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


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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. . .