Matt and his girlfriend at the LIRR stop by our home and we took the train out to Long Beach. My first trip out there in over a year. The sun was almost unbearably hot, as was the sand, while the water was numbingly cold. But after a few hours in the sun, the water was actually quite refreshing. The only real problem with Long Beach is that its' far too crowded, and you're only allowed to swim within a certain stretch of beach. So very often, when I thought about diving into a wave, I couldn't because I wasn't sure if some kid had been swept up by the wave and was floating toward me. The other problem with it being so crowded is the people themselves. Lately, there's no accent I find more grating to the ear than the New York accent, in any of its forms. The JAP-y accent, the Long Island accent, the regular Brooklyn accent, it's all too much for me. Of course right next to us was a very loud, garishly made-up woman, thin as a wire with big fake boobs. When she leaned forward, you could see the implants just sitting there out of shape and place. Matt's girlfriend mentioned that her bathing suit wasn't even holding anything there- the implant was doing all the holding necessary. She was also too tan and too annoying.
There were also your standard beach characters. Foreign men in their little Speedo banana slings, women and men showing off way to much flesh and flab- how about a little modesty?- and creepy looking guys glaring at all the ladies. There was also a guy with a tattoo that read "Blood Honor" across his back, among others, with a bandage covering another large tattoo on his left shoulder. Upon a closer look, you could see the top of a swastika poking out. That really put the rest of his tattoos into context. But probably the most disturbing was the duo of the naked baby and his mesmerizingly obese mother. I'm sure that babies have been naked on beaches for millenia, but for some reason the idea of a naked baby on the beach seems unsafe and unsanitary, for both the other beach denizens and the baby. How about covering up that newborn flesh, huh? It's like 90 degrees out and this kid's not even wearing a hat. Then who knows where that sound was getting into. But back to the mother, her obesity really can only be described as "mesmerizing." When she played with the baby in the sand, she got down on all fours, with her giant ass in the air, stretching her swimming suit to capacity. I'm not sure what the tension threashold on a nylon/polyester blen is, but it had to be pretty close with this:
That's a whole lotta thigh. And just for the record, this picture really doesn't do the view justice.Miss CM says that someday I'll be punished for making fun of the fat with a fat child (or "butterball") of my own. First of all, that will never ever happen. I won't allow it. Second, I'm not making fun of fat people. I'm making fun of specific obese individuals. I just can't abide people who allow themselves to balloon to such immense proportions. I'm still wondering how the baby got out of there. Are there special tools and harness needed when obese people give birth? A lot of people rail on and on about the problems with this country. I don't think nearly enough people rail against the obese. Besides it just being plain unhealthy, it's a major inconvenience to everyone else, particularly in places like New York where everyone lives and works and moves in such compact quarters.
Last night, while in the subway station, someone had written on the top of a poster for Legally Blonde 2: "Symbolizes verything that's wrong with this country." I, too, think the movie looks dreadful, but that had to be one of the stupidest comments I've ever read. If you really think the latest Reese Witherspoon movie is everything that's wrong with America, honestly, you probably deserve to die. And really, can you make a grandiose statement like that if you haven't even seen the movie? Even more distressing was the fact that he wrote this on the poster for Legally Blonde:2, not on the adjacent poster for the American Pie sequel. That, too, is inexcusable. And here I was, all proud to be an American.