Culture Shock

Last week was my “culture” week. I started off with catching the Broadway musical ‘Rent’ on Tuesday with Rob (who was back in town briefly before returning to Romania). Yes, I HAVE seen ‘Rent’ several times in the last two years, but it is my favorite and will stop running in June. Sadly, the cast was lackluster, and I kept thinking “wait this is my last live performance of ‘Rent’, and I’ll be left with this mediocre one, I should have stopped after catching Adam and Anthony’s performance”. Yeah, I’m a bitch, deal with it.

Two days later, Marathon Man and I went to ‘Macbeth’. Neither of us are big Shakespeare enthusiast, but Macbeth was being played by Patrick Stewart. Come-on, a chance to see Captain Jean-Luc Picard or Professor X in person….SOLD! The play was set in post WW2 Russia. Granted the Shakespearean dialog is bit hard to follow for my feeble mind, but overall it was good (and even humorous at times).

Now I am all cultured out and will resume drinking beer and watching C-class porn.

Long, hard, and full of seamen!

So last weekend was Fleet Week, or as I like to call it....Jersey girls gone wild. The sailors flooded into town, and just like last year, I witnessed all sorts of drunk women throwing themselves at these men. Honestly, I don't know what the hooplah is about because the ones I saw were not exactly great specimens of the male, but then again what girl cannot fall for a man all dressed up like a Ken doll. Seriously, I had to fight the urge to snatch those cute little sailor caps off their heads. One cool thing is that my office overlooks the Hudson. When all the ships were coming into town, they steam up the Hudson river and "line the decks". Basically they all line up along the rail and stare at Manhattan. It looks pretty cool to see all the white dots on the deck of the ship.

Its a bird, a plane.....oh wait, it IS a bird.

So the most unusual thing happened to me on Saturday. I was riding my bike in central park with several other bikers. They close the streets to traffic, to bicyclists basically can take over the entire road. Up ahead, there was a group of pigeons foraging off to the side of the road. As our pack neared, the pigeons took flight, and instead of flying away from the approaching bicyclists, they turned directly into us. I was seriously ducking and dodging birds when one flew directly into my front wheel! There was an immediate burst of feathers while I frantically swerved to the side of the road. Luckily I did not crash into any other cyclists but after a few revolutions being lodged in my spokes, the bird dropped dead on the road. Everyone put on the breaks while I checked my bike for damage. Someone even asked “are you okay….good…..damn, I have NEVER seen that happen before”. Since the poor bastard didn’t bend any of my spokes or jam up any components with its feathers, I decided to gingerly scoop it up and toss it off the road (so that it can decompose into nature and that another cyclist peddling by doesn’t wreak on account of his dumb body in the middle of the road”.

Speaking of things I’ve never seen before, I saw an African American albino on the subway! Yeah, I noticed he was an albino, and after rudely starring at him for a good 5 minutes, I realized he was black! Talk about rarity. I had so many questions for him churning in my head. You know “do you notice any difference in treatment in society because you are an albino or because you are black…do your piers call you ‘whitey’ and what do you say?” Yeah, I am the most un PC person ever, but at least I’m honest.

My retinas are burning!

This might be the scariest person ever! I may just have nightmares about him creeping out of my closet in the middle of the night with some dumb prop and yelling at me "laugh.....so help me God LAUGH!".

Idaho...no you-da-ho!

I went to see my friend’s band play at a NoLita bar. I’ve heard them play several times before, but decided to go anyway since the bar is supposed to be pretty cool. Well I show up, and there are two (yes just two) people there to see them. The other girl was dating the guitarist. Anyway, halfway through the set, a group of elderly people walked in. I’m thinking “I hope this bar is not on their AARP tour….because there are stripper poles everywhere!”. Seriously, they were performing among a half dozen stripper poles! I thought it was hilarious because the band went with the flow and even used them to maneuver around the stage (or run the guitar strings along the pole for an added effect). Secretly, I think they enjoyed it more than us.

Tribecca Rants

One reason why my blog took a week long hiatus is that I started volunteering at the Tribecca Film Festival. I basically spent every evening over 10 days watching movies. Free movies or writing blog posts….um do I even need to explain. My friend Dana and I signed up to be volunteers, and I lucked out getting the easiest job possible (well mostly because I listed absolutely no skills on the form so I was essentially only qualified to tear tickets). Yeah, I spent about the first hour in my first shift tearing tickets and depositing them in the bucket. Ohhh, difficult I know. Well next I was promoted to head counter. Yes, all I did for 3 hours was count heads in the line. I had a fancy walkie-talkie headset and red poncho! Seriously, I would count approximately how many people were standing in each line and help the person in charge count those who entered the theater. Seriously, they would say over the headset “let in 20 ticket holders”, so I would count out the 20 people the other girl in charge would let in. Well the best part of working the line was wearing the headset….and hearing all the shit that went down behind the scenes. Obviously, all the people in charge are Arts & Drama majors who don’t know how to organize shit (my apologies for Arts & Drama majors who can count ON THEIR OWN). Seriously, they didn’t even know basic math. If a theater has seating capacity for 200 people, and you have 180 ticket holders, then there are 20 tickets left to be sold or given to special badge holders (basically industry people like distributors, producers, directors, and their entourages). For The Wackness premier (yes I worked that and a dozen other movie premiers), all hell broke loose. There was a line around the block for ticket holders. Here is the conversation that the public wished they could hear:
Man #1 (inside the theater): ticket holder line, release the first 20 ticket holders
Woman #1 (at the line outside with me): copy, 20 people
[this continues for the next 30 minutes where they say release X amount of people, and we release X amount of people]
Man #1: ticket holder line, release the next 10 ticket holders
Line Woman: copy, 10 people
Head Woman (overall in charge person): box office what is your count
Box office man: box office count is 325
Man #1: release the next 10 people
Head Woman: NO NO NO, shit shit shit, stop, we are oversold…OVERSOLD!
Line Woman: we still have 40 ticket holders in ticket holder line, it is 5 minutes before showtime, what do we do?
Head Woman: tell them to wait, tell them the movie is running late
Man #1: we have people sitting in the aisles, what do we do?
Box office man: box office count now 340
Head Woman: shit, stop letting people in!
Line Woman: not my fault, I haven’t released any more people
Head Woman: where are these people coming from, who the fuck is checking tickets
Man #1: what do I do with the people in the aisles?
Head Woman (screaming): get those fucking people out of the fucking theater
Man #1: copy they are now out but more are trying to get back in
Head Woman: CLOSE THE FUCKING DOORS!
Line Woman: we still have 40 ticket holders and now the ones kicked out of the theatre are getting back in line. What do I do?
Head Woman: send them away
Line Woman: ummm….they paid for their tickets and are pretty pissed off since having a ticket guarantees them a spot in the show….what can we do?
Head Woman: Okay, give them a refund, just this one time.
Line Woman: copy, box office, I am sending 40+ angry people over to you
Box office guy: shit no, don’t do this to me, we can’t handle this, stop sending people!

The Line Woman and I are cracking up about all the chaos that is going on inside, and she has me walk the angry people over to the box office. One guy was yelling at the Box office Man and Head Woman, “I came in from Long Island to see this movie, and I bought the ticket several weeks ago, and now you are telling me I cannot see the movie because you fucking people do not know how to count, this is bullshit, I have to drive two hours back to Long Island tonight for nothing…NOTHING, you people are worthless, WORTHLESS!” Yeah it was hard to hold a straight face while seeing the people in charge get bitched out (they deserved it), and I later had to tell the 90+ people waiting to get any cancellation tickets that they have stood in line for 2-1/2 hours for nothing.

Well later the Head Woman came over to the line to yell at the Line Woman. Too bad the Line Woman left for the night and only I remained there. Well the Head Woman sternly talked to me that I misunderstood their instructions and it was OUR fault that the theater was oversold. Excuse me….I wasn’t going to take the fall for them being idiots. In my moment of glory (and in front of several other lowly volunteers hanging around), I talked back to her and said, “misunderstood you…wait so when you say release the next 10 people, you didn’t really mean it…was it a test?”
Head Woman: “well you were not authorized to release people at the time”
Me: “so you are saying we let people in when we were not supposed to….correct me, but you heard the same thing over the headset as we did, how did we misunderstand that…you said release people and we did”
Head Woman: “no, it is just that you let too many people in”
Me: “um, you said 10 people, and we let in 10 people….how are we wrong….are you saying I cannot count to 10”
Head Woman (backpedaling now): “no just, you were not trained to understand the instructions”
Me: “what, release 10 people, I released 10 people, I’m sorry is that really THAT difficult to understand”
Head Woman: “well you are just a volunteer, and when you work again, I just want you to know what happens when you are not listening properly”
Me: “what, no, this is my last shift, so blame someone else…I’m going to watch a free movie”

Honestly, I did only sign up for the free movies. You work one 4 hour shift and you get a free ticket to any regular movie. Plus we had several free volunteer only screenings each day. Additionally, if a movie was not sold out, we could stand in the line with the regular people who also wanted tickets and get a free ticket by showing our badges. Seriously, I was seeing movies non-stop! Monday, I watched 3 movies alone! If it was a shitty movie (you know independent movies are hit or miss), I liked to walk out and think “thank God I didn’t have to pay anything for that crap”.

Flaming it up!

Here are some pictures from a BBQ being held at my friend Gabby’s fabulous Brooklyn apartment. Yes, I know, I seem to be eating in every picture. What can I say, I love wiener! Oh and I eventually spilt a whole glass of margarita in my lap (hence the scarf doubling as a blanket). Thankfully I was able to burn all of those pictures since it looks like I peed myself mad bad.

BUBBLES!

So I am trying to find motivation to do the dishes. So easily distracted.....

Overheard quips

More Overheard in New York:

Columbia student, on her public health exam: I just didn't know where to put the gonorrhea! It had to go somewhere, I just couldn't figure out where!

My guess she also is afraid of riding tractors in a bikini.

Budget Vin Diesel: I love bacon. If I could, I would put bacon in my cereal.

Finally, someone who gets me.

Men in tight pants....SOLD!

Here are pictures from Marathon Man’s first Yankees game. It is the last season being playing in Yankee Stadium. Next year it will be a Starbucks and Chipotle.

Nawhlens

My weekend in New Orleans started out with the most unusual meal on an airplane ever. I haven’t had an in-flight meal in um…forever, so I was not sure what to expect when the stewardess offered me “meat” or “nothing (as the vegetarian option)”. Nowadays, you can’t even get a complimentary package of peanuts let alone a whole meal. I wondered how scaled down the food would be. Well I received one small salad (full of red tinged iceberg lettuce leaves which basically has the nutrient equivalency to packing peanuts) and a bag of chips. Okay, the bag of wasn’t labeled “chips” but it looked like the typical 99 cent bag. Imagine my surprise when I opened the package to find a gooey cheeseburger inside instead. I think my exact words were “holy crap, a burger”.

The weekend trip was in hour of my Chicago friend Emily’s bachelorette party. I’ve never been to New Orleans, but I have heard plenty of stories about the “big easy”. Yeah, the sorority college friends of mine would return after spring break and be like “look and all the collector glasses we got (ie we are actually proud of our giant plastic yard of alcohol that we drank and later vomited up all over some guy trying to make out with us)” and “oh my God, Stephanie and Becky were total sluts and kept flashing their boobs at guys, I mean the rest of us did it only once or twice but those girls would show their boobs even if they were not getting beads” because you know beads are priceless and totally worth loosing all dignity for.

The first thing on the agenda was getting our palms read/tarot card reading at the renowned Bottom of the Cup tea shop. Now I don’t believe in any of that psychic crap, so I decided to not give the reader any hints about my personal life. Yes I would simply sit there with my hands folded in my lap and not give any responses unless directly asked a straightforward question like “are you wearing pants….why yes, yes I am”. Some people divulge waaaaay too much information which makes it easier for the fortune teller to give a generic reading….”I see love in your life…why yes, my cat you must mean my cat, I love it so much…yes, I see that love ending in heartbreak because your cat will die, someday”. Granted I was trying to be open minded when the reader started off with general observations like “you are a leader, you are well respected, you have a lot of joy in life, blah blah blah”, you know, all the things people like to hear about themselves and think about themselves but are not always true. Then he looked at my palms and said I talk with my hands and am very animated. Hmmmm, go on. He flipped over some tarot cards and said “oh, I see you are moving in August and will be switching jobs and you will be seeing a lot of new faces”. Actually, I AM moving in August (back to Chicago) and switching jobs sort-of (I’m returning to the Chicago company that I worked at before I moved to NYC, although my paycheck origins do not change, the projects will be much different), and the old office has doubled in size so there will be a lot of new faces there. Starting to get scary. In the end, he revealed a lot about my personality, my relationship, and my life in general all without me saying one word.

Friday night we all had dinner in the Foundation room at the House of Blues. Okay, they should have just called it the sex room. All the walls were adorned with karma sutra poses and there was even a giant wooden statue of a naked man! He’s got WOOD! Needless to say, after several cocktails, we all started acting like 13 year olds at a sleep-over.

We moved on to Bourbon Street, obviously for more drinking. I love the open container rule (or lack thereof)! Nothing like hitting a to-go drink station and wandering around with your giant 42 oz Styrofoam big-gulp. I am an idiot for looking at all the crazy cocktail names and deciding that 151 Chill sounded the tastiest. Yep, Everclear, a whole shitload of it! Here is a conversation that I was told about:
Girl 1: Man Lindsay is sure nursing that drink
Girl 2: It’s everclear you asshole
Girl 1: Oh shit, rock on sister (and high fives me).
Yeah, I was told about a good portion of the evening having fully reset my memory. I do remember being on a balcony overlooking Bourbon Street and seeing all sorts of slutty women. No, none of the bacholorette party, just strange girls from the street. One girl was dressed as a naughty school girl and I wondered why she was dressed at all since she insisted on showing us her tits and cooch every five seconds. Also there were these black fraternity guys doing this circle chant elephant walk thing for hours in the rain. Oh wait maybe it was a soul train?

The next day we went on the Voodoo tour of the city. The guide was the leading expert but I couldn’t help staring at this giant growth on his neck. You know, like pimple that you can’t wait to pop. I would stand there nodding my head while he spoke, but honestly I was just biding my time till I could get my hands on it! One interesting fact that managed to seep into my booze soaked mind was that women would mix menstrual blood into their man’s food and drink as some form of a love potion. Yeah, how could you explain that if you were caught by your husband…..”oh honey, I was just cooking, naked, and tried to keep the dish warm by sitting on it like hens or penguins”. I guess that goes up there with the guy’s excuse of why he is covered in glitter…”no honey, I wasn’t at a strip club, I was making you a card, love you”.

Our Voodoo guide took us to the St. Louis cemetery (aka the city of the dead). It is a popular destination, so we ran into several other tour groups. Granted we had the renowned expert, and he rightfully pointed out who was full of shit. Yeah, one enthusiastic guide was all going on about not thinking the voodoo queen was really buried in the tomb when our guide shook his head and said he has seen the documentation…asshat! Score one for the giant neck boil!

The guide also took us to meet a real life voodoo queen. Now yeah she is a voodoo queen, but she was all whacked out on crack or something. She talked for an hour about nonsense. All of us were doing the uncomfortable don’t make eye contact otherwise you will have to pay attention to her and she will talk for another 15 minutes about nothing dance.

The afternoon we spent shopping and did I mention I love the to-go drink! Yeah, if you are not in the mood to shop, then might as well get drunk! Courtney took us to this Paris hat shop and the sales guy was gunning for us. He scolded Rachel and I for “touching” the dresses, he asked us to handle them by the hanger. Meanwhile, Emily made it a point to touch every dress behind his back while he was reprimanding us. Ah ha ha ha prick. Turns out he was not even a dress designer but the guy who put feathers in hats or something else totally gay. In his final remark, he said to us “well thank you for stopping in ladies” which was his passive aggressive way of kicking us out. Yeah, never been asked to leave a store before….well not without a good reason like having visible genitals.

That night we had dinner at a Jazz place with the world’s most nonexistent waitress. She was preggers and you would think she was running back and forth from the hospital between her few and infrequent visits to our table. Later we scored a table at a hookah bar. I’ve never smoked before, so it was really hard for me to get the hang of hookah. The girls were all gathered around telling me to suck more, suck harder, now hold it in your mouth. Talk about a man’s school girl slumber party fantasy. On our way back to the hotel, we hailed a cab driven by the most buff Egyptian man ever. The little guy was maybe 5’ tall and all biceps. The girls started chanting “guns” to him. Oh and his cab was all pimped out with a disco ball and flashing lights…or maybe that was just the hookah playing tricks on my mind. The next day we actually ran into “guns” again and were able to score a picture.

We finished off the visit by touring the Garden District which was gorgeous! Yeah, Anne Rice’s house was huge and super scary mansion like.