Crazy Is A Lifestyle…

The other night I had arranged to meet up with this girl Ellie at the Met. It was freezing out, so I layered a black hoodie underneath my tan, somewhat-thick jacket. It was a bit uncomfortable but it kept me warm enough. There’s this weird enjoyment I get out of wondering Manhattan at night, especially when it’s cold. It’s very serene and intimate despite all the goings on. Like the romantic loner constantly searching for a place to go.

I had my ipod locked and loaded with a play list featuring the Verve, the Smiths, and Radiohead; a trio of melancholy if there ever was one (editor’s note: the Verve’s album A Storm In Heaven is the best night time music I’ve ever heard). I hopped on the 6 train uptown to 86^th and 5th, upon which a man claiming to be an angel boarded. He said, “Yes folks, I am an angel. I was sent here from heaven to collect a debt. So if any of y’all got some money to spare you could really help me out of a jam. Jesus is pissed!”

I was heading towards the Met when Ellie called me to let me know she was going to be late. So, I wandered for a bit looking for a place to eat, but I just wound up getting a slice of pizza and hanging out in a Barnes & Nobles, waiting for Ellie to let me know when she was good to go.

After about an hour of this, she called back to tell me she was tired from work and was just going to go home and sleep. It wasn’t too late but the night was starting to get really frigid so I hopped back onto the 6 to go back downtown to 23^rd street. I stopped off at Madison Square Park by the flat iron building to finish my pizza on a bench. I had my tunes playing through my earbuds, but I could still overhear a man’s voice echoing from a nearby bench a little ways away from me. I put the music on pause and began to eavesdrop. He was clearly homeless, but slightly more organized. He was yelling at a pigeon that was waddling around in front of him. I’ll try to recreate the argument as best as I can remember it…

“How could you take that bread? You know I give you the bread with the seeds!”

Pigeon begins to waddle away.

“Why you doing this to me, baby? Don’t take no more bread from no one else!”

The pigeon stops and looks back.

“C’mon honey, don’t do this. Here, have some seeds. From me this time!”

The man tosses some chunks of bread onto the ground. The pigeon begins to peck away.

“That’s it. Cheatin’ ain’t right, and you know it! Stay with me baby!”

It was at this point that I finished my cheese slice and left the park, because even though I was curious as to how this relationship would unfold, I figured retaining my own sanity was just as important. If I had stayed and continued listening, eventually I would have become obsessed with the man-pigeon bonding and collapsed into a fetal position of confusion on the ground. That’s the problem with a place like New York. You’re constantly bombarded with odd behavior until you become so used to it that you start to think, “why shouldn’t I date a pigeon?”

I made my own way home by midnight and was disappointed that my night with Ellie wasn’t fulfilled, but I didn’t care about missing out on the Met anymore. After all, who needs centuries and centuries of creative expression and timeless pieces of artistic beauty when you have an unlimited supply of crazy New Yorkers to entertain you?

Live From India, It’s Elephant Aid!…

Paris Hilton is starting to use her status to do some good in the world for a change. I know she’s been traveling to god knows where doing god knows what to make up for her jail stint, but I found this quote from her and it has really opened my eyes to an epidemic that isn’t really getting any mainstream media attention these days:

“There would have been more casualties if the villagers hadn’t chased them away. And four elephants died in a similar way three years ago. It is just so sad. The biggest problems are in Assam and Meghalaya. The elephants get drunk all the time. It is becoming really dangerous. We need to stop making alcohol available to them.”

Alcoholic elephants? When did this start? All this time there’s been a drinking problem amongst the elephant population and there hasn’t even been a single news piece alerting us of this problem? I remember that coke outbreak with the squirrels a few years back but this is very different. Paris is right, we have to do something about these lushes. Forget Darfur and the Middle East, it’s time we use our power to accomplish some real change. I bet it’s those lazy liquor store managers. They never ID and now underage elephants are excessively drinking and ruining the villages with spilled martinis and used condoms.

And how much booze must be required to get an elephant shit faced? A lot I’m guessing. That’s a whole lotta alcohol being wasted on these behemoths. Alcohol that could be being used to destroy towns and villages over here in the US instead.

After learning of this startling revelation from Paris, I did some statistical research. As it turns out, elephant fights in India have increased by twenty percent in the past year, while anonymous sex and public urination have increased by nearly thirty percent.

The Good Ol’ Days…

My nephew is about to turn one year old on November 26th and, son of a bitch, does it make me feel old. OK, I know I’m not old old (22 is nothing to complain about), but every week this kid changes and it really makes me think about how fast time goes by these days.

I don’t get to see him all that much (basically every other weekend), so when I do see him, he’s either grown another inch, gained another pound, or learned how to say “hello”. It certainly puts things in perspective…too much, really. (Yeah, I know, Spinal Tap references have been done to death these days.) He was born when I was entering my final year of college, and now here I am a year later, graduated with a job and drinking much, much, much less than I used to.

Enjoy these early days little buddy. Life picks up speed real soon…

It’s The Little Things That Get To Ya…

I’ve apparently forgotten how to chew properly today, again. No matter what I do, I can’t stop biting the inside of my lower lip. And the more I think about not doing it, the more I do it.

I even tried slowing the chewing process to reduce the risk, but I wound up just biting the exact same spot…only slower and more painfully. It was the single stupidest moment of my life. I could actually see myself about to bite down on the sore spot. It was in slow motion. And even though I could see it happening, I just kept slowing biting my lip and moaning in agony. I had to keep explaining to my friends at work what I was doing, and at first they laughed. But after a few more incidents their smiles turned to genuine concern for my well-being.

There’s something very sad about not having the ability to chew gracefully anymore. It actually almost ruined my day. I felt like jumping out of the window immediately after that regretful display, just to end this cruel existence.

If I can’t chew a pizza, how can I expect to live a successful life?

If I Could Only See This After Every Bad Day…

I left work yesterday at 6pm and was walking along Broadway towards Canal Street. I had my headphones in (as I usually do when I’m walking around out there) but had them on low volume so I could still hear well. I also spot a man and a woman arguing a little ways up from me. The guy was black and in his mid 30s (if I had to guess). He was sitting on a light blue Vespa moped. He was dressed in a leather jacket with an over sized black motorcycle helmet and large sunglasses. He had giant brown boots laced up tight around his yellow-stripped vinyl pants. After the woman finished yelling at him, he zipped up his jacket and said, “Bitch, I’d been riding these things since before you was sniffing yo mama’s shit!”

He started the moped up, revved it twice, then floored it straight into the subway’s stairway sign. His boot came flying off and he yelled “My boots, they be flyin’!”

I laughed all the way to Hoboken.

An Office Party That Isn’t Awkward…

My job often functions more like a college party than as an actual job. It’s hard to tell if anyone is doing any valid work whatsoever, and the ones that are actually accomplishing something are usually done in fifteen minutes then go for a two hour long lunch break. It’s really great. I just surf the web endlessly all day and every once in a while do some legitimate work. So it’s no surprise that one of the biggest drunken bashes I’ve ever been to in my life occurred at this place last week.

It was Thursday and the day was dragging on forever. I was dying of heat but if I opened my giant window I would freeze immediately. Heat exhaustion combined with boredom is a recipe for incompetence. Luckily, around four o’clock or so, a co-worker ran into our room (there are about six of us) and started shouting about two kegs that were delivered to the offices upstairs. So without any hesitation, every one on our floor rushed up the only stairway leading up and began to drink exuberantly at exactly 4:15 pm. None of us had eaten since about noon so all of the signs pointed to catastrophe.

The party was pretty normal at first, just a bunch of people drinking and chatting about work they should be doing at the moment. Then, at around the 7pm mark, things changed. Things changed because Matt, my immediate boss, brought weed.

Everyone was clearly belligerent by this point, so naturally the voices got louder and the sexual tension increased dramatically. Two people vomited simultaneously all over our brand new ficus plants. This was followed by Sam (my partner in crime) standing on the balcony of a window flirting with a group of girls in the building directly across from ours. It would have been funny, had the threat of Sam falling eleven stories down onto Broadway not been present.

We’ve had office parties plenty before, so people shouting out the windows at anyone within earshot was not a new form of entertainment to us. This time, however, the ones within earshot didn’t appreciate the humor. So they called the cops. The cops were called to break up an office party!

So we all headed off into the night, with piles of work still accumulating on our desks. Since I don’t live in the city, I was a little confused as to what I should do. Although I was pretty baked so I didn’t care that much. Somehow we made our way to a bar, only I couldn’t tell you which one. It was dark with green bottles lining the walls. That’s about all I can remember. I pretty much talked to Christine the whole time we were there, while Sam and Matt got into a fight with some homeless guy. I’d explain it greater detail, but again, I was shit faced.

So we departed and went to another bar, where for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to buy a screwdriver. Now, I’ve never had LSD. But something happens to me when I mix liquor after I’ve been drinking that much beer, along with weed. And I’d imagine it to be very similar to an LSD trip. I don’t remember anything really beyond the screwdriver, but I can remember sitting on the R train with Christine and Sam for a brief period. Then, I’m told, I passed out. Not like I slowly laid my head down and gently whisked myself into dreamland. I passed out. Eyewitness reports say that I was awake, then my eyes closed and I slammed my head off of the metal seat handle and collapsed onto the subway floor.

I woke up the following morning on Sam’s couch in a haze of debauchery. I couldn’t remember anything from the day before really and I had a giant bandage around my forehead.

I later found out that 12 people had called out of work that morning.

They Just Don’t Make Fetishes Like This Anymore…

So there’s this story evolving over in Scotland that has caught my interest. Not because of the weirdness of the act in question, but because of the potential consequences. The story goes like this: guy gets caught in a hotel room attempting to have sex with a bicycle (yes, you read that correctly), freaked-out people call the police, guy goes on trial for breach of “sexual peace” (I wonder if they give out Nobel Peace Prizes for that category, too).

Apparently he wasn’t answering the door after several knocks so the cleaning service people barged into the room and saw Robert Stewart (the name doesn’t help his case) on his bed with the bike, naked from the waist down thrusting himself into the bike, simulating sex. I’m not even sure how sex with a bike is possible. We’ve been trying to figure out the mechanics of it all day today at work. I guess that all depends on whether it was a girls’ bike or a boys’ bike.

The saddest part of this, and the part that no one seems to be disputing, is the fact that they are trying to put this guy in jail. They are actually wasting jail space on something as stupid as this. What’s so disturbing about seeing a guy hump a bike? Crazy, yes, but prison-worthy? What this guy needs is a psychiatrist, not a place that will only reinforce his sexual insecurities.

You put someone in jail for doing something that harms someone or something else. Inanimate objects don’t have feelings. It is impossible to make them feel bad, let alone violate them. When I was six I tried to make my Winnie The Pooh stuffed bear jealous after I told him I was going to start playing with my Transformers action figures more. He didn’t seem to care much.

Stewart banging out a bike in the comfort of his own rented, seedy hotel room is his own business. It’s not harming anyone (unless he gets his own pecker caught in one of the gears). Stop humiliating this guy in public just because it makes you (the news people and that hotel staff) feel like upstanding citizens. There are way more people that deserve to be in jail instead of this guy.

Like that guy that got caught humping pavements in ‘93. Sicko.

 

Here’s the link to the news story if you’re interested (you know you are):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/26/nsex126.xml

Radiohead And The Fickle Fans…

Since everyone else has given their two cents on the Radiohead pay-what-you-want business model, I might as well have my say, too. If you don’t know (those of you living under slabs of stone I would imagine), alt-rock giants Radiohead released their last album on October 10th. The difference this time is that since Thom Yorke and company had no label deal worked out by then, they decided to release their eighth studio, titled In Rainbows, on their own via the Internet. The album was only available as a digital download and only through a website Radiohead created. The key aspect that has everyone talking, however, is that you could choose how much you wanted to pay. Any amount was acceptable, especially zero.

In the month long wake of this market-bending approach, every music and business enthusiast has come out of the wood work to either criticize or defend Radiohead for doing this. Even the fans are engaging in fierce debates over this move. Many industry insiders are claiming foul, while others are showering with praise.

I myself am a huge Radiohead, uh, head. The Bends is probably my favorite album ever and OK Computer is not far behind. When I learned of In Rainbows and how they were going to let us hear it, I was ecstatic. Not so much for the concept of the whole thing but just because I was going to be hearing some new Radiohead tunes. That was really all I cared about. From what I’ve been reading lately, however, many others don’t share that same sentiment. Here’s an example of someone on a “Slicon Alley Insider” message board and their reasoning for paying zero dollars for In Rainbows:

“Lack of technical info about the MP3…lack of uncompressed or lossless version…no album art…slow website…the manufacturing costs of what I downloaded was 0…I am going to buy it on CD anyway…They got an email address out of me (which they didn’t need)…If I paid real money, then I would have to probably provide my credit card info. Not if I can help it.”

Wow. The sad thing is, this is a common response to this whole situation. People everywhere are slamming Radiohead for the intricacies of the In Rainbows release. Yeah, the quality isn’t perfect. Yeah, there isn’t any album art. But you know what? Who cares?

Here is one of the most popular bands around today, choosing to distribute their new album to us for free if we so choose, and people have the nerve to complain about it. It’s music. I don’t understand why an art form as free and limitless as music is constantly scrutinized under these terms. Music’s primary duty is to please you aesthetically. You listen to it, you enjoy it, then you listen to it again and again at your heart’s content. Radiohead tried to focus on that, but they still catch hell for it. This need to rationalize slamming someone else’s music based on reasons other than the music itself has got to stop. What would you rather Radiohead do? Give their music to a major label and sell it to us through places like Wal-Mart or Best Buy where they can charge you almost twenty of your hard-earned dollars for it? Radiohead was trying to show us, the so-called “consumers”, that they care about us by letting us pay what we wanted for the album. They tried to give us a break and, surprise, people still have problems with it.

People like that guy quoted above probably spend their days complaining about the current state of music and how utterly disgusting the mainstream acts are. They hate major labels, support indie chains, and blah blah blah. Yet, they refused to support Radiohead for trying to be the ultimate advocates of independent thinking because of reasons like mp3 quality and the fact that they asked for an email address. Cry me a fucking river.

Music is music. It shouldn’t be a business. It shouldn’t, but I know that it is. Between record labels swallowing indie labels left and right and huge retail chains killing off independent record stores, it’s getting harder and harder to get music by reasonable means. I’d like to have more bands follow Radiohead’s lead, but I know that not every artist can do this. Quite simply, Radiohead can afford to do this. They have enough fans and enough of a respected musical past that they didn’t even need to promote In Rainbows.

The best part of all of this, however, is how silent Radiohead have remained throughout it all. Johnny Greenwood, the only member to speak out about this career move in any detail, simply stated that they just wanted to get their music to their fans as quickly and with as little strings attached as possible. That’s all. They wanted people to hear their new songs, and they extended their hand to us all and said, here, have our music and we hope you enjoy it. Then, let me just say, thank you Radiohead. I appreciate the gesture along with the music and I hope my fifteen dollar tip serves you well.

 

Not Quite Voyeurism…

When I’m at work, my computer station is right along the side of a wall where there are two big windows. So as I stare at my computer, I have the most perfect view of New York that I could possible imagine right in front of me (complete with Empire State Building). It makes the day a little less boring sometimes when I can just look out the window and piece together all of the lives going on based on the various sounds emanating from the cityscape.

Directly across and below my window is an apartment building. It’s a rather nice brick building that has several balconies lined with plants and patio furniture jutting out from the four apartments that occupy my line of sight. One of those apartments contains a beautiful, dark-haired woman. Her windows are always open and the blinds are never shut. She is around my age (early to mid 20s) and is always in sight, whether she’s on her tiny balcony or in her room. I spot her everyday without fail and she’s usually dressed down.

I’m not big into spying on people but I can’t avoid seeing her. When I glance out of my window for even a second, she’s there. And so, everyday, I spot her and start forming little stories about who she is and what she does. She is very attractive (the building is not far away) and I can’t help but to stare at her when she’s on the balcony. Sometimes she stands out there, talking on the phone or just staring off. But despite the mundane activities, I always find myself watching her.

In some weird way I feel like I know her. The city is a place with constant social interaction but it can still leave you feeling isolated and distant. Your bombarded with success, promise and hope on a daily basis, but none of it’s for you. Maybe she feels the same way and that’s why she is on the balcony every day, hoping to feel included in some way. Each day when I look out over that massive view of the city, I think of the sheer amount of anonymous people out there. But now here’s this random girl who has become a familiar face in an ambiguous view. And it’s slightly comforting.

But, knowing my luck, she’ll probably move out as I finish typing this sentence.