Well I thought for sure I was done with this thing... I have a girlfriend, we live together, life is good, etc, etc... But of course life inevitably turns to shitty and surprisingly this is just about the only outlet I have for talking through my feelings and crap. I guess it’s a good thing I’ve laid off this blog for so long, though.

I find myself once again with a girl who seems to not be able to stand me half the time. This time, as I mentioned, we live together, so it’s sort of worse (although when the last girl decided she hated my guts halfway through a saturday, it was usually too much of a hike for her to go back to her place, so she stayed and we smoldered and it was a lot like this).

A friendly acquaintance of mine has recently been put in charge of an advice column and I spend a lot of spare thought time mentally writing out hypothetical letters for her to answer in it. They tend to go somewhere along the lines of: “I can’t hang out with both my girlfriend and my friends because at some point she always turns sour and begins to act shitty. Are we doomed?”

Or: “I am catching myself looking at cute girls on the subway and out on the town and fantasizing about the possibility of a breezy cheerful relationship that isn’t so much ‘work’. What can I do?”

Side note: Around about the time of my last entry on this site, I had decided that I was going to write memoirs, and that it would be a bad idea to spend all my juicy energy on pouring out my heart in this blog when I should have been pouring it out into a manuscript or something. And then I decided that writing self-indulgent whining about everything that sucks was taking my focus in the wrong direction, and that I should be doing fiction instead of glorified journals. Or maybe it was that first and the other last. In any case I stopped writing altogether and realized I had managed to clamp down on my only emotional outlet. So I’ve been a little bit like a pressure cooker ever since. This entry is me letting the steam out before I explode.

Anyway, I’m having serious relationship problems, and I have zero perspective on whether I’m causing them or how bad they really are or what. I’m considering seeing a shrink just so I can get a fucking opinion. At this point it’s been so long since I’ve hung out with any friends that it would be severely lame to make this the topic of a conversation with any of them. If I ever WERE to hang out with them.

In other news, I finally quit my job and got another, more exciting one. Except I think I might hate the new job. Once again I have no way of getting any perspective on my feelings or experiences here. Other than my girlfriend’s warped impressions filtered through her own hatred for her job and unhappiness with her life (don’t get me wrong, she’s been very supportive to a point... she doesn’t like sitting through anything I have to say that takes me more than 10 minutes), I don’t have any way to talk to anyone about this that would give me any meaningful insight.

I bounce between thinking I’m just irrevocably burnt out in this line of work to thinking there’s a personality conflict with my new employers, to thinking the personality conflict is actually internal jitters and unrelated feelings of discontent (see above! heheh) that are manifesting themselves as unhappiness at work in order to insulate my romantic life from the truth.

In terms of the theme of this site, moving far away from the epicenter of hipness and excitement: the girlfriend believes that and acts like she’s nearing a point where living out here is going to drive her batshit crazy, so she’s been basically making me feel miserable about living so far out from the action. As if it wasn’t hard enough.

Tags: trouble in paradise, archive

Well, so this post will probably resemble more closely the stuff I was writing in the early months of the blog, and I’m sure it’s basically going to read like a page from one of my gazillion half-started journals. Pick a year, it’s all the same basically.

So it’s love trouble, of course. Here’s the situation: The Lady Friend and I have been dating for quite some time now, and I’ve gotten to the place where it feels like we should be living together. I can’t just say, “I want us to live together,” because I think deep down in my damaged child of divorce little boy heart I just want to be left alone in my room to feel sorry for myself and play with my toys however and whenever I want.

But really, we should be living together. I’ve done it twice before, and I know that there are some serious benefits that come along with and make up for the sacrifice of personal space and freedom. I’ve even convinced myself that her three cats would be fun to have around...comforting and such.

So, after Lady Friend had finished a slow emotional breakdown involving thinking she’s done with life in NY and wants to move to a different city nearby, coupled with the apparent anguish I was causing her by implying she should find people to give her cats away to (which had caused her to take it just seriously enough to enact in her imagination the heartbreak that separation would entail), I said: “Forget about all that shit, would you like to move in with me instead? You can keep the cats.” And she said “OMG yes, that would be amazing and fantastic, etc.”

And all this exposition here has got me marveling at how cynical and cold and inhuman I am, but it isn’t like that, really.

Not 30 minutes after we agree to move in together here at my place, she starts pointing out all the signs that I’m not really into it. Fast forward to earlier this week. We had a meaningless fight on the phone in which I was trying to describe some hipsters I had seen in the window of one of my favorite local bars, but she wasn’t quite following. And then she had no idea what I meant when I said that one guy had this cap on, you know, like The Irish stereotypically wear? An Irish cap? Sort of pinched in the front with the bill?

She wasn’t getting it (“Like in Lucky Charms?” she wanted to know), I was getting frustrated, and this was scaring her. She was shrinking/wilting like a violet. This is something she tends to do and I’ve recently begun to have moments in which I can’t deal with it anymore... It’s like reaching your arm through a fence to grab a ball you lost on the other side, but you accidentally push it a little out of reach. And then it slooooowly rolls back, only to slide away under the pressure of your extended fingers. Maddening when it happens a lot.

Anyway, she ended the call, I spent the night text-apologizing for being a dick. And I WAS being a dick. But at some point doesn’t a couple have to be able to relax and let it out a little? Like I wasn’t calling her names, my voice wasn’t raised TOO much; I was just excited and really wanted to share, and she wasn’t getting it... (some context: when we have conversations in person, or even when I’m answering direct questions, she has a tendency to stop listening, instead sort of glazing over and doing that thing where you get distracted by looking at someone’s mouth moving instead of hearing the words coming out of it. So I’m a little sensitive to her not listening). I’m not saying she’s the bad guy, but can’t a girl just go, “Hey, you were a dick, but I get it”?

Instead it evolved last night into her theory that I don’t really want her to move in with me. This in turn under my examination evolved into “Maybe I have some reservations, which are the normal guy reservations, but I think I’m not the only one, can you explore your own?”... To which her delayed response has been, “My reservations are that your reservations are making you a dick and I don’t want to be stuck with that.”

Reasonable? yes. A cop-out? yes. That most recent conversation didn’t end well. It didn’t really end at all. I clammed up because what i have to say to that isn’t proper phone conversation, and she took my clamming up to be seething rage or cold indifference or something else coming from me. So we said polite goodbyes and that was it.

Here’s the thing (and I’ll wrap this up because when it gets this long I feel like I’m imposing on the one random person who’s stumbled on this blog), I wasn’t a dick because we are suddenly moving in together and I resent her for it. I was a dick because generally that’s who I am right now and probably forever more. I can’t stand my job, my neighborhood is stale, and I don’t spend any time on friendships or creative projects anymore (like i ever really did?). I get punchy and spunky and sarcastic. I’m super good natured and really care about the people I care about, but I like to cut loose and be rough around the edges. And she doesn’t. I agree that her way is infinitely better, and I’ve been able to play along sometimes, and really feel how warm and great it all is. But I’m afraid I can’t keep it up much longer.

So this is more than a fight about how the thought of her two litter boxes stinking up my apartment has made me cranky, it’s something really close to deciding whether the differences in our personalities are more important than the similarities or not. That’s break-up level talk. I don’t think I’m up to that just yet. I still think deep down that Lady Friend is more like my style of rough quick banter than she thinks... and I’m less combative deep down once I get to a secure, rewarding place in life. I could be wrong about us, but if we take the present snapshot for the whole deal I think we’re gonna end up splitting. And I really don’t want to do that.

Tags: cohabitation, relationship trouble, archive

Ok, so I’m going to start off with the pap. I happened to watch a little television tonight, having gotten home late and needing something to distract me from a monster headache and a pile of unfulfilled dreams. I was canceling a gym membership and picking up (yeah picking up myself, not having it brought to me which is what ya pay for) a package from the fedex compound in Brooklyn, if you wanted to know.

So anyway, I was watching this new reality gameshow competition thing called “The Sing-Off,” which if you haven’t seen the ads is like “Star Search” but with group contestants only. Or as I’m sure the show’s creators pitched it, it’s like “Glee” meets “American Idol” by way of “So You Think You Can Dance.” Sheesh I’m done with the fucking quotation marks. Italics from now on. If you don’t know any of those references, it’s an a capella group competition with three judges (dude, Ben Folds is one, and he’s like a kindly yet serious high school music instructor).



I’m pretty much hooked even though I despise every single one of the other shows this thing takes it’s cue/influence from. Mostly because the groups competing are actually kind of bad. Plus they eliminated the only group with a compelling non-musical back story tonight (called Solo, from a poverty stricken neighborhood somewhere). Making it to the next round were at least two incredibly white lady groups who sang without much soul or character or emotion or whatever.

My favorite moment, other than the super short solo of the tall dude from Solo who had this buttery Lou Rawls meets Marvin Gaye with like a tiny smidge of Johnny Mathis voice that will definitely make him rich and laid, was when the elimination bit got down to its final two groups (Solo and Gaggle Of White Housewives [sic]). There was a moment when both groups were huddled together clasping hands tightly, waiting in painful anticipation. There was some serious shit riding on it, and both groups had reason to believe they were going home. I personally expected them to eliminate the WASPs.... So anyway, both groups had a member who was visibly praying to god. It was almost like a mini competition to see who could get god to pick them with the most devout pleas. I sound callous... Yep. White ladies church group no 1 won. Bleh. They sucked.

Other topics? Well... it’s Xmas time and I’ve got to decide who to blow money on. I’m in a little bit of a fight with part of my family, so I’m thinking of sending them all something really thoughtful to pour on the guilt. Haven’t gotten much in the way of family contact from them since we all “reconciled” 2 years ago that I haven’t initiated. They pissed me off recently so I haven’t initiated any contact with them and suddenly they’re all “you’re so quiet, is something wrong?” Well, if you get a christmas present, then yes, I hate you. Just not sure what to get them. I’m becoming a real fan of small stuff. There’s an incredible variety of tiny things to get people... It lends itself well to finding something “personal,” like a flask for a certain alcoholic asshole.

On the coworkers front: more and more surreal. I’m starting to get shit from the idiots new boss for not tattling on them when they don’t do their work. As I wrote that, I just realized that she probably had a few talks with them, and they probably blamed their lack of involvement in their own projects on me. Like I’m an ogre and I chase them away from their own shit. Sighs. It would be nice to work on something that isn’t absolutely embarrassingly awful. For once. Please universe.

Tags: sing-off, coworkers, holidays, gifts, archive

Oh man. Ohhhhh man. So here’s an interesting thing. Depending on how I tell this story, my Friday night was awesome, or it was bizarrely pathetic. I will now attempt the awesome version.

As you know, this Friday was the Friday before a Saturday Halloween. So. Sort of a lot of pressure, on account of there’s not much excuse for not dressing up or doing something because you have aaalllll day Saturday to get yer shit together. Except noone really wants to throw something together that last minute if they don’t have to, right? Right. Hence, Friday night. In fact, the special lady and I had attempted the trip to the costume shop (Ricky’s) on Thursday, failed, and instead pigged out on burgers and mac and cheese at Odeon. I highly recommend that. Much more fun than last minute costume shopping.

Ricky’s on Friday was a mad house. Line around the block (ok only halfway, but the rest of those people were packed into the super stuffy sweaty panicky basement, frantically scrambling for last minute costumes, or wigs, or blood). I almost bailed, as I was feeling a little reely from my recent successful swine flu vaccination and flu shot. I prevailed. I got a creepy latex dead pig’s head mask and some skeleton wings. Swine Flu, and people actually got it. Success... But that’s Saturday! What about Friday, jackass?!?!

Ok, I take my bag of costume parts up to 34th St to meet the lady friend and a work friend of hers at this place. What was it called? Maru? Something incredibly 90s trendy. The bar top normally cycles continuously through the rainbow spectrum (red is especially annoying), awful top 40s dance pop, and asian fusion food. And the only European whiteys are the ones you come in with. Pretty awesome, actually. The bartenders are super nice, sweet actually, and they have this deal. For $35 you get a bracelet that lets you drink anything within reason all night until 12. We got there around 7:30. Fast forward to 10:30, after some truly terrible fried calamari (think frozen onion rings) and some really good yakitori’ed shrimp and pork belly, we three drunk white douches were trying out their high end private karaoke room FOR FREE.

Now, I’d like to play this off like we scammed them with some bullshit story, but the truth is our story was legit: we wanted to get a room for New Year’s Eve karaoke madness. So they took us up, fired up the crazy remote controlled disco lights and handed us the toaster-sized control pad. Problem: the karaoke book was only about an inch of laminated pages thick. And of that, only about 5 pages were English songs! DAAAAANG. So we fired up a Britney song, pounded it out, and took the elevator to the OTHER super trendy Korean owned private karaoke room establishment in the building. We gave them the same story and got the same treatment! Awesome! Except they had even fewer English songs. I think we did a Gwen Stefani song (by “we” I mean “they”) and left.

Here’s the part that makes it tragic: they were utterly unbooked for New Year’s Eve. We could have had a sweet pad in Korea Town with an awesome view and basically unlimited drinks for like $300. But there weren’t anywhere near enough songs to fill even an hour of time. Even so, my sweet lady had her checkbook halfway out. It was that awesome in there.

End of the story: Another hour of free drinks, taxi, and we held onto my costume! Yes!

Tags: koreatown, karaoke, halloween, ricky's, odeon, archive

Ok, so I’ve been watching a reality series... I think the last one I actually followed was “The next Iron Chef,” but I’m not 100% on that. I really liked it for the same reason some of my coworkers (I say coworkers because noone who calls hipsters their friends watches or admits to watching television, much less following a whole reality tv series to it’s conclusion, so i can only talk tv with coworkers) didn’t like it: The contestants were all very accomplished in their careers and confident in their abilities.

It was a pleasure to watch those guys and girls stretch their muscle and compete in a pretty amiable/jocular environment. They liked each other and noone was a prick. Exactly why “Top Chef” wasn’t fun for me. I also probably could give a shit about the new season. One was enough. It means way less each time they do something like that.

Anyway, the show I’m watching now is called “More to Love.” And in case you haven’t heard of it (I’m pretty sure you haven’t), it’s basically the Bachelor (or maybe I should take it back to Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire), but with fat chicks. And a fat guy.

Thing is, this fat guy is basically a relatively charming and suave frat dude who happens to be overweight, but not all that much. He’s a big guy, but it fits. What’s more important is that he’s clearly had experience with the ladies.

The same couldn’t/can’t be said for the ladies. They are almost to a girl virgins. They have mostly never been on real dates with guys or kissed guys or ever had boyfriends. And this guy figured it out. Or had it figured out before he even got to the set. If you can find it, watch the first episode and you’ll see the whole thing play out. Extremely self conscious inexperienced girl who thinks she’s dogmeat meets guy who compliments her eyes and BAM! she’s in love. They had like 25 fat girls running around telling the cameras they were “seriously falling in love” with this guy.

And while he may deep down be classy, absolute power corrupts absolutely. He figured out real early on he could use the fear of rejection mixed with a little inane complimenting to basically make these girls fool around with him. He at one point (ok several points) even goes so far as to tell girls that whether they kiss him or not factors into his decision to eliminate them. And IT WORKS!

Oh fat girls. Stop eating and get a fucking clue! Heheheh... sorry about that, that was insensitive. Anyway, nothing profound to say about that. I predict the girl he ends up choosing will be all wrong for him. Unless he picks Tali, who is already all wrong for him, but in a good way. (if you’re watching you know that leaves that blonde chick. I don’t trust her)

Tags: television, more to love, fatties, Iron chef, archive

So I think I’ve managed to keep the updates so few and far between that I’ve lost all my (2) readers. Sorry, you guys.

It’s been pretty fucking humid lately, and I’ve noticed a new problem with the house. RUST. rust? Yeah, my apartment is rusting. I noticed it on my toothbrush holder first, like 2 months ago. These little blackish spots had been appearing in the well that the bottom of the brush rests in, and I thought it was mildew or mold or something equally disgusting I would scrub it off, but it would come back a few days later... long story short it’s rust. There’s rust on most of my “stainless steel” appliances, too. Even the faux steel veneer on my frigidaire junk. Of course, in the course of trying to scrub it all off I realized there’s some caked on gunk on the handles of everything. I don’t think I’ll ever get it off. Until maybe i sell the place.

Another victim of the humidity: my orchids. I have three orchids here, and I’m not sure how many of you know what the deal with these things is, but orchids are fucking hard to take care of... apparently. You get them with these beautiful flowers in bloom and some vague “don’t water too much” instructions. And they do fine for maybe a few weeks. And then the flowers shrivel up and fall off one by one. If your home is incredibly humid, that is. The one I have at work in the AC and the dry air is doing fine... even though I accidentally burnt it in direct sunlight.

Lastly, I went out with some friends to celebrate this guy’s 30th birthday this weekend... the old lady and I were expecting to be like one of maybe 10 guests and the least close/connected to them. But other than the guy’s roommate and wife, there was only one other person. Interesting. I’m not sure what I think about that. I like to think I don’t have any friends and that it’s because of my specific situation/personality. But man. 30. I may have actually had more people at my 30th... although I can’t remember at all what I did. I remember what I didn’t do, though.

Tags: frigidaire, stainless steel, orchids, archive

Well I’m not sure what to focus on here. Job sitch: scary as fuck. Morale is at an all-time low across the board, bureaucracy is ascendant and personal accountability is keeping pace. So I’m in a work environment where blind devotion to red tape is making it hard (impossible) for people (and me) to get shit done, but a new philosophy of holding people responsible for their work means not getting shit done has consequences. Yikes. Don’t get me wrong, there’re a ton of idiots at my job who would’ve been fired years ago if they worked anywhere else, and I personally welcome any boss who decides it’s time to stop letting shit slide. I’m just worried about the whole guilty-by-association thing. How does a person decide which team member fucked up on a project? Safer to toss out everyone, right? I hope not. Let’s hope the union gives a shit.

Love life sitch: In a serious relationship. No more handjobs in bars by strange women for the H.I.E. Instead it’s trips to nearby metropolises to attend the weddings of sisters, weekends pushing the karaoke comfort envelope open, and evenings listening to lengthy recountings of daily minutiae. Lucky me those minutiae are often regarding encounters with J. Lo and Katy Perry... but I gotta say I’m having trouble sharing my hermit space with someone else. Most days it’s fine and fun to have a caring lady to cook for and talk to and cetera. And then it suddenly gets old and I can’t stand to have her around. And it’s hard not to interpret those feelings as being deeper than commitment phobia/panic and selfish desire to watch the bad TV I like. But I think this one’s going to be around a long time. As long as I work in some days off.

Except MAN i could save some serious dough if she moved in and split the rent. Holy crap. We’re talking max-out-the-Roth-IRA-contributions money. heh. Or whiskey.

Look for a more specific update this weekend as I attempt to hide from girlfriend relatives by pretending to work. Also, I’m toying with the idea of telling some dating stories just to get them out there before my new blissful state erases them from my mind. Let me know if there’s interest.

Tags: girlfriend, archive

Well boy do I have some great stories to tell. And it’s been so long since I’ve posted here that it’s probably safe to tell and assume that noone who might be hurt will read this. But maybe not, so apologies. Also, I will be reevaluating this blog’s whole purpose probably soon. Because it’s seriously lame not to update it with fun shit and stories and links and photos and whining bullshit.

So here’s some updates: I am another year older. Had a birthday party for myself, which is I guess what adults end up having to do when we get to a certain age. I’ve never seen a TV show portray anything like that, though... which means I am a loser. Anyway it was at Melody Lanes in Sunset Park, which means bowling. Out of about 40-50 invitees, I got maybe 10 people to show up. What’s weird is the assortment that came. I clearly don’t have deep membership in any big unified groups of friends. I’m pretty cool with that now.

The fucked up part was all the seriously lame excuses that people gave me for not coming. One person said that I had invited too many of her exes (none showed up), another one said last time she bowled she broke a nail, so would be avoiding it this time. My favorite was from a pretty good friend in which she decided not to come because the “subways were too messed up” that day. That night she ended up 4 stops away on a train that was running fine later that night, according to her facebook pictures from that night. In the end we were probably only 5 long blocks apart, but I was too pissed to do any reaching out.

Why have the posts dried up, you may wonder? Well I’m seriously dating a girl. That’s right, I’m pulling the cliche move where I drop everything and everyone to get rolled up in new romance. Only I’m trying really hard to keep that from happening. Problem is I can’t fucking get people to hang out! That and I’m not trying as hard to make it happen. Hopefully things will get more social now that the weather’s heating up for real.

Tags: bowling, birthday, excuses, archive

So a recent development (or set of them) has got me thinking about how life changes in interesting ways as you round 30 and head for home (the grave). First off, a digression into memory lane: As a guy, I used to have a pretty cliched little black address book in which i kept....contact info. I mean that shit was actually necessary pre-pda and pre-internet and most people had some form of centralized repository of miscellaneous and important contact info. So stop judging, assholes.

And in this book, I of course rated girls and kept track of how many i kissed and what-not... this was high school, ok? Which led to the quintessential “Reality Bites”-immortalized practice of counting and listing at various moments (ok, immediately after the sex) the number of girls i had had sex with. Even the ladies do this, so once more, stop judging, dicks.

Anyway, remember that? Like notches on the belt, or hash marks on the bedpost, or whatever.

So what’s the new version? The one that takes over from the ego-building celebration of conquest (or circumspect cherishing of past moments of intimacy, depending on the notcher) of our early 20s? Well, it’s a masochistic cataloguing of missed opportunities, of course! A painful reminder of failures and dropped balls; a reminder that the clock is ticking and you have somehow been left behind on the race to find someone. I’m talking about people on that prior list who are now married, or getting married soon.

Marriage was pathetic when it was immediately after high school, but now that we’re talking about real adults (with whom we once had serious relationships) settling down with the soul mate of their choosing it huuuuurts! It doesn’t hurt in a conventional way, though... It’s like a little proof that there must be something wrong with you. This is getting long-winded so I won’t delve into that. But here’s my current number. Of the girls with whom I have been in meaningful relationships since college, 7 that I know of are either happily married, or getting married this month. THIS MONTH! There’re THREE of those! Sigh. Not that I want to get married, but yeah, now I want to get married.

Tags: aging, marriage, notches, archive

So it finally happened. I did a little too much stalkering on the old facebook and got what I deserved: My ex is “in a relationship”... Dun dun duuuunnnn... And of course I’m all reeling in shock and awfulness and a little stunned. Because as a matter of fact I have been gazing fondly in retrospect toward the good times we had in the past. I mean she was the rare type of girlfriend who adores and mildly idolizes her man. Which at the time was offset by her tendency to get ragingly upset at every expression of independence i ever made. It ended for a reason. I ended it for that reason. I was right i was right i was right. I’m trying to affirm, over here, gimme a break.

I think i have even figured out that she’s in that relationship with a dude in a minor band, one with a medium small following. I hate it! Why is it taking me so long to find a terrific girl? Hmmm? And why am I so obsessed with settling down? Prob has a lot to do with feeling like I’m getting old AND feeling isolated down here in exile.

Speaking of Exile-land, I went with some chums to a new comic book store up in...Prospect Heights? Picked up some comics (my ex turned me on to comics, of COURSE). And lo and behold, somehow it comes up that the owners (who are lovely people, very awesome in fact) are new residents in Exile City with me! Awwwwwwwesome. Some comrades in isolationville.

Starting to get a little better living down here. Love life has screeched to a nonexistent halt, but I’m also slowly building up some better social relationships with some healthier people. They also live closer than hipstertropolis.

Leave a comment if you have any comic suggestions or want to let me know you’re reading this crap.

Tags: facebook, comics, compatriots, archive

Alriiiiiiiight. So. Which chapter of crap in the life of a lonely hermit grown-up hipster is this going to be, you ask yourself? How about I vomit out what I’m dealing with in the medical realm? Ok, so I went to this specialist, a gastroenterologist, to get a scope jammed down my throat to prove i really have chronic heartburn. And he did and I do. But it was a weird experience and I was left sort of questioning the honesty and professionalism of this a-hole.

So I asked around. I have 2 friends who have Crohns disease, which is a pretty baffling and shitty digestive system disorder. For those keeping score at home, yes I slept with these girls. We dated. I dated one for quite some time and we had some really good times. We aren’t very close anymore. I digress.

I got their doctors’ names, and I figure since they have been to millions of these guys and gals and settled on their current doctors, they have GOT to be good. Why didn’t I do that in the first place? Because my general practice guy (not so hot himself) referred me to this guy.

So anyway, my current guy is shady and has already committed insurance fraud and withheld information from me (if the info even exists... i haven’t seen much proof he did the tests he said he did other than the camera in the gullet). So... when my prescription plan denies my refills, I’m not too hopeful that the situation will get resolved. It doesn’t. Long story short, the rep from the prescription plan told me she had never dealt with as crazy and rude a doctor and that I should switch, and I have to pay over the counter prices until I do.

Check and check. So I have an appointment with a doctor who has been thoroughly checked out by a friend tomorrow. I can’t wait to see if it makes a huge difference in my experience. I also can’t wait for act 3 of the drama with my old stomach guy: in which I try to obtain my records and have to threaten to turn his ass in to the state board for insurance fraud.

Tags: gastroenterology, doctors, crazy, archive

Well I’ve been pretty quiet on the blog front lately. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want this blog to represent, and how to keep it interesting. It’s basically become a dumping ground for all the crazy lame shit that happens to me daily. And as that it has definitely let me blow some steam that I otherwise can’t blow, not having a sympathetic live ear to fill.

But I wanted this blog to be a sort of guide to coming of age in geography- and hip-obsessed NY. With plenty of funny depressing shit, but also some useful crap and some pictures and stuff to keep it interesting. I had planned to make a logo out of the bridge i live under, and enhance my stories with images.

Unfortunately it’s been nothing but crap crap crap lately. All the bosses at my job have been asked to retire and one’s even going to jail. My union prescription plan won’t cover my acid reflux meds anymore because i’m too healthy (once i get the cancer they will let me have them)., also I keep getting stood up by friends and girls. What’s the word for a member of the opposite sex who could maybe be your friend or maybe she’s interested in romance but it remains ambiguous? Someone needs to come up with one. Because they have been seriously canceling shit.

Last weekend I had 4 last-minute cancelations! FOUR! And living far away, it takes a lot to get things all coordinated and shit. A last minute bail generally means I’m already there because I have to leave an hour and 30 in advance. And here’s where having paperback books that actually fit in your pocket becomes the most important thing in the world. One can always find a place to park it and read.

Kentucky Derby is coming up. I have to find a party/bar that i wouldn’t mind being alone at the whole time. It’s my new rule: never sign up for something unless I would be fine doing it alone, because chances are I will be.

Tags: archive

I think I’m going to go ahead and give in to my hermit tendencies now. I may go so far as to drop my facebook account. I had a particularly frustrating day. I have basically instituted a policy of accepting every invitation i get from everyone. I expected this to result in more socializing and maybe even more good times.

Instead it’s just a sack of disappointing. Today was a prime example. A girl I met invited me to Prospect Park to hang out with her and some friends. When I asked where she responded that I should call her when I get there and she’d tell me where they were. I went. I called. She was at home. Ok. Fine. The park was really nice and no big deal being stuck there alone because I had a book, the sun, the breeze, and hundreds of people enjoying themselves.

Then, I went to a birthday bbq for a friend (acquaintance). I grabbed a six pack on the way. When I got to the address, no-one answered the buzzer, the friend didn’t respond to calls or texts. I went back home carrying the beer the whole hour 15 it took.

I have a large stack of old pictures and old letters here from my childhood home that I rescued from storage recently. I think I will post some of the letters here on the blog. They are really something else. In the meantime I’m gonna wallow in memories and nostalgia. They should keep me occupied on the brief times when I want company. Some of the letters are really awesome. There are quite a few letters wondering why I’ve stopped responding. I have a lot of bad karma built up if these letters are any indication.

Quick question: If you were in a band 12 years ago, found some pictures, and posted them to facebook, would you be upset if your bass player and former best friend untagged himself from them?

Tags: plans, nostalgia, archive

Ok, first and foremost. Comments. If you are reading this blog, let me know you exist by chiming in or saying howdy. In the future I’ll try to create some discussion worthy posts, with questions and such. Or don’t comment. But it could be fun. You can do it completely anonymously. No need to enter any private info, just put a nickname and you can post! Sweet, i know. Click it NOW!

The juicy bits: I closed my okcupid account. Ok I just disabled it this time (yes, I have been here before). Only this time, instead of it being like I’m fleeing from the crush of psychotic and mediocre girls desperately clamoring to slice my skin off and wear it as a hipster-suit, it’s a more reasoned and deliberate flight. I have some very convincing reasons (to me) for why online dating will never work for me as more than a place to meet friends who I might possibly sleep with. Except I seem to not be interested in that at all. Basically, the process of browsing through potential matches and trying out some and ditching others is too much like shopping online. It sucks out the excitement of real life. Plus I was addicted to the constant, mild ego boost.

Also, I have purchased two badges to the northside festival, and I suggest you check it out if you want your hipster friends to like you. I will like you even if you don’t. Too lazy? It’s like if some hipsters in Brooklyn woke up and realized that all the bands that make other festivals hop actually LIVE HERE. So they all ALL are booked and playing in June in the hipster triangle. I’m just hoping I find someone to share the extra badge with, but I’m sure this time I’ll be able to sell it.

Lastly, check out the Leila (pronounced Lila) texts blog here. It’s mildly funny. The concept is that this girl gets every text on Verizon addressed to “Leila”. Which apparently Verizon lets you text to a name... who knew? I’ve met this girl and she’s hilarious. The hilarity doesn’t quite come across on the screen, but it’s still fun.

Tags: online dating, comments, okcupid, archive

So one of the stories/fables that I heard as a kid which sticks in my brain these days and has always held a certain fascination is the one with the line “the prince has horse ears”... as a recurring refrain? maybe it’s the title? Here’s where wikipedia could ruin the romantically blurred fog of my memories and shine some clarifying light on the question. So I’m gonna not go there.

The story goes that in some kingdom, there’s a prince who’s always got a hat on, or long hair, or both. He is befriended by someone (maybe a barber) who gains his trust and this prince shares a serious secret. His hair or hat or crown is hiding the fact that his ears are horsey. Like he has hairy Spock ears. And this new friend swears to keep the secret. Except that it starts eating at him and eating at him. He’s basically about to burst with this hidden knowledge, but he is very loyal and trustworthy so he fights the urge to spill it, to confide the secret in some third party. But he can’t take it, and has to tell, so he goes out into a field of reeds and whispers “the prince has horse ears”.

And well, it bites him in the ass. Somehow the reeds hold the sentence and i can’t remember how (maybe a flute made of the reeds), but they release their secret in the presence of a gathered audience, revealing it at the worst possible time to the worst possible crowd that this guy is a freak.

I feel like the internet is that field of reeds. There’s no way to keep things a secret in it, but you really want to believe you can. And that’s too bad, because there’s basically no way to spill the beans in a healthy yet confidential way. I suppose that postcard thing, postsecret, and others like it are the closest thing.

I have some doozies I’d like to. Is this part of growing up? Keeping painful secrets forever and from everyone? Because it sucks worse than almost anything.

Tags: secrets, archive

Well this is going to be short... For once. Am I right?! Eh? High five! Zing!

Went to a great show last night. It was part theater/comedy and part actual musicianship. Les Funky Bitches Fantasique at the Sidewalk Cafe. I went because some friendly acquaintances were in the show and the audience. And there were possibly going to be a lot of them. In fact, there were only two. But they’re top of my list of friendly acquaintances (has anyone come up with a word for that? did I in a past blog? I should now... associates? no.) that I like and really enjoy being around. So it was a great time. I encourage you to see the group perform on like a second date. Perfect second date.

And my mom arrives in 4 hours! We’re gonna chillax, have a nice dinner at a steakhouse here in the neighborhood, probably clean my apartment, go for a walk. She’s here to be my date to the big awards show I’m part of tomorrow. In which I may win two awards, but probably not because super super awesome things only happen to me once per year, and they usually wait until the end. Or did I just make that ridiculous shit up? Yes. Yes I did.

Tags: archive

I decided to go out for breakfast this morning. I didn’t even worry a whole lot about the money this time, although why a guy has to drop fifteen bucks every time he sits down to eat these days is beyond me. I suppose I could have shown some self restraint. In any case, it was visually a stunning late morning. The air was crisp and the sun bright, and people were all out with the same idea: breakfast. And maybe a walk. But mostly people were sitting in places that serve food and or coffee in groups of 2 or 3 or 4. Very convivial.

So I decide, since it’s been a very long time since I’ve eaten at a local restaurant, and since it was one of the first places I went to when I moved here, to eat at this giant diner down the street. This place is huge. And popular.

I generally feel guilt when i walk into a restaurant with a bar and insist on being seated at a table. I can see the calculation in the host’s eyes and hear the protests going through his or her mind. And Saturday afternoon is big business for places like this. So this time when I walk in I head straight for the bar and grab a stool. And there was a dapper young stylish couple sitting there too! I tell you, this neighborhood’s going places. Once the edgy cool-hunters cram as many of themselves as possible into the impoverished and dangerously gritty ghetto right above this area, they will be forced to embrace my middle american oasis with it’s large, cheap apartments and naive attempts to be trendy (some new bars opened. Gag).

Anyway, this old guy grabs the seat right next to me, which is annoying because i like to have space around me when i eat in solitude. And old guys get talky. But I tend to forget on occasions like this that I probably would love to talk, and who am I to refuse an opportunity to be social with all my whining about the isolation and loneliness?

So he talks to me and I listen. And I participate. And it turns out he’s an old Turkish film actor, and an accomplished ballroom dancer (Latin styles, only), and he attempts to start up a conversation about soccer but stops himself because I’m American and I know nothing about it. Which I agree with. I know nothing about it... but I also know nothing about any of the sports because really it takes way too much effort to follow that shit.

So he shows me his iphone, which has bookmarked a page in Turkish with all the scores of all the games in Turkey. I ooh and aaah, and tell him I don’t have one yet and that I’m impressed. We joke about how, now that you can get the temperature instantly on your phone, you don’t have to go outside anymore. Then he tells me about a recent medical procedure he’s had and how competent and wonderful the medical services in this country are. I hesitate to nod enthusiastically to this one, as I’m thinking about my own recent “travails” but this doesn’t derail the conversation. Then he mutters something about women getting too fat these days with their huge asses, not being able to entice decent men. I reply that some guys like them, and there’s someone for everybody out there, if they look hard enough. To this he replies that I probably don’t need to settle for the fat girls, as I’m in good shape, like he was as an attractive young actor in Turkey.

Finally, he tells me about his wife who is 21 years younger than he is, who has been his wife for 30 years, and who tells him she loves him every day. This feels like a big deal to me. So I congratulate him and do a little reflecting on my own life and my own experience with devoted younger women (woman). They really are fantastic, by the way.


As I get up to leave he looks me up and down and remarks that I must be returning home to my beautiful girlfriend. I tell him I don’t have one and he gives me another look and pronounces in a full-bodied throaty turkish accented english that I’ll be having quite the success with the ladies and that they had better get ready.

There was a lot to this guy and my first instinct was to bury my nose in my book and try to get him to leave me alone. But I fought it, and he turned out to be very entertaining and a good self esteem booster. Luckily I also seem to have the urge to talk to strangers at bars, be they breakfast or after hours.

Tags: breakfast, strangers, archive

Recently I’ve grown aware of the fact that the internet is fueling inside me a quiet desperation paired with a low smoldering rage. And I don’t think that’s good. Of course by “internet” I don’t mean the whole thing, although there would be some truth in saying it’s eroding my quality of life in subtle ways. But in other ways it’s been liberating, so I won’t throw the baby out with the bath water....

Or I should say, I’m keeping the bathwater and throwing out the baby. The baby would be facebook. Why facebook? Well here goes a rant: As people who know me may be aware (and one friend pretty insensitively posted on my “wall”), I’m obsessed with the concept of friendship, and the state of having friends. I’m probably not professionally qualified to judge exactly what it is in my psyche that’s got me tweaked about it all, but I’ll take a stab. I’m indulging myself by posting this here because I think there may be evidence that it is something common to many men my age, and may soon become a mass cultural phenomenon. My evidence?

The movie I Love You Man, about a guy who doesn’t have any guy friends close enough to be his best man at his wedding. There have been others that hint at similar problems, although I think this is a first to make it the central theme. So the phenomenon I’m inventing here is dudes in their 30s who don’t have guy friends. I’ll add “who don’t have many real friends” to that, just because it’s likely the dude with only gal friends has probably slept with many of them, and as I’m coming to understand myself, that leaves certain snags in the relationship which prevent the friendship from being as carefree and rewarding as I fantasize about them being.

Anyway, I don’t think I understand what real friendship is. Because I have very very few deep friendships that stand up to any sort of stress. In fact if I were to be totally honest, I’d have to say I don’t think I have any. But maybe I actually do and I just don’t know what that means. Here’s the thing, Facebook lets me see that there are tons of people who I would love to be spending time with who are having parties and doing things together without me. And it’s KILLING me. But this isn’t anything new to me. I seem to have always had a hard time getting friends to consistently include me in plans.

My mother always said that I should be more active and invite people to things instead. Which has planted the seed of self blame which has matured and borne tons of fruit. Fruit in the form of neuroses, fears, suspicions, anger, dejection, etc, etc, blah blah. Because she has a point. I don’t make plans. Because I mean who likes rejection?! In fact I DO make plans and they are always rejected. But then again it’s not like I try very hard. I’m scared shitless by the thought of picking up a phone and asking some dude if he wants to hang. So shitless that if I get voicemail I leave a half-assed vague message (or sometimes very specific, but passive, like “I’ll be at the Cake Shop tonight for a show, what’s up?”) and leave it at that. Or the mass text asking what’s going on this weekend. People seem to never respond to those. The thing is that I would respond. I would respond to every single query by a friendly acquaintance (I need a word for friends you can’t fully depend on but like to see) as to what my plans may or may not be, and generally would welcome their attendance. So I feel like it’s ok for me to do it too; and feel bad when no one answers.

A would-be friend recently told me, when I straight up asked her why she hadn’t invited me to a potluck dinner at her place, that I wasn’t on her A-list and would have to try harder to hang out with her more before I could expect that kind of participation in her life. The problem with that is I take that seriously (and I had been trying, in fact). I feel like it’s my fault she didn’t want me there (2 closer friends of mine were there). So where does that leave me? Desperately trying to do the right things that will make people want to invite me to their stupid birthday parties and dinner parties and concerts on facebook. And feeling crushed when I’m not. Even though I know that I’m both expecting way too much from people and giving far too little.

In the meantime I’m going to attempt to not visit facebook except to answer emails. Good luck with that, me.

LINKS!
This is a fascinating article on friendship from some BBC magazine.
Where I go to figure out what I’ll be doing alone this weekend.

Tags: facebook, quitting, archive

Well, so why does today suck, you might be wondering? Yeah? Ok... first, the medical bullshit. So I recently got billed for my last visit to the stomach specialist, which was a follow-up to my upper endoscopy, which revealed I have acid reflux... The bill had a charge for a test that wasn’t done. And now i’m wondering if I should report these assholes to my insurance provider, because they have cut me a check for the amount and they also put a nice toll-free number on it for reporting insurance fraud. So I called the doctor to see how he would react.

And this is why I sometimes love but mostly hate this fucking city. You are forced to constantly and actively fight for yourself. It happens when you get a sandwich at a deli, it happens when you buy an apartment, and apparently it happens when you see a specialist about your recent diagnosis of GERD. The other guy is ALWAYS testing your boundaries, trying to squeeze you for as much as they can, or trying to get away with doing as little as possible, and it can be a good way to build up some more aggressive skills. But it gets OOOLLLDDDDD. Especially when people who are supposed to be taking care of you get pushy.

So the guy was like, “So what, it was like 3 dollars more?” And I’m like, no it was six. But that’s not the point. So he asks, “Well then what do you want to happen?”

Fuck. If only I had prepared a list of possible ways they could make this up to me beforehand. I wasn’t ready for him to put it back on me, but it’s a pretty classic maneuver here in the city, so I should’ve been. Anyway, my response was that if i ever actually DO have to have this test done, they need to do it for free. “Ok, sure.” he said. “Is that all?”

Asshole. Of course it won’t be that simple in the unlikely event that i really do need the test. First off, I will have gone to a different specialist because I’ll be damned if I EVER go back to that prick. Which brings me to the other part of that whole episode that has got me all upset: I called my general practice doctor to see if he had received all the test info from the stomach guy (the tests they actually ran) and the receptionist put my doctor on the phone.

He said, “Your guy left me a note about your endoscopy.”

Oh... yeah, he didn’t have much to say to me about it. -me

“Well, there’s a note, and it says...blah blah blah hiatal hernia blah blah”

WHAT?! Hernia?!?! Well they didn’t tell me about that.

“Oh, it’s relatively small, he says. Not worth getting fixed.”

So my “specialist” who I have seen twice now forgot to mention that there actually is a specific CAUSE for my acid problem. ASSHOLE! So now I’m not sure what to do. Pay him or report him? I’m leaning toward reporting him. But that feels like a surefire way to land me some negative karma. I’m torn.

In other news, facebook has started suggesting events that multiple friends are going to. This seems like a good idea except in the cases where I wasn’t invited.... which happened today. This chick i invited to my st paddy’s day thing next week (which i have canceled due to lack of interest...that empty page of attendees was making me fucking depressed) and who was at a party i went to this weekend invited basically everyone on her friends list EXCEPT me.

And I’m sure it’s because I made her friend cry. Which I would go into but I’ve already beaten that horse to death elsewhere. Basically, this girl likes me but I’m not rich enough for her so she keeps me at arm’s length. She also has some serious emotional issues (having confessed to me once that she has cheated on every guy she’s ever been involved with). And when she asks me my opinion on her situation I tell the truth. I even candy coat it to protect her delicate feelings, but it doesn’t matter. She acts like I’ve called her a terrible monster and gets weepy and righteously mad at the same time. It happened at the party. Her friends hate me now (again). Life gets messy sometimes.

Tags: hernia, plans, archive

So I’ve got a problem I may have alluded to in earlier posts, although probably not, because it involves family trouble AND pending litigation (this last rather obliquely). Here’s the thing: After a looooong time of being disappointed by people and growing suspicious of their motivations and ultimate goals, and then having those suspicions proven justified every time, I have a hard time trusting people to do good. This goes for everyone equally with a few rare exceptions. I could list a lot of examples that support my current mind frame; a friend who walked out of a lease stiffing me with $1200 debt and bad credit, a sublettor who kept my security deposit to pay for her husbands college entrance exams, countless lies told to get out of plans, girls who stopped loving me but claimed otherwise. The list is huge and extends back to my distant foggy childhood.

But part of my whole deal this year and moving forward has been letting go of shit like that and learning to not judge the people who do those things too super harshly. In fact, the majority of grudges I carry are probably not really things that would bother other people. Or maybe they would and I’m just trying to be positive. Regardless, I’m trying very hard to become an optimist about the inner drives and motivations of people around me. Part of it is reworking my expectations of what’s normal behavior and part of it is knowing when to let shit slide.

Now, I have two sisters who have recently become much larger parts of my life than they ever were. And I have a hard time trusting them. In a lot of ways they are completely alien to me. Their inner workings are mysterious and I tell myself I can’t possibly guess what’s going on inside their heads because I was raised in a different environment with different priorities and influences than they were. They lived with our father for WAY too long to have come out unscathed.

On the other hand, they used to adore me when they were very young (before the messed up jealous behavior started, followed by my eventual withdrawal from that life). They continually surprise me with acts of kindness and generosity and intelligence. Most days I’m very proud of them and super glad to have them be part of my life.

But we have some seriously stressful shit happening right now, and it all revolves around money. Money is something that this side of the family has never developed a healthy way to deal with. And we have some very clearly different ideas on what should be done with a chunk of cash we all have equal stake in (maybe). Except that when it comes down to it, no one EVER has “equal stake” in shared cash. There are always going to be little qualitative differences in your claims to it. Emotional ones, and depending on how far back you want to go historical ones.

For example, my father stopped paying child support when i was young. Should I be able to claim back payment of that now from his estate? I don’t want to, but it is apparently the kind of thing my sisters may consider (but for themselves) to be a fair claim. I have to be vague here, because there’s a lawsuit involved... sorry. But the thing is, throwing money into this mix is making it harder for me to keep my suspicious nature in check. And it hurts. Because I know that my suspicions are almost NEVER unfounded. So I’m super torn here and I don’t know what to do. Oh well... there’s always booze and tv.

Tags: suspicion, money, archive

Ok, I just gushed out my day in an email and decided to just rip it off and paste it right here. So suck it, losers! (kidding. obvs):

“So guess what I did today. I "broke up" with an online date girl. I should paste some text from the email so you can rate my effort. Or some from her last email so you can see why it was inevitably going to end badly. I think this way I get to be a very small asshole and she gets to feel righteous for a week and then forget about it all. Wanna know what event precipitated this admittedly already-in-the-works dumping?

Ok, I'll tell you! So we email each other while at work, right? yeah, so she asks me what I'm doing this (past) weekend. And, because I have a pretty full lineup, I tell her exactly what I'm doing. It was basically booked thurs and sat nights. So I suggest dinner either early and limited on sat or sunday (she has some sstuff going on friday and sat nights). She says, yes. I ask which she prefers. She says sunday and I say good, sunday. Then on friday she texts me something like have a good weekend and i text her on saturday that it's gorgeous outside whoopeee. no response, which I'm personally a fan of, except I know it's probably significant. So sunday comes and I have brunch with some friends and then i text her hey, are we having dinner? no response. So I email, hey, in case your phone is dead, are we having dinner? and then i call (i hate calling, but to be the one with the justice on his side i'll do it) and leave a message: hey, i'm thinking you're not into dinner, but i still am, let me know. so she calls back and it's 7 by now, and i don't answer. because it's her turn to leave a damn message right?

Only she doesn't. She doesn't! I mean why the hell call in the first place?!?!?!?!?!?! Veeeery significant. So I reluctantly call back and she answers. She's all on the offensive: "I am sort of used to actually communicating with the people I'm spending time with" or something like that, "So when I didn't hear from you on the phone I assumed it was off....." painful silence "So I ate already"

And I said oh it's fine and then she began to launch into what seemed like a wind-up for a tirade against me (I'm sure about how I'm not sending clear signals or trying hard enough to keep her interested... I've gotten that before and it turns me WWWAAAYYY off), so I cut her off with some stuttered "it's ok's" and "you don't have to explain's" and she shuts up....

and then apologizes and says if i want some cold pizza i can come over. And I double down with, naw, it's cool I have some leftovers i can eat. And then it's awkward for a while and then we stumble through a reschedule. [and now that I'm writing all this i think i'm going to paste it word for word into my blog, along with this comment... and while I'm editorializing for my blog in an email to you, I will also point out that i think my ex knows the address to my blog, which sucks because i don't want her to read about my exploits, such as they are, and get hurt]

And then I realize it's time to end the thing. And then I also realize that I don't have to be the perfect gentleman and always end things on the phone or in person. In fact, an email saves everyone the discomfort and has the added benefit of being more likely to happen sooner, you know? Like having to do it in person makes it SO MUCH EASIER to put off the messiness. So I composed a lovely email and sent it to her, making sure it would get there when she didn't need to focus on work or whatnot because I can't help being condescendingly sensitive.

GAAAASP. done. I hope you enjoyed reading that. but seriously it felt pretty self indulgent.”

Tags: breakups, email, archive

I’ve got several things to touch on with this post, but I doubt I remember them for more than the next 4 minutes, so here goes a list:

Maintenance payments:
These are the thing that keeps home ownership from being the unequivocal “good thing” that we all believe it should be. For all my rent paying readers (hahahahahaha: readers! with an “S”! HAHA. ok.) who may not know, it’s a monthly fee that pays for shit like the super (who charges to fix stuff in your apartment, btw) and heat and water and gardening. And it is ALWAYS going up. We just got another increase. I can’t handle it. My monthly maintenance is more than my car payments used to be (I sold the car to be able to get this place). And we’re getting hit with--now follow this one closely--two one-time assessments of 200 bucks. Assessments are how the building gets more money from you without raising the maintenance fee. It just gets collected in one lump sum. Twice. Assholes.

Karaoke:
Went to a friend’s birthday thing this weekend. What do you call it when people meet up at a bar for a person’s birthday? It’s not exactly a party, is it? Anyway, we started at this place called the Dove Parlour, which was overblown and maybe not all that great. But then the party relocated to Planet Rose. And here’s the thing; it’s a karaoke bar. In fact it has no other reason to exist or be frequented. It’s almost like people blow in off the street solely to belt out a song and then they flitter off again. The people in the place are all there waiting for their selections to come up, and along the way they get rowdy for crowd pleasers, singing along to the hits. Anyway, I popped my karaoke cherry. It was magical. It was definitely like the first time you try sushi and realize there was nothing to be afraid of in the first place.

Let me pause here to get a little philosophical. Or at least introspective. I was hanging out with a different style of person from the usual that night. There were absolutely no hipsters per se along for the ride. Everyone was in general characterized by a pointed lack of guile, very little irony, and possibly (i’m inferring here) musical taste that could be classified as unsophisticated. This is part of my project to shift the type of person I spend my time with away from the ultra image conscious hipster stock I’m used to. And it was incredibly awesome. I wouldn’t have sung in a group of my old friends. Never ever in a million years. Too much judgement happening. This group at Planet Rose was incredibly positive and it was a good feeling. I heartily recommend it.

Technorati:
I don’t really know what it is, other than a blogging ubersite that keeps a list of active blogs and makes them searchably accessible to a buuuunch of people. So I got on it and listed HIE with them. I also added he ability to leave comments, and an RSS feed for those of you who know how to use them. It only has my recent posts, though, so it will take some time for it to flesh out. There’s also a button to add it to your faves on technorati. I have no idea what that means.
But please leave a comment if you read this to let me know you’re out there... that means you, my one reader.

Tags: technorati, karaoke, coop, archive

So it’s 12:42AM, Friday night. I’m at home. Here’s a thing about New York that’s subject to change, but hasn’t in the last couple years: Most people don’t really go out on Friday night. And if they do they royally half-ass it. I am giving in to this situation and Fridays will henceforth become Get Shit Done nights.

To wit: tonight I spent a fucking loooong time dicking around with my resume site. Of course I’m not going to link to it because I hate you all and I would never willingly let you find out who I really am. No but really, come on. And I had an interesting discussion about gentrification with a person I almost went on a date with from that cupid site, but we didn’t and now things have simmered down into a bland series of instant messages about the hood. We both live here at the ass end of Brooklyn, hence our original inclination to meet up.

Anyway (and I realize my blogs are like a million times too long, so I’ll trying to paraphrase here), it went like this:

Girl: I see more and more hipsters in our hood every day
Me: Oh thank god
Girl: No, but they’re going to ruin the neighborhood.
Me: Huh? How?!
Girl: Gentrification. I don’t want an American Apparel here.
Me: Srsly? But--
Girl: I’ve seen too many neighborhoods with charm and character destroyed by gentrifying rich yuppies
Me: Have you ever actually opened your eyes in this neighborhood? It’s all rich white people ALREADY! And they’re all TACKY!
Girl: Something stupid and irritating
Me: Somebody tell me when the yuppies get here

So I obviously edited for time, etc, etc, but the thing is, this girl is always complaining about how lonely and isolating living in this place is. And she’s right (when she says that part). Why anyone wouldn’t want a nice mix of people with a sense of fucking atmosphere to be injected in this pean to “Saturday Night Fever” of a town I’ll never know.

Back to the subject of this entry (right). I have now posted my resume online, and everyone I know who works in the biz I do finds something to dig into and pull apart, sending me into a spiral of self doubt. Everyone else, however, loves it and is positive. My industry is full of bitter jealous assholes. Myself included.

The rest of the time was spent trying to figure out how to get my stuff to show up on google. I think the consensus is you wait a month. fine. i will. Next stop, work on getting this garbage heap up to snuff.

Tags: resumes, websites, gentrification, archive

Well I’ve had quite a few blog-worthy developments in the last few however long it’s been, and I can’t say I’m all that hyped about writing about them. And maybe that’s what I’m going to write about. Or whatever.

So. Since Feb 3, blah blah a ton of shit has happened. I got on the okcupid for a while. Which if you couldn’t figure out just by the name is an online dating site--distinguished by it’s status as completely free. Dudes don’t have to pay to send the ladies emails. Not only that, it has a facebook-like chat interface thing, so people can constantly harass each other. There’s a whole mes of other titillating time wasters on it and I’ve gotten a friend of mine hooked (so sorry), but I have since closed my account (sorry, mystery prospects, you’ll have to never meet me and be ok with it). A few plainly bad dates and one crazy stalker later, and I think I’m ready to fucking throw in the towel on the dating thing. I think I might have mentioned the whole dating thing last entry... that’s how much I pay attention to my own words.

I made it through Valentine’s Day without giving some nice girl the wrong idea as well, but I may have pissed off a few (passively). Oh well. I refuse to take someone out on that day who I’m not semi-serious with, or at least seriously infatuated with. It’s special. Reserved for last minute dashes to bed and breakfasts upstate and endless gifts delivered from mail order catalogues specializing in edible arrangements.

And then there was the housewarming brunch. Quite a terrific success. I had people come all the way out to Bay Ridge to celebrate my new home, exactly (almost) one year after I signed my papers and got the keys. I have to say I was a nervous nervous wreck the whole week leading up to it. AAAnd the first hour, when no-one showed up. And then people began to trickle in. Thank God. I made a shit-load of tiny pancakes called ebelskiver. They were a hit. I almost made the mistake of not buying alcohol. Thank God for S, who convinced me to jog to the liquor store the night before on the off chance they were still open (they were). Long story short, there was even a second half to the day with pizza ordering and Rock Band playing.

After all the lead-up to it and the cleaning and the painting (had to finish) and the fretting over who would come and who should be invited, I have much less inner compulsion to get my face out there in front of people. Unfortunately that’s the wrong damn attitude to have now that I’m finally making progress on having and keeping a social network of good people. Super hard to do in Bay Ridge, and near impossible if you love being a hermit like i do. This weekend: acrobatic theater in the upper west side. I hope I can keep the smile going.

Tags: filler, friends, archive

I have this scar on my face left over from when i was assaulted in Williamsburg. It isn’t directly from the mysterious blunt object those guys used to smash my face. Instead, it’s from a deep impression my glasses made on the bridge of my nose as they were driven deep into my face flesh (by the mysterious blunt object). It’s kind of a cute little sideways “y” shape, and it breaks out (i get a zit on it) all the time.

So here’s the thing: It is as plane as the nose it lives on. You can clearly see a crease that branches a little. And it’s pretty obviously a scar as far as I’m concerned. Anyway, some people just can’t see it. It is an incredible mystery to me. I will put the tip of my index finger on it, say “Here it is, at the tip of my finger” and shine a light on it and some people absolutely deny seeing it.

But others, more intimate, closer friends or loved ones, they can see it without any help. And i say something like, “but isn’t it hard to see?” to which they generally reply, flatly: “Nope.”

This brings me to something I think about occasionally, as I try to figure out how to be comfortable in my own skin and navigate the world like adults do, and that is the white lie. The lie you tell because you know, you really just know that it will make something better or easier or that it is what a person would rather hear than the truth.

In general, I don’t want the lie. And so, being a devout follower of the golden rule, I tend to be brutally bluntly honest about things that others might sugarcoat or outright lie about. But people lie to me, and I am tempted more and more to lie to them, as i can see how it would ease many many situations... like if I say were to want to postpone a date with someone: I could say that I was feeling tired and really antsy about not having any clean clothes and i haven’t had good couch time in a while so I would rather go home tonight rather than plod through a date going through the motions, and do laundry.

It would be infinitely more in the interest of smooth relations to say something like, “I got a last minute project at work and it’s going to take me until midnight to finish, can we please reschedule?” Everyone wins. In the honest scenario I probably would get the reschedule, or ever see that girl again.

But it comes back to wanting to hear the truth because it just feels cleaner to me. Here’s a story and then I’m done. I’m at high school graduation, after the ceremony and walking to my car when a dad stops me. “Hey, you have a white gown on.”

“Yeah?” (most of them were green, mine was white because I’m special)

“Well i was watching you, and I just wanted to tell you: when you tossed your cap in the air it flew higher than anyone else’s” He had a glistening twinkle in his eye, kind of like when a youth minister is filled up with spreading the holy spirit to a new audience.

“Really? You sure?” I asked, knowing it hadn’t.

“Yeah! It arched up and over all the other hats. I know because it was white and I had seen you throw it.” Smile, searching eyes.

“Wow. Thanks a lot, mister,” Which I delivered with a genuine attempt at gratitude emulation.

“You’re welcome, I just thought you should know.” And with this he packed hi family into the minivan and drove off.

He was lying. My hat had caught an edge in the downdraft of the A/C and skittered off sideways right at a friend of mine, who returned it. It was in fact the lowest hat toss of the day. I felt dirty the rest of the day.

Tags: Identity, archive

Well, so. If this blog is supposed to be about growing up, facing the less cool parts of livin’, and moving on with the business of aging gracefully, I suppose I should share this day’s activities.

I got a gastresophageal--something something endoscopy today. Apologies for the commercial at the front of the video.

Not much to say about it, really. It was a bummer going to this thing alone and having noone waiting to see how I was doing. I did get some semi-anonymous facebook love from high school classmates, but I had to practically beg for it by posting a few links and mentioning it in my status.

I’ve always been very independent. In fact it’s one of my biggest faults. But this living just out of reach of a whole sack of shit that seems like amazing fun is seriously wearing me down. It’s hard to come home every day to a giant empty apartment and not have the option of stepping out for a few drinks with some friends. Or even alone, with the possibility of interesting conversation with like-minded strangers.

So I recently read this book, The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz, and it tackled some of the roots of this ennui I’m feeling. (Is it even called that? Do I care to make sure that’s correct?)... I recommend the book to anyone currently regretting any decisions they’ve made, or struggling to make some choice that seems life-or-death. It isn’t a very good book, but it had some nuggets. Suffice to say I should know better than to pine away over something I didn’t even really have when I lived in the fucking center of it all.

Still, coming home alone all groggy from anesthesia wasn’t the high point of this month.

Tags: archive

So I recently bought an Airport Express after agonizing for about 3 months over the best way to handle my now wireless situation at home. I wanted to be able to print without having to cart my computer over to the printer, plug it in, etc etc. That was the essential thing I needed, but bonus wifi frills I was considering were the possibility of shared storage (so I can plug in a hard drive over by the printer and use it to stream crap to devices on the network), or streaming tunes wirelessly. Plus I didn’t want it to cost any money.

Long story short, I got the airport thing, which lets you plug your printer and a set of speakers in. I got that for the same price as a wifi printer and got to keep my sweet trusty Samsung 1710 for a little longer. So I get it at J & R because any time I can buy an Apple product somewhere other than Apple, I do, and I got it home and set it up. Barely a hitch. The thing works, I can print and my speakers have been liberated from the computer. Sweet, yet I still feel empty inside.

And then in the middle of a song, about 5 days later the thing stops working and starts flashing a yellow light at me. Back up a little, I used to work at an Apple Store as a Mac Genius (the repair guys). Forward: I do a ton of troubleshooting and crap and it just won’t work. The thing’s broken. I make an appointment at the apple store (for 5 days later because that shit is booked solid), and stew.

Here’s where I’d like to go on a tirade against Apple’s in store service policy. I won’t, but it sucks. You have to go there and sit and wait. Usually to get turned away with a half-assed solution. I think I prefer hours on the phone with india to hours sitting on artsy wooden benches. At least with india you can call right back if you don’t like the results. With Apple I suppose you have to find a different store and start all over again.

Back to my story. I wait an hour past my appointment time to be seen. I get a seriously by-the-book guy as my genius. He hears my problem, reproduces it, and then tries something that hadn’t occurred to me: he plugged it into the computer directly (with an ethernet cable). What happens? Well it works perfectly, without so much as a hiccup. I had been doing all my configuring wirelessly, and while it had worked perfectly fine at first, I guess I should have assumed that was a fluke. I mean, who would assume you can configure a device meant to run totally wirelessly, wirelessly? What an idiot, right?

Anyway, he returns to me to show the screen with the proof he had set it up all fine and shit, beaming and maybe even a little smug, and I realize I have a choice. I can let him have his moment and just take the piece of shit home (did I mention I threw away the packaging as soon as I got it working? Don’t ever do that, or you could be stuck with something that works in the store but not at your place) and try his dirty trick of plugging the wifi thing in... OR I could insist he do it the way I was supposed to be able to do it and let me see that it worked before I agreed to leave.

I chose b. And if Apple is listening, if I had been served at the time of my appointment, I probably would have accepted the guy’s verdict, and you could have spent the next hour helping 4 other customers. Anyway, we probably spent 50 minutes sitting there, trying to get the thing to stream music and it wouldn’t do it. I made this point: shouldn’t it not be this hard to get it to work? Did yours at home (he told me he had some) take this much futzing? He tried to make the point that apple can’t control for whatever my specific situation at home is... Something I can appreciate, having delivered that line to people myself in the past. Thing was, the store’s airport express shows up fine and dandy, no warning lights in the setup software, unlike mine which continued to flip to yellow at random points.

I would rather not get too detailed about what happened next, but I will say that I got a replacement and I’m not proud of how it had to go down. Noone was happy in the end. So I come home.

On the subway this kid of about 12 is walking around the mostly empty car looking closely at nothing, then i accidentally make eye contact with him so he comes over and sits next to me. And I ignore him. A few stops later some people get on and sit across from us. I notice they are watching the kid next to me and smiling, which I assumed was because he was mumbling to himself. I glanced over and he had a fully loaded swiss army knife completely unfolded, turning it over in his hands, caressing the various blades and screwdrivers and sporks. I switched cars at the next stop and I swear to god he almost followed me. NY is nuts sometimes.

So what happened with the stupid airport express? Well the new one had the same fucking problem, of course. What did I do? I plugged it in to my computer and set it up over ethernet, that’s what. I live in constant shame.

Tags: apple, subway, wifi, archive

Well so here’s the part where I jump into divulging mildly confidential info and am thus forced to keep this site anonymous forever and ever ever. But first, the noise problem.

The part of the neighborhood I moved to is made up mostly of people waiting to die. They are old. They are great as far as old people go, though. At least to someone who’s used to a certain stereotype of the elderly as quivering, barely mobile, mostly silent and lacking in the spunk department. Where’d I come up with all that awful bigot-ey bullshit? Well the southwest, natch. My point is, though, that here you get some real live wires.

Take my upstairs neighbors as an example. They scream at each other all the time, move furniture in the middle of the night (2 AM), and have crazy topics as fall-back conversation. When encountered in the laundry room, the old man from upstairs likes to wistfully declare that the “Indians” had it right. “Huh?”
“The Indians had it right hundreds of years ago.”
Me: “H- how so?”
Upstair Old Guy: “They never washed their clothes.”
Me: “Oh, yeah?”
UOG: “Yeaaah, they had the right idea, this washing stuff’s for the boids.”
Me: “Is that right. Well I think I prefer being clean. It gets a little unpleasant after a few days--”
Uog: “Naah, they really had life down back then, those Indians. You have a nice day.”
Me: “You too”

Problem is they’re fucking loud sons of bitches. Even when they are off to Florida until April, like the building manager (who’s sympathies lie firmly with the older residents) claims. In fact, as I write this I hear something large being dragged across the floor. And I have to be the crazy psycho who forces the sweet old couple to buy carpets (which everyone is required to have). And leave asshole notes tucked in between the doorknob and door jam. Which bitch about loud humming machinery that turn out to be in the basement and NOT in the “empty” apartment upstairs. So now I’m crazy.

Work
So two more people got fired last week. I’m wrapping up the last episode of the show I cut, and would probably be the next in line. And I bought an apartment. This is a new type of stress. And the messed up thing is I’m finding myself getting boxed into WANTING this job badly because of the mortgage and the inherent potential depression factor of being jobless in Siberian Brooklyn. Nuts.

Want a fun link? Not safe for work

Tags: neighbors, layoffs, archive

I’m not sure I want to do this blog crap, but I’ve got a hundred reasons to try it out, so here we go. First, what the hell is Hipster in Exile? Well, to be honest, it sounds a little stupid to me, but I wanted a website name that wasn’t just my first and last. It’s a little risky mixing anything more ambitious with a glorified resume space (which you can check out if you’re hiring a video editor, just ask), and I’ll probably have to do a little self censoring to keep from getting myself in trouble, but what the hell? Deciding to let chips fall where they may. Blah blah blah... answer the question. Ok, so I was recently fortunate enough to be able to buy an apartment in New York. Only problem (or is it a problem?) is that it is far far away from all of the traditional haunts one associates with being in any way cool. Or anything resembling atmosphere. Or friends, for that matter.

My goal with this blog is to explore what it means to grow up to people like me who have spent an inordinate amount of time being concerned with being in style or expressing our individuality by dressing and acting like like-minded people. It’s about what happens when life forces a hipster to hop back on the conventional train and rejoin the mainstream. It’s especially hard in New York, so close to the epicenter of taste-making and fashion. It’s even harder to realize how tied up in that superficial image rat race I was and begin to move on.

So now I have an apartment, a steady, not-so-glamorous job (although that may change with this dismal economy), and a full-on midlife crisis in swing. And none of my friends want to come out here. Expect this site to get more sophisticated as I pour more of myself into it. Expect to see pictures of things. Expect links to stories about coming of age, or finding meaning, or how to replace a toilet.

Tags: Intro, archive