The fabulous life of the unemployed

Well its been a while. I hate when people ramble on about not updating their blogs so I'm not going to. I even feel guilty mentioning it, but whatever, I'm done with it.

So, I'm unemployed and loving it. Here's how my typical day usually pans out. I get up anytime between 9 and 12. Ok, so I've never gotten up at 9. I guess the average get up time is about 10 o'clock. (Mind you I have already gotten up around 7 to take Kipper for a walk) I take Kipper for another walk, and usually get a coffee at Starbucks in my neighb. After that, I make myself a protein shake for "breakfast" or rarely scramble some egg whites - you see, I'm working on that killer body so I can become a rich and famous model. I'll let everyone know when that happens. 

With my tummy full and my pup taken care of, I plop myself down on the computer to work on shaping my future. I could do any number of things, and right now there is no rhyme and reason to what goes on. Foremost on my mind right now is getting solid applications out to my graduate journalism school, so I've been working on the personal statement, corresponding with my recommenders to make sure they get their rec in, ordering transcripts, sending GRE scores, reviewing writing samples and all kinds of other thrilling tasks that go into successfully applying to schools.  

Sometimes I'll look for jobs. This includes contacting friends, colleagues, and acquaintances and asking them for contacts or job leads. This includes trolling Craigslist along with millions of other people in NYC looking for a plum job, or even just a bartending or modeling gig. This includes. This includes emailing my work advisor who is "working" on getting me temp work - and I say working because so far she has done jack shit for me; not that I blame her, I can imagine she's got dozens and dozens of better qualified, needier applicants she can place for the scant temp jobs that are available. Still, the bitch could return an email. This includes applying for internships and emailing random editors telling them why they should hire me. It's often surprising where jobs can come from. But here's the catch. I don't really want a job. I'm on unemployment and its not so bad. $405 a week. That's $1620 a month for all you who haven't been keep up with your multiplication tables. Now, it's not like I'm going to be planning any Carribean vacations on this money, but it can certainly get me through the month. And I'm married now so I have my husband to support me if need be. Plus, Rick and I live pretty modestly. It's basically rent, gym, bills, and food. We hardly go out anymore, so the major bar tabs are a hazy memory. I've blown my wad on fab furniture over the past year so the apartment is nice and pleasant to be in. New clothes and gorgeous little things dahling would be nice, but I can live without. Going out to eat is nice, and we can still do that time to time. Thankfully, we are both healthy and I am covered under Rick's health insurance. Luckily, there is no compulsion to keep up with any Jones' so I'm living a pretty satisfying life. Trouble is, it clearly won't last. As lazy a person as I naturally am, I will want a job sooner than later. Once my applications are finished, I'll have nothing important to occupy my time and I'm going to feel like a giant waste of space. 

Ok back to the schedule. Working on the computer all day get monotonous so I'll take breaks from time to time to time. If it's not to cold out, I'll take lil Kippy Reno out for a run to the dog park. It's a new routine I've developed and I really love it. I run along the Brooklyn Heights promenade, which always affords an impressive view of  downtown Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge. I feel like Rocky training, and I can tell Kipper is so happy, with his eyes wild and alert, ears flopping in the wind. We go to the dog park which is about 1 mile, and although there are not as many dogs running around now that it's so wintery, usually there are one or two that Kippy gets to frolic with for a half hour or so. Other things I'll do to break up the monotony is surf the web, make some food, play fetch with the Kipster, watch CNN, chat online with friends, clean and do chores, play video games, stare at hot guys working out at the YMCA across the street from us, and yes, yank one out from time to time. Sometimes at the same time. Ah, the glory of masterbating mid-afternoon! Is it any wonder I'm loving being unemployed? 

Now, many of you have probably noticed my allusions to my burgeoning modeling career. I like to try and talk about it tongue and cheek because it's kind of ridiculous, although I have made good money on it before, and I have been successful at it, so I think it really could be viable option to get me through the next several months until school starts. And certainly I could defer for year if they want me to be the new face of Calvin Klein Underware. Just saying. So, in pursuit of some gigs and or A CONTRACT, I've been doing several headshot shoots with my friend and wedding photographer Sara Wight. We got some really good ones and I am working on putting a comp card together soon.

Eventually Rick comes home around 4:00 and we usually chat and he showers, takes Kippy out and sometimes takes a nap at which point I go back to doing some more work. Now we are back to the point in the day when I was employed: Rick wakes up, we watch tv then go to the gym or the reverse of that, eat and do nighttime activities, which range from having sex to making tea. 

Thanks for reading!! If you have any job leads or words or kindness, please let me know!

XO

JB

Its amazing the things you find on the web when you're unemployed. . .

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

We got a new dog!!!

According to the City of New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. . .First of all, what the hell is "metal hygiene." It sounds like some Big Brother program to convince us all not think dirty thoughts. Anyway, this thing we got in the mail is just plain funny. Apparently Rick is the owner of Princess, a spayed Shih Tzu.

We have no idea why New York City thinks we own a Shih Tzu, but its amazing that her name is Princess.

Lisa Kudrow's brilliant new web-show

I've loved Lisa Kudrow for a long, long time. Ever since Friends and even Mad About You, way back in middle school, I've harbored a deep love and appreciation for this extremely intelligent, beautiful and hilarious woman.

I thought Kudrows portrayal of Phoebe was by far the greatest performance of the bunch on Friends and I never quite understood why Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox seemed to get most of the attention. Probably because they were the more conventional beauties on the show. Then came The Comeback, in my opinion the most underrated comedy series of the last decade. Kudrow has a gift with comedic timing and adds amazing subtley to every role, making her fascinating to watch. And I find much of her more recent work goes beyond pure comedy. She's not afraid to invest in a character and slowly build out her psyche. Alot of her recent material is not so much laugh out loud funny as slow-burning, twinkle in the eye, sly smile satisfaction. You almost forget she's in on the joke. She employs comedic devices such as subtle verbal tics, uncomfortable pauses, and quick eye movements to build some of the most complex comedic characters we've seen.

Take Web Therapy for example, Kudrow's new web based show which you can catch at www.lstudio.com or here, specifically: http://lstudio.lexus.com/#vid1204 . Kudrow plays Fiona Wallace, a completely self-absorbed "therapist" who is launching a new business by offering 3 minute therapy sessions. Fiona is elitist, confrontational, and awkward and I love every moment of it. She's probably the worst therapists out there, as she seems to have no formal training and spends most of the each 3 minute session addressing her problems. Flying by the seat of her pants, Wallace has chosen this new therapy "modality" because she discovered that 50 minute sessions usually amount to patients "going on and on about dreams and feelings and memories and past experiences that add up to whole lot of nothing. . ." Of course the written word does not nearly convey the way Kudrow delivers this line, complete with eye rolls, condescension, disdain. Even the 10 second introduction is a tiny slice of brilliance. Notice how Kudrow says her character's name, "this," and "therapy." Her eyes also bug out for a brief moment in excitement and she makes a little neck gesture to express enthusiasm. All this in just the introduction. Right now there are only 9 short episodes online, but they are better than the majority of the schlock that is on network tv right now. So check it out, let me know what you think, and if you haven't seen The Comeback yet, Netflix it immediately.

You know you love me
XOXO,
JB

The Fucked-Up Economy Hits Home. . .

I can't say that I didn't see it coming. Things have been bad at work. As far back as last Christmas, when Rico told us he couldn't give us an Xmas bonus, things were bad. And that was almost A YEAR AGO. That was before gas prices shot through the roof and the housing market crashed and I think every American bank went under and oh yeah, something happened with the stock market as well. So, sales were down. We moved out of our delivery company and hired an in-house delivery team. We converted the basement to a warehouse. We reduced our hours to 4 days a week for the entire summer and then some. I actually thought we were doing remarkably well considering the circumstances, but apparently not. We reached a breaking point. 

So, yesterday I got laid off. It was all very amicable. First thing in the morning. Rico praised my work over the past three years, and told me how upset he was and he gave me a hug. Anna, our bookkeeper, gave me a hug too. Rico told me that he would gladly write me a recommendation, and asked for my keys. And that was it. I was out the door, free, and unemployed. 

Its hard to describe how I feel. Its a heavy mix of emotions and I swing wildly from one extreme to the next. I've been "terminated" once before from a hotel in Provincetown and honestly that one stung a lot more, and I know its because that one had to due purely with my work, whereas this job loss is completely economics based. So the ego didn't really take too big a hit. One thing does make me angry though. Rico chose me and not Rumy to let go. Rumy was technically my subordinate, and I'd been there far longer than her. It hurts that Rico felt Rumy was more valuable than me, and that I was not given the option of taking a shortened week or less money. Rumy definitely is payed less, so perhaps this was the deciding factor. Either way, it doesn't seem fair, but as my father properly taught me "life's not fair." 

I am tempted to vent about many of my experiences at the store, but I'll refrain from that now. Perhaps at a later date when I've got no money and no job and I really need to let off some steam. For now, I'll say that overall it was a good experience. Overall, Rico is a good man, a wonderful artist and designer, and a great boss, but often overly emotional and irrational.  

That said, I do not envy Rumy one bit. Running that store is going to be exhausting by herself, and dealing with Rico 5 days a week would drive anyone insane.  Even thinking of the current ongoing problems and having to deal with them all myself makes me feel really bad for her. Then I have moments of unbridled joy when I realized that Oh my God, I'm never going to have to deal bitching, anal customers, wrong pillows, wrong orders, seams coming undone, stains, delivery damage, exorbitant shipping costs, late deliveries, un-met lead times, coked-up designers, whack jobs that come off the street and waste my time, and literally thousands of annoying customers I've dealt with over the years ever again. Its clear I still haven't let go of alot of this stress because I still feel anxious when I think about certain issues. All things must come to an end, and although this one came to an end about 9 months too soon, I'm going to look at it as a blessing in disguise.

Because, as I said, I'm free. As much as I actually did like my job, it was a sort of trap and I had gotten everything out of it that I was going to. I was stressing about telling Rico that I was planning on going back to school and obviously thats not an issue anymore. There are several major bonuses. First, I have lots of time now to work on submitting kick-admission's-ass applications to my journalism schools. I can spend more time with my dog, with my husband, and at the gym. I can focus on my writing (my blog!) and most importantly, get a new job that has to do with writing! Yeah the economy is going down the shitter, but I'll try not to think about that too much. . .to Craigslist, my dears! I'll keep everyone updated!

The Obligatory Obama Oration

Yeah this isn't an oration, but I fucking love assonance so deal. And barring the tone of the topic and the previous sentence, I am overjoyed Barack Obama will be the next United States President. I am just as happy that George Bush is out of office and the Republicans are in retreat. 

Election night was quite nice. I come home and Rick is positioned in front of the TV with CNN (obviously, cause no other station has Campbell Brown and David Gergen), which was a strange sight considering he's usually asleep when I get home. 

I plop myself down, grab Rick's hand and wait for the returns to roll in. Ok, so it wasn't as dramatic as that, and as everyone knows, waiting for returns to come in can be as boring as watching paint dry, and then sitting back and deciding you just LOVE this new color (like what happened on Tuesday), or realizing you've just totally changed the room into this hideous new thing that doesn't agree with any of your social values (2000 & 2004). Yeah. Moving on. 

The very first returns made me just the slightest bit nervous. They projected a couple of states McCain was supposed to win, and he seemed neck and neck with Barack in several other states, with McCain slightly leading. Of John King, at his beloved Magic Map, kept saying that the urban, democratic areas had yet to be reported, but I was poised for the worst, given the outcomes of the last two elections that I was just sure would go to the Democrats. Well, they started calling more and more states for Obama and then he began leading in several key states. Of course the major turning point was when they called Pennsylvania for Obama. There is a bar just below our building with a back patio which we can hear very clearly now that there is a huge building shadowing it and reflecting all the noise up the side of it. Every time a state was projected for Obama, a huge roar would go up that seemed to shake the whole building, and there was no doubt we were living in good ole liberal Brooklyn. Soon after, Ohio was called for Obama, and although they couldn't call it yet, everyone started talking about the implications of Obama winning. As we all know, at 11 PM EST, they called the race and proclaimed Obama as President Elect. It was a wonderful moment, and Rick leaned over, said "this is good for us, baby" and kissed me. I could literally feel a weight lifting off my shoulders; a lightening. We popped a bottle of champagne and toasted to No More Bush, to Democratic, liberal leadership, and to the first African American elected President.

Of course people had been hooting and hollering the entire time outside and honking horns going down Atlantic Ave. This continued throughout the night even to the point where Rick had to get up because he couldn't fall asleep due to all the noise. He may have been a little excited, too. Now, I was a Hillary supporter and slowly warmed up to Obama as the race wore on. While I don't have the frothing-mouth, fanatical love for Obama as many people I know do, I have to say he has given me something that no other politician has ever given me: hope. Yes, just as he promised, just as he campaigned on. I knew it exactly the moment it happened, the next day. I was crossing the street and thinking about Grad school and applications and projecting what my future might be like depending on what school I go to. And then I realized that no matter where I went to school, Barack Obama would be President while I was going there. Not George Bush, not John McCain, not Sarah Palin or some other asshole who thinks of me as a second class citizen because I love another man. No it would be Obama and I actually felt a surge of happiness and above all, hope. It felt amazing. Here's the the future, O, let's make it a good one. 

Is it just me or is Gossip Girl getting crazy good as the season goes on?

I mean! I'm just sayin. . .

BioShock: The Review

Well, I promised a review of Bioshock a while ago and now, since I finally beat the game this weekend, I'm now delivering. 

As a preface, Bioshock has gotten amazing reviews from every major electronic games magazine out there and has one several "game of the year awards" as well. It received an aggregate score of 95 on metacritic.com and basically has been called the bomb by everyone whos anyone in the video game world. 

My experience was a little less enjoyable than that. And I'm not surprised. I'll put it out there right now: I am an extremely hard to please gamer. I demand constant innovation and immersion to keep my attention. I am a developer's worst nightmare. So, while there are many parts of Bioshock that are admirable and deserve high praise, overall I was dissapointed with my gaming experience. 

Bioshock is a first person shooter that begins with you taking the role of an unnamed man on an airplane that suddenly goes down in somewhere over the Atlantic ocean. You rise up to the surface surrounded by a ring of fire and are able to swim to tiny creepy island, where upon you discover an "elevator" that does down. . .way down. . .

The elevator takes you to Rapture, a gleaming city built at the bottom of the sea, a place its architect and god-like ruler, Andrew Ryan, has built to escape the oppressive regimes of our world. "Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?" Ryan asks. "No, says the man in Washington, it belongs to the poor. No, says the man in the Vatican it belongs to God! No, says the man in Moscow, it belongs to everyone." Such is the context of the rich world you are about to enter. The writers of Bioshock have done a superb job of creating a world unto itself. Ryan has gone about creating his own utopia under the sea and the production team behind Bioshock has mounted an incredibly believable model of this world. The visuals, although for the most part dark and saturnine, are rich a mix of stylized 1950's naivetee and an underwater labrynth constructed with steel, glass and fire. The sound is equally as enthralling. T

he heap of metal you are in is constantly creaking and heaving under the oppressive weight of the ocean and these

 sounds really help in immersing you into this world. The denizens of Rapture are a twisted bunch and you can almost always hear them before you see them. Their mutterings, death cries, and caterwauls echo off the metal walls and, and the beginning at least, produce a palpable sense of fear. Its equally terrifying and pleasurable discovering what Rapture was and has become, mainly due to the impressive production value the designers have instilled in the game. The story unfold through audiotapes left around Rapture and its up to you weather or not you want to listen to them. They add considerable deapth to the story, although I found them sometimes distracting and hard to understand. I had to turn on the subtitles option

 halfway though because almost every main character speaks in one crazy accent or another. I've heard they are filming Bioshock movie, which comes as no surprise, as this game is ripe with the makings of a creepy action blockbuster. 

Rapture is a world gone insane. Unchecked scientific progress has lead to widespread use of personal genetic modifications - think of plastic surgery gone mad - that clearly spun out of control until a tipping point was reached and anarchy erupted in Rapture, killing most of its occupants. The things that remain, the Splicers, are deranged, mutated humans who are constantly searching for adam, the stuff that lets you genetically enhance yourself. Soon enough, you'll have the opportunity to splice yourself up and be able to wield awesome powers - fire, electricity, telekinesis, even command swarms of insects, as well as outfit yourself with suped-up tonics that provide sweet passive bonuses such as invisibility and electric skin. And

 you'll need them, because you're goona have to take down Big Daddies, and lots of 'em. 

A Big Daddy bears down, Little Sister in hand. Uh, I think we're gonna need a bigger wrench.

Big Daddies are the hulking, drill-for-a-hand equipped behemoth protectors of the Little Sisters, the Keepers of the Adam. They'll do anything in their power to protect these little girls. After you do eventually take them down, you're confronted with the a decision - save the Little Sisters from the "worm" that is infesting them and take some their adam, or kill them and take all their adam. Huh? Exactly. The specifics of what exactly is going on when you chose to save or destroy the Sisters is muddled and therefore, for me, diluted the intensity of the moral decision I had to make. Yet it is still there. Do I save this little girl, albeit one with glowing, red evil eyes, and scrape by, or do I destroy them, and become more powerful than I could ever possibly imagine MWAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH. Personally I decided to save most of the little girls, cause, y'know, I'm a stand up guy, but I had to kill a few just to see what happened cause, y'know, I'm bad ass like that. Critics have hailed this feature of the game as one of its best, because it "makes you feel." Now, I did have to think a few seconds about what I was going to do the first few times, but there are so many Little Sisters, the experience became rote and repetitive. 

While it might sound like I liked this game overall, there are several major problems in it for me. The most important for me was the repetitive nature of the game. Overall, there are only about 5 enemies. There are the Splicers that either jump at you, shoot at you, or throw bombs at you, there are gun turrets, and there are Big Daddies. I quickly grew bored of level after level of the same thing. The Big Daddies are scary and menacing, but after the 12th one you've killed, the excitement is gone. I wish they each had different strengths weaknesses, different attack styles etc. similar to Mega Man bosses, because as it is, I used the same strategy for each one - stand back, launch a few grenade rounds, stun with electricty, launch a few more, repeat. The levels have a similar been-there-done-that feel to them as well. While its true you go to lots of different places like the Medical Pavilion, the energy generator, the "Vacation Land," etc. They all feel so similar and are colored with such dark, murky tones, I got more than a little inured to the style.  Now, perhaps I didn't spend quite enough time with the game, or play it on a high enough difficulty level, but frankly, I didn't want to. I've read how innovative the game can be, and how you can progress through different parts in different ways, but to be honest I don't have any desire to go back and experience this again. Even as I could tell I was nearing the end of the game, I had to force myself to keep playing, mainly so I could just beat the damn thing and move on to my next game. THAT, more than anything else tells me that this is not a stellar game. Or, maybe its just me. I DID play it all the way through and thats not something I can say about every game. 

Overall, I give it an 86 out of 100

J&J's wild night in NYC or: We were so Gossip Girl last night. . .

Last night was truly amazing. Some, like me, might call it redoubtable, which means awe-inspiring (a holdover from my recently passed GRE days). It was just one of those nights that starts off right and rockets you away. Everything continues to get crazier and kookier and you'll in the drivers seat. One of those nights you can only have in New York City. A few weeks ago I heard from my HTM friend Mark that "my lady lover" (yes, he actually used that term) was performing. By lady lover he meant the redoubtable Lady Gaga, who totally makes me wet. Tickets were $10 and it was a no-brainer, I was going. Right around that time, I got reacquainted with Jackie, Nick's friend from law school. We hung out during David Enrich's pumpkin carving contest and ended up convincing a large group of straight people to come the Katty Shack with us, and we had a fantastic time. This event seemed right up Jax's alley so I invited her and lo and behold, she loves Lady G just as much as me. This type of thing isn't exactly Rick's cup of tea, so I was not surprised when he decided to stay in and watch his science movie. It would be pretty lame if he wasn't so hot doing it.

So Jax came over my place around 8 and we have a few drinks and watch some hot music videos before we headed off into the night. We hit up the F train and the train was just leaving the station right as we got there - fuck. Little did we know that this seemly unfortunate event would lead us to the greatest discovery of the night: a pair of plastic, lens-less, pseudo blinged out black glasses frame. Jax found them under the subway bench, picked them up and kinda went "eww". They looked kinda funky to me though, and I insisted she try them on. The results were pretty magical:

I know. We pretty much look as awesome as people can look. And then, right after we took these two pictures, another train rolled into the station. We have liftoff.

We became completely obsessed with these glasses for the rest of the night and insisted everyone we met try them on and take a picture with us. With our entrance where a menagerie of people we trying to get in. I pulled out my will call ticket and we went right on up. Just like celebrities. The place was chock-a-block with queer hotties and with our new glasses we were in high demand. I looked down the bar and made eye contact with this super cute guy and we both smiled at each other. I g confidence boosted by our magical new glasses, we strutted up to the clubot a sudden wave of self-conciousness and worried my glasses looked stupid so I put them up over my head. When I looked back he called down the bar "put the glasses back on! You look so cute in them!" Then I took a picture with a sexy nun who had her own pair of sweet glasses:So we were checking out the place (it was at the Highline Ballroom) and decided the upper balcony was the place where VIP like us should be. We asked about it and discovered thats where Lady G was doing album signings, but we could only go up there if we bought an album. Unbeknownst to me, Jackie had bought one so she had a wrist band, but I didn't. "Come with me" she said, and led us back to the main ticket booth. She asked the guy giving wrist bands a question and then let someone come up and distract him, at which point she casually reached down by the table and grabbed a wayward wristband and put it on me. Instant love. Really. NO ONE has ever done that for me! It just seemed so naughty and ballsy. I LOVED IT! We are now entering the stratosphere.

So we go upstairs and Jackie gets her album signed by Lady GaGa who had intense security around her - unfortunately we were unable to get a picture of her wearing the glasses. But we did get a nice shot of Lady G getting ready to sign Jax's CD - look how happy she looks!
By that time Marky and Matt had arrived! Yay! So we went down and, naturally, took some more photos of everyone wearing the glasses.
Loves it! Unforch, Mark wasn't feeling 100% so they were more in a lets chill and watch from the back type of mood, and Jax and I were ready to dance. Amanda Lepore was performing at that point and we pushed our way up and all of a sudden she was naked. I've never see that before. Lets just say her hair looked fierce. No, I kid. Her body was actually pretty rockin.

After the perfect amount of performances, booty shaking music and time enough to show off our glasses to everyone, it was time for the Gaga to perform! I was buzzin enough to enjoy just about anything, but she looked fabulous and put on a great, 15 minute set which was perfect. Check out her outfit and this amazing photo of her (at one point I was convinced the second here win me the pulitzer in photojournalism. I still love it, its just not quite as great as I originally thought).
We lost our shit when Just Dance came on, as did everyone else. That was 3 minutes of pure dancing bliss. This is Jackie, losing said shit:
And this is me, about to lose my shit. Notice stolen wristband and fly wedding ring.
After Lady Vajayjay went off, they busted out some of Britney's "Womanizer" and a couple other hot tunes so we danced it up, and went a little wild. This big black guy kept coming up to me and wanting to dance with me and introduced me to this little Russian lady as "my drug dealer" three times. Hey also kept trying to dance with Jackie. We look like BFFs in this pic but he was totally weirding me out.
One of the things I love about Jax is that she loves to dance probably more than I do. And, more than just dancing, she loves to dance on stages. So far, both nights I've been out with her she's dragged me up on stage and we're both working it out for everyone to admire. I don't know if this pic was taken while we were on stage but you can get a sense of how much fun we having dancing together.
Then, total pandemonium broke out as my head morphed into a giant Lady Gaga poster. Hot tranny messes across the whole place ooohed and ahhhed.
Soon, the crowd started to die down and we decided to take out leave. We were on way too much of a high to head home for the night, so I suggested the Cubbyhole! Yay! Jackie had never been there and I was just happy to be going to an "afterparty" so we took off. . .but not before pretty boy from the beginning of the evening stopped us, the same hot guy who told me I looked so cute in my glasses. He told us he was with Richie Rich and didn't want to hang out with him any more and blah blah blah where were we going and could he come along. It was so weird and kinda out of the blue, so Jackie and I just looked at each other and were like sure! Why not? But not before you take a picture wearing these glassesssssss!!!So we pile in a cab even though I later realized the Cubbyhole was about 7 minutes walking from where we were, although its like the Twilight zone in that area of the West Village and I can never find ANYTHING. Anyway, this guy John starts talking about how his boyfriend manages Madonna, and Cher and how he knows Andy Roddick and has the keys to his apartment and all this shit. He seemed totally enamoured by us and was inviting us to all these parties left and right. It was major name-droppage, which turns me off and gets me wet in equal measure, and for the most part I believed this guy. Whatever, I was pretty trashed by this point so everything he said I was impressed by and basically oohhed and ahhhhed and tell me more'd at. Major drinking commenced at the Cubbyhole, more dancing, split beer, cigarettes, etc. We were on such a high from the night and everything just seemed hilarious and so amusing. And of course, lots more ridiculous pictures.
Then, probably the weirdest thing of the night happened. Devon came in to the bar at about 3 in the morning, screamed by name, declared herself shitfaced, and freaked out that I was wearing her Olive Oyl shirt I "borrowed" from her in college. Susi was there, looked wildeyed and a bit wigged out, and no wonder: they had just come from partying with Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson. Just went I thought our evening was about to take its wildest turn yet, and get invited to party with La Lohan, Devon was gone. In her defense, she was totally drunk and I think just stopped into the bar for a pee and then going home. And just after that oh newfound suggar daddy decided he had enough and peaceout without so much as leaving his number. Oh well, no four ways with Andy Roddick in the future. It was probably near 3:30 by this point and clearly about time to go home. So we gathered our things, hailed that cab and dragged out drunken, tired, happy queer asses back to Brooklyn. It was definitely one of my top 5 nights in NYC and I am SO happy it happened.

Peace bitches. Halloween's a-comin. . .

BoCoCa: My life in the Hills

I love my neighborhood. My neighborhood loves me. Our apartment is really at a very interesting intersection of Brooklyn: part luxe, part ghetto, part business, part entertainment, part government, part nightlife, part white, part black, part middle eastern, part hispanic, part gentrified, part ghetto. Most of all, for me, my neighborhood is convenient. My neighborhood is actually so convenient, I can easily go weeks at a time without leaving a four block radius from my house. Literally the farthest place I have to go on a regular basis is my job, which is a whopping four blocks away. I imagine this apartment I am in now will be the most convenient place I'll ever live in respect to all major amenities. See the map? See that huge mess of icons all cluttered together? Thats all the amenities I use almost every day.

Let's take a look: I already mentioned my job, which is four blocks away. The gym is a block and a half away. The grocery store (Trader Joe's) is half a block away. My bank is less than half a block away. The dry cleaner is literally one door down from us. We rent cars at Avis, which is directly across the street. The laundromat is one and a half blocks away. There is a huge movie theater 2 blocks away and a wonderful independent theater 8 blocks away. There is a Barnes and Noble right next to the movie theater and another amazing independent bookstore two blocks away. Lastly, we have access to about 6 different trains within a five block radius.

But lets not kid ourselves. This is no Eden Rick and I step out into every day. We live RIGHT ON Atlantic Ave, one of the busiest, nastiest, dirtiest streets in the whole country. It took a while for us to get used to the 18 wheelers downshifting outside or window every night as we tried to sleep. I would literally bound out of bed in the mornings, awoken by some mac truck barreling down the street, thinking the terrorists were attacking again (you'd be amazed how much air breaks sound like bombs about to explode). There is a Halal meat market right on our block, and we are routinely privy to the sight of whole, skinned goats, sheep and other unidentifiable mammals being brought into the butcher's via shopping cart. The is bus stop right outside which brings the double bonus of getting to hear the bus come by every 10 minutes and drawing interesting characters to the stop. Still, its our little corner of the Earth and its really begun to feel like MY neighborhood. The future is still uncertain, but we'll probably be moving sometime next summer. I will be sure to enjoy it until then


View Larger Map

I just took the GREs. . .and boy is my brain tired!

Today, I took the GREs, or for the uninitiated, the Graduate Record Examination. It was a stressful situation for the most part, but I did well!

The testing center was only 5 minutes away on Livingston St. and I when you get there, its like you're arriving at jail. You're not allowed to bring ANYTHING in with you and the woman told me that if I wore my sweatshirt into the testing area I would not be allowed to take it off. You stuff everything into a tiny locker they give you and then you sit down in a hallway with chairs along one side. Someone calls your name and then they test you on information you entered when you register. I'm always afraid I'm going to be stupid and get this stuff wrong. But I didn't. Then they take you inside this room with lots of computers and the woman hits some buttons and starts the test for you. There are some tutorials that literally tell you how to use a mouse and type, which I gladly read so as to delay the test. After about 15 minutes of these tutorials, the test began.

The first section is the essay section, where you have to write two essays. The first is the easiest, where they give you a statement and you have to argue for it or against it. There are no wrong answers, as long as you support your thesis and write a clear essay. There are two topics and you can chose which one you want to do. I got two good choices. One had to do with customs and traditions defining a culture, and the other stated that students should focus on learning ideas, trends, and concepts rather than focusing on facts. I chose the latter and wrote a pretty fucking sweet essay. I had lots of time left over and edited it. I was feeling good.

In the second essay, you have to tear about some "memo" or "report," finding inconcistancies and bad assumptions. This essay was easier than I expected as the prompt was long and had all kinds of inane assumptions in it that I could criticize. I didn't have as much time at the end but I finished and I thought I had written another pretty damn good essay.

Then my break came. I decided to go to the bathroom even though it made me nervous, because I'm always worried I'll be late, or do something to disqualify myself, or some other stupid shit like that. However, nothing happened, and I sat down, restarted the test, and the verbal section came up. I was most nervous about this section as it is ubdoubtably the most important part for getting me into a good graduate program, and therefore my very future could depend on what answer I chose during those 30 minutes. The test started out well, until I got the the word GAINSAY and I had to give an antonym. I have had trouble defining exactly what "gainsay" means in the past, and in fact I had that flashcard on my desk to look up exactly what it meant. This morning I saw the card on my desk and I thought about looking it up. I didn't and then later decided I just wasn't going to do it and I swear to God I thought to myself "watch, I'm not going to look this up and its going to appear on the test." And it did. So, it through me for a loop a little bit. However, I remembered what it meant and I think I got it right. The test was getting harder and harder, which was a good sign, but I started convincing myself I was answering everything wrong after "gainsay" came up. Then there was this incredibly dense reading comprehension article about coral reefs and I got bogged down trying to understand it and I wasted a lot of time, so I began to panic. At one point I had minutes to answer 15 questions. Ah!! I'm fucked, I thought. I really fucked this up. I knew I would. I put my last answer in with 2 seconds to go, and felt defeated. Certainly not how I wanted to finish up my test.

Math was next, which I don't care too much about, but I still didn't want to look like an idiot. Wow, this one felt even worse as I was going through it. It seemed to be focusing on all the types of questions that Princeton review told me it wouldn't focus on and they were all hard! "I must be getting all of these wrong," I thought, so where are the easy questions?! It really felt like a blood bath, because some of the questions were so hard I had no idea how to even guess or ballpark an answer. There were strings of 2 or 3 questions that I literally just guessed at. And then I would think back to verbal and get distracted by that. I thought of my brother, who did poorly the first time he took the GREs, and then took a class for them, took the GREs again, and did worse. I was despairing. Lastly, they give you an experimental section that doesn't count. They tell you if you do well on it you have the possibility of earning $250. I was in a bad mood and thought I wouldn't take it, but the sectional was verbal and I thought I would try. Also, it was a nice tactic to avoid seeing my abysmal scores.

Finally, the moment of truth came. I knew I would have the options of canceling my scores, but if I did that I would never know what I got and everyone would know that I had canceled them, and I would be out $140. I ever so briefly considered canceling them, but knew it was stupid to do so. I bit the bullet and submitted my scores. Verbal: 680! Math 540! Now I know many of you may be aghast at such a low Math score, but that actually one of my better scores, and I really doubt if any of the journalism schools I apply to are going to reject me because I don't know what one third to the negative second power is. So that score is adequate. A 680 on Verbal is clutch and AMAZING considering I thought I had done so poorly. 690 was the best I ever did on a practice quiz and every other score was much lower than that. I keep thinking I read it incorrectly. I guess we'll see when I get the results in the mail. Sooooo happy to not have to stress about learning math anymore!! I already threw out my study book.

Did Palin hit it out of the park? You Betcha

More so than Big Papi did at least. I just want to say a solemn prayer for the Sox this season. Ya done good kids, and I still love ya. 

So I missed the live airing of Saturday Night Live this weekend so that we could watch two boring innings of the Sox wining game 6 of the ACLS. Even though the Sox fans who refused to change the channel for 3 minutes to see Palin do the opening sketch were outnumbered by people interested in seeing Palin, they were obnoxious and vocal enough to leave the channel unchanged at a party we went to. 

Regardless, I stumbled in around 3:00 in morn to catch some Palin/Fey/Poehler action on Hulu.com, one of my favorite website. Like many Americans I've been equally charmed and repulsed by the creature that is Sarah Palin and also like many Americans, I've been obsessed with Tina Fey's portrayals of the GOP VP Nominee (given the rhyming amazingness of this phrase, how did I not guess they were going to do a rap?) 

While you all may boo me, I went to bed with a newfound respect for Mrs. Palin. It takes a lot of courage to go into the lion's den - 30 Rock - bastion of the "liberal media elite" to face down your dopellganger with a smile. It found it interesting that Fey and Palin shared only a split second of screen time as they quickly passed each other during a mock press conference. Perhaps this was one stipulation of the McCain campaign, although I find it equally bizarre that Palin and Alec Baldwin shared over a minute of awkward screen time (Baldwins wins worst cameo of the night with a telepromptered-in performance). 

To me, Palin seemed comfortable, for the most part. Its got to be weird for ANYONE to do a live sketch with Lorn Michaels, Marky Mark and Alec Baldwin, let alone let alone someone who must've known a least 2 out of the 3 of those people were certainly NOT voting for her, to put it mildly (I heard Michaels has donated money to McCain). While in the opening sketch Palin survived, in the Weekend Update "Palin Rap," she shone like a star. In my view Palin looked beautiful, projected confidence, spoke well, and gosh darn it if she didn't raise the roof as well as any urban types out there, I'll eat my foot. The rap was almost mesmerizing to watch. Seeing her groove in synch with Seth Myers while Poehler rapped "shoot a mother-humping moose eight days of a week" was one of the most surreal things I've seen in a while. And I truly give mad props to a lady who can throw their hands up to "all the mavericks in the house put your hands up." She truly was the definition of being a good sport. P.S. Check out how gay Todd Palin looks during the sketch. Brilliants. 

While I think overall Palin improved her image overall due to the performance, I think its far too little too late, and I find it was kind of sad that she let Baldwin call her "that horrible woman" basically to her face. I guess it was soft of  touche for McCain's "that one" during the debate. Still, my fascination with the VP nominee was reinvigorated by the SNL skits and somehow she has managed continue charming me. Even though she stands against pretty much everything I believe in, there is really no way I can find to hate her and a secret part of me even likes her! I suppose this is what McCain saw in her in the first place. 

As Alessandra Stanley suggested in the New York Times, I find it highly feasible should Palin  lose the election (please God oh please) she could pull a reverse Ronald Regan and turn her newfound celebrity wattage towards entertainment or television journalism, should she so desire. She's already got a signature sign-off, which, like everything else about her, I find oddly endearing, so much so that I'm going to use it now:

Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow.

Columbus day in Columbus!

Well, I GOT IT!!! Oh my God, Jane, you can't use that, that was a crazy person.
-Valerie Cherish (Lisa Kudrow) from the Comeback - GREAT series! If you've never seen it, stop reading this right now and go add it to your netflix queue. I'll be here when you get back.

Nothing like a random quote to start a blog entry I say. I thought of that because I really wanted to start the blog this way: Well, I DID IT! I spent Columbus day in Columbus, Ohio. Or, really, I drove within 10 minutes of it on one of those beltways that circle alot of bigger cities, like 495 in Boston or Washington, you know? Close enough though - and I'm definitely checking it off my list.

Even though my weekend wasn't QUITE as ridiculous as that, it was pretty bizarre in that Rick and I drove 11 hours each way to Cincinnati and back to visit our friends Joe and Michelle. You can see a picture of us here:
Michelle was Rick's best woman at his wedding and is probably his best friend ever, and they are a very fun couple. It was a weekend of firsts for me: My first time to Cincinnati, my first time to Kentucky, my first time playing guitar hero, and my first time to a carpeted gay club!

Traffic leaving NYC was horrendous, and after several arguments, an exploded 18 wheeler, and many hours of CNN on the radio, we rolled up into Cincinasty at 6:30 in the morning. They live in a nice, suburban part of town and live upstairs in a cute duplex, but they are moving across the river to Kentucky next week so all their shit was everywhere. Everyone is our group likes to play games, so thats pretty much all we did, all weekend, which was pretty awesome. Pass the Pigs (I dominated), Hearts, Guitar Hero, Aquadukt, Tripoley, Mario Kart (pwned), Super Smash Bros. and Pitch were the order of the day. As usual tempers flared and moods were altered depending on who was winning what, and several total meltdowns were narrowly avoided - one by me having to go up to my room to cool down for half an hour after watching Rick win hearts - AGAIN. I will have to dedicate an entire entry regarding Guitar Hero but suffice to say, I enjoy and I regret any negative thing I've ever said about it.





















Rick and and Kippy went and played tennis in this beautiful park that overlooked Cincinnati and the Ohio River during the day. There were three spectacularly bad pictures of Rick and I taken, and one amazing one of Rick and Kipper. As you can tell - Kipper had a GREAT time and it really made me want to move somewhere where we can have a bigger space and easier access to parks because he loves running around and exploring so much.
At night, Rick and I declared we wanted to check out the Ohio/Kentucky nightlife and Joe and Michelle obliged. Shockingly, they hadn't been out to any gay bars in the area, but we got on good advice that Adonis was the place to go for all things Gey. As the drive to get there went on and on and the neighborhood became increasingly sketchy, my sense of nervousness and giddiness rose in equal measures. We literally drove for 15 minutes outside the city and finally happened upon what looked like a converted motel. Behold, Adonis, the nightclub:
If you can see Rick's face in the picture, thats pretty much how the rest of the night went. The place was actually very nice, unusually large, and clean, and showed entertaining music videos on lots of screens. They had a pool room and an actual pool that made me think the place would probably be a shit load of fun to come during a summer afternoon and get shitfaced at the pool. After a couple drinks and a couple rounds of pool we went home early because we were still kinda out of whack from driving through the night. The place did seem to be filling up and there were a few cuties there so overall, I was actually impressed with the Cincinnati scene.

We got up at 6:30 this morning to head back to NYC and the drive today was much more pleasant than the way. For one, we hadn't both worked that day and two we got to see some beautiful foliage and rolling hills in the sun. Kippy didn't like the ride back very much though; he got car sick and threw up all over himself. Poor Kippy! He had a good weekend overall though. On a final note, I find it amusing and random that I was in West Virginia today so I took a pic of the welcome sign:
It actually was really pretty during the half hour we were in the state. WV always gets a bad rap as being super hill-billy-ish but then I always remember it separated from Virginia because they didn't want slave anymore so, right on West Virginia, you rock. I'm out.

Time to buy guns and head up to the Berkshires?

Ok, is it just me or is this financial crisis scaring the living shit out of anyone else, huh? I've been totally obsessed with watching the Dow online for the past week. Every time I open CNN.com I pray that there isn't some new headline about how how the Dow just dropped by like 5,000 points and how 8 new banks just went, well BANKrupt.  

Being a moderately privileged kid, my parents and grandparents put a modest amount of money away in stocks for me for when I should want to go to back to school, buy a house, travel the world, buy a pinball machine, etc. and its been nice knowing its there, but I haven't really cared too much about it. However, now the stock market has gone down by something like 20% in the past week, I have to consider pulling my money and just putting it in my bank account.  Every day I think the market is going to turn back up, and every day it plunges even farther. I really don't know what to do, and I get the feeling no one else has any fucking idea what to do either. 

I'm also worried for my parents. This is happening to them at a really shitty time. They are planning on retiring in about a year. I thought it was bad enough that that housing market was tanking given that they plan to sell their house in Lexington in about a year, but now I'm sure they have lost maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars. I just imagine everyones retirement funds, college funds, and nest eggs shrinking so much and it makes me sad.

More than that, I worry how much more the system can take before there is a collapse of the world economy. It seems every bank failure bring about another failure I feel like eventually the dominos falling are going to reach an unstoppable velocity. Yesterday I looked on CNN and the headline was "Stock Market Plunges Below 10,000 points" in big PANIC SIZED WORDS and I thought it meant the market had fallen BY 10,000 and I thought it was the end of the world, that chaos and violence would soon reign. Really, my stomach dropped and it made me feel sick. . .is anyone else having this terrible anxiety? 

So all this shit is making me stress about my money, my family's money, and the world's money. Its not a fun time. At least I have the Red Sox and Gossip Girl. Ah Jacoby and Blair, you help Mama through the hard times, you do, you do. . . 

Last Day of Sunlight in our apartment?

Or: Girders of Death Rise over our World


Like zoinks! The end is nigh! Ever since they started constructing this enormous building directly behind our apartment, I've been living in fear of the day the new construction would top us like the little nelly bitch apartment building we are and leave us in perpetual darkness. This new building has been one of the most henious aspects of moving into our newest hood: jackhammers, dust and darkness oh my! They have been building slowly but just yesterday they put up the girders that will support the floor that will block all of our southern exposure (not that it was abundant in the first place). Such is the price of "progress" I suppose. . .maybe there will be some hot construction worker I can spy on from eye level now, although they all seem to be unattractive Mexicans. . .well, a boy can hope. So here's to natural sunlight, I will miss thee.


Our kitchen window with ominous girders rising outside
How high will they go? Only the shadow knows. . .

My baby got a boo-boo

So last night started of benignly enough, with a nap, a quick dinner, and the kettle set on the stove in preparation for a enjoyable night of watching Kim Kardashian shake her other-worldly ass on Dancing With the Stars. Rick went out to take Kippy for his evening walk, but several moments later I hear him come back in.

"Jon. . ." he groans, which he almost never calls me, "come help me. . ." I'm not sure I've ever heard Rick utter those words, much less in the helpless, scared tone that he did. My spider-sense was going off the charts and I immediately thought Kippy was injured - my mind began flashing through all the horrible fates that could have befallen him. Was he hit by a car? Did another dog attack him on the street? There was hardly time for any of that as Rick has left maybe only a minute before.

I dash in from the kitchen to find Rick lying in the entryway, wincing, a stream of blood pooling on the ground by his feet.

"Oh my god!" I said, "what happened?!"
"I fell down the stairs" he groaned, "I'm hurt"

Again my mind was racing at light speed fearing the worst. Had he broken any bones? How bad was his laceration he obviously had suffered as well? Moments directly after an injury are fascinating, both as a victim and suspect. My brain tries to take in all the evidence at once and shoots into the future showing me every possible outcome. During the very first seconds, all the terrible injuries I've know people to suffer from "falling down the stairs" jump at me - is he paralyzed? Has he broken dozens of bones? Certainly the fact that he's on the floor and calling for help are not good signs. Neither was the rapidly growing pool of blood.

"Oh man," I stammered. "Where are you bleeding from?"
"My foot."
"Did you break anything?"
"No, just my foot. I don't know. It slid into the banister."

I ran and grabbed some toilet paper and took a good look by his toes, and it did not look good, but at least he hadn't broken anything, or hit is head or sustained any other major injuries. Still we had no idea how bad the cut was and the blood kept coming. We got him to the bathtub and he rinsed the cut out and examined the wound which was between his 3rd and 4th toe. He had badly scrapped up the top of his 3rd toe too. Rick briefly pulled the toes apart to gauge the extent of the wound and we both saw a deep, sinewy, nasty laceration. "I have to go to the hospital" Rick promptly declared. So much for Kim Kardashian's ass. . .

Alarmed by the deepness of the cut and still in pseudo-panic mode, I scurried around the apartment gathering things for the hospital, while Kippy licked up Rick's blood of the floor. Nice. Rick discovered he could walk slowly so we decided to just go to the car service place on our corner. On the way down we walked by a trail of blood leading down to the second floor staircase, where Rick had abandoned his flip-flop. Any neighbors coming up would have assumed we had murdered someone and dragged him into our apartment. Turns out that Kipper went behind Rick and wrapped his leach around him and took Rick's legs out from under him. His feet flew out and jammed into a semi-sharp railing that caused the cut. He called for me from the staircase but realized I couldn't hear, so he then crawled up to our apartment.

We got a car quickly and soon arrived at the oasis that is Long Island College Hospital for Rick's first ever visit to an ER. In the end, it wasn't a disaster, and it wasn't a pleasant hospital experience either. We waited about 20 minutes in the waiting room before we got a bed in the ER. After about 20 minutes there, and not even seeing a doctor, we began joking about how the patients would have to start treating each other, like students grading each other's tests. "Everyone to the right. . ." Soon, however, the adenaline wore off, and the vast boredom and misery of the hospital began to swallow us up and the two of shared a cramped gurney. At least the bleeding had subsided and Rick wasn't in too much pain.

After two and a half hours, at about 1:30 AM a wonderful black female doctor came to examine Rick. She quickly proclaimed it was the most awkward cut she had ever seen and asked if she could just cut off one of his other toes so she could sew it up properly. I was an eager spectator and enjoyed watching her stick her huge novacaine needle directly into the wound. As she cleaned it I got a really good view of the wound and was amazed at how deep deep crimson the deepest part of the cut was - it was pure, fleshy sinew. There were other minor dramas going on around us to keep me entertained as well: a jewish girl next to us with a mysteriously swelling leg, an elderly crack head lady who abruptly decided it was time to go home, and a gangbanger type who was lead in in handcuffs.

We finally got home around 3:00 in the morning and went straight to bed, even though the apartment was a disaster and it looked like someone had been murdered in the bathtub. Turns out Kim wasn't kicked off of Dancing with the Stars, so I'll get my chance to watch her next week, as long as Rick doesn't fall down the stairs again.

The homos come marching out!

Hooray and Wow! I haven't been as giddy to be a homosexual since evangelical leader Ted Haggard was caught with a gay hooker and crystal meth pipe stuck up his ass! Two MAJOR stars have come out of closet and I am so very happy for them. There was no dearth of rumors swirling around both Clay Aiken and Lindsay Lohan. Clay for one had been spotted and on several gay hook-up sites and several rags have featured interviews with his lovers. Also, gosmongers have been loudly whispering about the relationship between glama-lesbo L. Lo and her androgynous gal pal DJ Samantha Ronson. I'm just so happy and pleased for both of these people and I know first hand the relief AND FUN that both of these kids must be having. While I admit that I've always found Clay pretty creepy and still do, well at least he's a "being-honest-with-himself" kinda creepy. As for LesLo, its seems like she's cleaned up act ever since she's been hanging with Ronson - perhaps all her hard partying ways were in response to the stress of being in the closet. Also the extreme beauty of La Lohan makes up for the creepy and pseudo-ugliness of Aiken, so its a +10 points overall. 

Memoirs of a Geisha: my 5th grade review

At one point, Memoirs of a Geisha obtained a DiVinci Code type status in the American mindset. Everywhere you went, you saw people's noses buried behind the cover. Your co-worker was reading it; your mom just finished it, your friend's girlfriend kept talking about how she wanted to read it. Then the Rob Marshall movie came and went, remembered most for its splashy visuals and yawn-inducing story. I thought after the movie past and I never read the book, I never would, but it turns out it is one of Rick's favorite books and at his behest, I finally read it.

I always had a passing interest in the subject, but it seemed like it would be heavy and plodding: I expected to be confronted with self sacrificing women being constantly repressed, raped, and abused. I expected long, tortuously passages describing gorgeous scenery in Japan contrasted with a sadness and reservedness that the Japanese are so known for. However, Memoirs of a Geisha turned out to be mainly a beautiful soap opera set in Japan, complete with lustful encounters, catty exchanges, backstabbing, and opulent locales.

The novel is definitely a book you can tear through and the writing is nice and easy. The story follows a Japanese peasant girl born into a sickly family in a dreary fishing village who eventually becomes one of the most prominent geisha in all of Japan. The novel's greatest strength is in emersing you into geisha culture of Gion, the most famous geisha district in all of Japan. I found learning about the symbiotic workings of the okiyas (living compounds of the geishas), teahouses, geisha schools, and customers fascinating. While the society reminded me of the old school Hollywood Studio System in which the studios basically owned the stars, geisha culture is really a unique and foreign system that does not neatly translate into anything us Americans are familiar with.

Descriptions of how the girls are picked, trained, the rituals they go through, and the day to day life of the entertaining they do is fantastic. You feel like you are the lucky recipient of century old secrets, which in a way you are. What I found most entertaining is the way the geisha's compete with each other to become the most well known, highest paid entertainers in the land.

Sayuki, the main protagonist, is likable enough, but complains relentlessly and pines away for this one guy through the entirety of the book. The most interesting conflict is between Sayuki and her older okiya-mate Hatsumomo, who is widely renouned as the most beautiful geisha in all Japan, but who is cruel and hateful towards Sayuki who eventually grows to become her rival. However, at some point Hatumomo makes her exit, and I found my interest wanning and the story seemed to drag a bit and lose it narrative steam.

In conclusion, MoaG is a good, light read, and you will definitely learn a lot about Japan and geisha culture. There is ample drama and sensationalism to keep you satisfied for a good while, but the book finishes on a whimper.

My poor Tommy

There is a certain part of my brain that doesn't seem to know I'm gay. This part of my brain also likes football. There is a part of my brain that definitely knows I'm gay. This part of my brain loves Tom Brady. I'm mean just look at this guy.He's effing hot. I mean this guy would be hot if he played a jock in a Falcon flick, but he actually is a jock, and one of the most successful and respected jocks at that. Ok, ok. He's been a little bit tooly from time to time, which the whole Bridget Moynahan baby daddy drama, and the fact he seems to like hanging out with Giselle in New York rather than Beantown, but really all is forgivable for this guy. I feel a surge of confidence and pleasure every time Tommy takes the field because almost without fail he gets the job done.

Tom and the Pats have been very important to my life. I've been a fan since the 2000, the year before their storybook season went Bledsoe went down and this little known kid from California bravely stepped in and led them to their first Superbowl championship. This was also the year that I came out and I vividly remember watching the "Snowbowl" divisional playoff game against the Oakland Raiders with my father the night I came out to my parents. We walked in silence through the driving snow and together watched one of the most exciting football games that have ever been played. I think the experience actually helped my Dad get through that first night. I can imagine him thinking "well, we still likes football, so it can't be all bad. . ."

Since then, Brady has lead the Pats to 3 Superbowl Championships. With Brady at the helm, Bill Belichick had created one of the most dominant and feared teams in NFL history. All that came to a screeching halt last Sunday when Kansas City safety Bernard Polard tore into Brady's left knee, sidelining him for the rest of the season. Well, I feel terrible for Tommy. It must be hard to not be able to do what you do best. It must be hard to sit back and have to watch while someone else does your job. Tommy if your out there and are ever feeling down or need somewhere to convalesce, my services, and apartment, are open. Somehow I feel he might prefer Giselle as his Florence Nightingale.

And so we have Matt Cassel, the new Pats QB, who comes to us in a very similar manner as Brady. Cassel has big shoes to fill. While he in no way compares to the beauty of Brady, Cassel's got his own boy next door California charm, and so far he has done a bang up job leading the Pats to a 2-0 start, and competing with a NFL vet like Brett Farve. Keep it up Cassel! You'll never replace Brady, but if you can lead this team to another Superbowl, I just might start to imagine you in Falcon's next locker room scene.

I got an Xbox 361

Yeah thats right! Its one degree better than yours. Score!

And now for a lovely little picture. . .

That'll do. It looks exactly like that except I keep mine on its side, cuase its lazy like me. Anyway, I finally broke down and got a 360. I've been talking about it for probably 2 years now and I thought I'd save Rick the pain of me suggest to him that he get it for me every birthday, xmas, 4th of July, gay pride week, etc. Actually what did it was the latest issue of game informer came featured tons of new games from this years E3 and I decided that enough was enough. I mean Resident Evil 4? C'mon, who doesn't want to blow the heads of zombified African villagers? I hope that didn't sound racist. I mean, I'm not racist, I'm just stereotypically white (sorry, random ANTM reference). I got it off Craigslist, which is always an experience in and of itself. I have actually been trolling the Xbox market on craigslist for months now, and I always found it odd that the best deals were in Carnasie or Avenue U or some other random place I've never been. Ok, that definitely sounded racist, I think? Sorry. But my fears are legitimate. I read about these guys who would go to buy iPhones on some random corner in Bed-Stuy and they would be held up at gun point. So yeah. Plus, as mentioned earlier, I'm lazy and so I decided that the deal would have to go down in my neighborhood or have it delivered to me. Plus I fear the red rings of death which any Xbox owner worth his achievement points prays against every night. I mean whats going to stop some dude from handing me some broken Xbox? I certainly would never have the balls to demand my money back. As you can see I had a lot of requirements and basically assumed that every deal would end with mean leaking blood out of my head. Stressful. So, I found this ad for this guys selling it for $240, and I told him I'd pay him $20 bucks more for him to deliver it and I made it clear that I would require him to plug it in and prove it worked before I paid. He was totally cool with that, which made me suspicious, but just as planned he came over after work, hooked it up, we made the transaction and that was that!

He only had NBA2K8 which I will be trading in quickly. I downloaded Castle Crashers which is like Smurfs meet Golden Axe, with a little bit more deapth, and Rick and I just beat it tonight. I have to admit it got a little tedious, but it was good for a laugh and had a good amount of charm. I just wish I had picked a different knight; I chose green, who uses bio-poison type magic - never my favorite, as I feel its just kinda a pussy magic, you know? Like, poison, are you kidding me? What are we going to cast a spell and then dance around and avoid attacks for like 10 minutes while our opponent slowly wastes away? Lets just scorch them with a giant fucking Fire3 and get it over with!

Speaking of bio-ness, I got Bioshock via GameFly yesterday, and I've logged about 2 hours. It features an underwater dystopian city set in the 1950's. Swell. More on that later. But first, one more pretty picture.

Smoking that Salvia

So today the New York Times came out with an article on salvia use in America and it was really eye opening. I had never even heard of this drug before, and I used to think of myself as a pretty well informed druggie. Those days are long gone. The Times article mentioned the proliferation of YouTube videos of kids using salvia (which is smoked out of pipes and bongs much like weed) and immediately I jumped on to watch. The videos range from teenage girls giggling their asses off to freaked out college dudes stumbling around looking like zombies.

Now back in the day, this would have been right up my alley. I'd be on one of those websites ordering that stuff from some hippie up in New Hampshire and trying to convince all the girls to do it. Kasim and I would sit around and have a ridiculous time with it together. But those days are gone. I'd say from around the time I smoked my first joint back with Kasim, to the night I tripped on Robotussin (aka the worst night of my life) I was a pretty hard core druggie. I was fearless. Lets tick of the list: pot, booze (together for pleasure!), e, mushrooms, vicadin, coke, and acid. I was a pretty heavy pot smoker during my senior year of highschool and during Freshman year of college, and really only dabbled in the harder stuff. My nightmare episode with robotripping for the most part ended my love affair with drugs. Now, I'm older, wiser, and usually much more sober (except for that time in New Hope). Still, I think I still have that experimenter's spirit should the situation present itself (i.e. without Rick). As long as I feel comfortable, I would consider doing most drugs, its just not something I seek out on my own.

Even though most of these kids end up looking like they've been on an intense multiple week bender after about 10 seconds, I have to admit I'm intrigued. I watched one video of several highschool girls sitting around in a sunny, wooded area, smoking salvia and butts, and in an almost grotesque way, the video made me nostalgic for times past. Its true that when I used to do drugs alot, I felt cool, I felt bad ass, and I KNEW I was having more fun than all the straightedged kids. Now I mainly see it as a waste of money and time, but I still say that people have the right to put anything into their bodies that they want, as long as they are not a danger to themselves or others.

I used to feel so comfortable losing complete control of myself and seeing where my brain takes me, but now, its often more scary than redoubtable. Maybe sometime with Laura or something. So yeah? What was I saying? Can you pass the bong?