Hello Everyone -

It’s been a very long while since I’ve posted anything here, and I apologize for that. I was away for about three weeks (two in Italy and one in Boston), but I’ve been back for another week now. I want to get back into the swing of blogging on this site, so this post is going to be about nothing, but will hopefully get the transcendentalist juices flowing again. You don’t have to read this, it probably won’t be interesting.

Once again, thank you to everyone at the Boston show. We had a great time doing it, and I hope you had a great time too, either watching it or helping out like so many did. It would be awesome to do a show there again, and we’re even talking about taking the show on the road more. The next show might even be in New Hampshire!

My job as a tutor is about to end, so that means I’m going to have to find another one. The process starts over. I’m trying to figure out how to really get paid for writing because what I’m doing now isn’t working so well. I am writing a lot more recently, which I feel really good about,but the question of course is the next step. I’ll keep you updated on what happens.

Also, I’m moving out of Brooklyn for a few months. I’ll be subletting Zeke’s room in the village. I’m excited to be there and very happy about moving out of my current place. Things were OK before but not great and the past few days they’ve been getting really weird and I can’t handle it. Stories for another time. I still haven’t explored my current neighborhood, but hopefully I’ll move back to the area after August. Living in Brooklyn is pretty nice.

So this just became an update on my life. Sorry about that, I’m sure most you don’t care. Next post will be a good one, I promise.

Anything else? The Lakers won the NBA finals. I usually like watching finals celebrations, but I turned this one off pretty quick. It was just really boring. I said to Stacey at the time that it felt like a bunch of guys who were just acting how they thought someone was supposed to act when the one the finals. It seemed really weird. The next day I read a Bill Simmons Article about the game and he said the exact same things I had said the night before. I knew I was right.

A few Saturday’s ago, in accordance with what was an officially planned event (thanks to Grubard and his supposedly ironic facebooking), Stacey and I met Grubard and Julie (did you know they are dating on facebook?) at Tom’s Restaurant (not the Seinfeld one). It’s right next to my apartment (and therefore right next to Grubard’s too). It was a rainy rainy morning, but we stood in line outside anyway (I had heard such good things about this place, we decided it was worth it). The line moved pretty fast for what it was (and even went through half the restaurant inside, but even the wait was enjoyable, the reasons of which your about to find out) As we stood there, every three minutes (on average) an employee would walk up the line with a big tray of food – cookies, french toast sticks, sausages, strawberries and cream, and even mugs of coffee for everyone (cream and sugar if you wanted it). The owner (Gus) made himself known to everyone there, and was really funny and friendly; as if we’d been friends for years. And the people he really was friends with (of which there were quite a few) he treated even better, going as far as giving a little black boy a two minute bear hug and then a handful of money. And the food was good too (really really good).

Since moving to New York, I have embraced the brunch culture; although I unwittingly started this affair with brunch back in Boston, when on Friday mornings, tired, hung-over, and suffering after 11am math class, my roommate Greg and I would hop in my Subaru Legacy and go out for breakfast, each week trying to find and evaluate a new and unknown diner (The Tufts brunch scene was dominated by only two restaurants, where you would have to wait in enormous lines, with the people you didn’t want to talk to at the party at the night before, for the same food every week. These places were good, though). This weekly sojourn caught the attention of my other roommates and friends, and we would go venturing into Medford with increasing numbers, and even my current relationship with Stacey was, in a large part, founded on these mornings. Now, in New York, I have a neighborhood, a village, an island, five boroughs, a city to explore, two days a week. And for the months I’ve been here, and the months earlier spent visiting and crashing on floors, I hadn’t yet tried Tom’s, the fantastically reviewed and homey diner right next door to me. Quickly into our meal there and with great grinning mouths, Julie, Stacey, Grubard, and myself ecstatically claimed this was the best place we’d ever been to. Now with about a week to think and move past our original, excited hyperbole, the place has been properly digested in mind. It is great. But, are there any ways it could be better? Let’ see:

The Food:
It’s good. It’s great, really. But, it’s not fancy. Pretty standard breakfast fair – eggs, pancakes, waffles, french toast, etc. Not fancy is fine, but since I’m used to the east village, I generally see all sorts of fancy, specialized concoctions, and figured this was the NYC rule; so Tom’s could be seen as antiquated, un-hip. But, the food was good enough to cancel out any issues one might have had, and any frilly foods would have been completely wrong for this place, a rupturing and uneasy mixture. Furthermore, even though you had to choose from typical moring starches and proteins, Tom’s tweaked every dish, making the food unique and incredible. Dozens of different types of pancakes, even with corn or cranberries, chorizo with lemon instead of normal sausages, even three different types of butter, including cinnamon, strawberry, and mango.
The Food – I wouldn’t change anything.

The Waitstaff:
About four minutes after we ordered our food, Gus walked up behind Alex and Julie with four plates in his arms and amiably said “sorry about the long wait.” That should speak for itself.

But, if it doesn’t, more analysis: The real waiters were business like and swift. They did what they needed to, filled your coffee, and pretty much stayed out of the way. I like when waiters don’t interrupt too much, but if you don’t and want your waiter to be your thirty-minute friend, don’t worry, I think the attention and jokes one gets from Gus and his wife more than fill the empty void inside you that you need waitresses to occupy.

Any other ways the make the waitstaff better? Topless waitress: believe it or not, this idea has been tried and it failed. A donut store off the highway in Maine tried to mix sex and breakfast, but quickly went under. Health violations aside, making Tom’s anything but a family joint would ruin the aesthetic and consequently the enjoyment. For the same reasons I don’t really like eating at Hooters, lewdness and heart-warming food cannot connect pleasantly for me.

The Coffee:
Honestly, the coffee wasn’t great. It was watery and not very strong. But, it was cheap – less than a dollar – and I had a cup in my hand since I got into line, and the refills were free and prompt.

The Decor:
Like the food, the decor is an amalgamation of past virtues. A frantic amalgamation at that. The place is packed with old pictures and reviews, strung up with colored christmas lights, and perfumed by randomly set potted plants. Individual highlights from the menu are written on colored posters that polka-dot the walls. It’s a mess. It works. Unlike those family chain restaurants that cover their walls in old metal prints and antique furniture and sports equipment (I’ve always theorized that there is a catalog for those restaurants full of that random crap), the decorations seem genuine and sweet; a relic, like Gus himself.
Would I change the decor at all? More christmas lights? Naw, it’s good.

Can Tom’s be any better? Maybe lower the price by a dollar. That might be it.

The Hipster Grifter
Meet kari Ferrell: Criminally Hipster
Oh, Crazy Kari

The NY Observer wrote an article about the girl that sublet my apartment while I was on my road trip across the country. When I got back she moved into our storage closet and then we found out about all her shit right after the Super Bowl and kicked her out.

A couple little details from the Bergen Street part of the story:

-She was late on rent a couple of times and the first time she went to the landlord instead of my roommate on the lease. That caused problems.
-She skipped out on a cab at 4 in the morning and the cabby buzzed every apartment in the building looking for her. She got on the intercom at one point and told him that “no one had ordered a cab.”
-She skipped out on a Thai food bill and the delivery boy came looking for her about five times. We now get a deal there though. Thanks Jimmy!
-One night my phone was dead and I got home at 3 in the morning. She’d called and when I didn’t answer assumed I wasn’t coming home and so I found her and her boyfriend Bobby sleeping in my bed.

She was really nice and fun and all sorts of shit, but she’s crazy. What’re you gonna do? We called the SLCPD and they told us to get rid of her and then we called the NYPD and they were like, “Call us when she kills somebody.” The system (doesn’t) work!

Two fried chicken restaurants in New York, one in Harlem, one in Brownsville, Brooklyn, renamed their stores recently after the newly elected 44th president. And, as you might expect, there was immediate backlash against both Obama Fried Chickens. The reason, of course, relates the old stereotype that African-Americans unreasonably over-enjoy fried chicken, and eat it more than any other ethnic group. By naming their eateries after the first black president, protesters believe that these restaurants are making an unfair and racist connection, and are calling the owners of the stores, the employees, and the chicken racists and perpetrators of racial insensitivity. The owners of both restaurants decided to change the name, then decided to stick with the President’s surname, and decided to change it again, and then to keep it, and so on.

Unfortunately, what I see these protests, not the names themselves, accomplishing is bringing that particular racial stereotype to light. What I mean by that is that if it weren’t for the public outcry, the media attention, etc, these restaurants could go on being fried chicken restaurants named after a so far beloved US President.

To further explain, this naming and it’s subsequent controversy parallels the US Governments covering of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica in 2003. When Colon Powell appeared before the UN in 2003 to deliver a speech about why America must go to war with Iraq, government officials covered the tapestry reproduction of Picasso’s famous painting witch hangs in the UN’s main hall with a blue sheet. “Guernica is a mural, 11 feet 6 inches high and 25 feet 8 inches wide, which commemorates the aerial bombardment—and obliteration—of the ancient Basque town of 5,000 inhabitants by German and Italian squadrons on April 26, 1937,” and is a general anti-war statement.

The veiling of the painting was done so as not to remind the members of the UN of the travesties and horrors of war. What it did instead, as Slavoj Zizek explains in his book How to Read Lacan, was the opposite. By covering the tapestry, which always hangs in that spot, the newly created lack actually brought attention to what was under the sheet. Of course, we can’t know if those present wouldn’t have looked up above Powell, seen the screaming black and white horse, and thought, “my god, we can’t go to war,” but what we can know is that by hiding it, the new blankness did call attention to what was normally behind the curtain, reminding everyone that yes, Guernica is there, and yes, it shows women dying from falling bombs. From this action, a presence is created from the void; something from nothing (which I could go on and on about, as some of you know). Afterward, anti-war demonstrators used Picasso’s image in demonstrations against the Iraq war. Do you think they would have used it if the image hadn’t been covered up? I don’t.

Do we see a similar situation in the protests against the Obama’s Chicken Shack? It’s more of a stretch, for sure, but I think the reasoning still applies. Through the protests and news reports all that’s accomplished is a metaphorical waving of a banner reading “Black People Love Fried Chicken!” If you didn’t know this was a stereotype, you do now. So, while we’re at it let’s rename Brownsville, Brooklyn, home of Obama Fried Chicken. That’s probably a racist name too, right? Does writing this make me a racist? Probably.

(totally random side note: Spell check wants to change Guernica to Copernican)

After living in my apartment for three months, today my roommate’s cat Ziggy finally got the courage to come into my room. Ziggy and I are friends. He likes how I scratch him. But, normally, Ziggy hangs out in the kitchen and living room, which is fine with me. Sometimes, when I come home and no ones around, I catch him prowling around my door, and when I make my self known, he jumps and sprints down the hall.

But today, as I was eating in my room, watching 30 rock on my computer, I hear loud mewing and see a black and white paw sticking under my door. This is a surprise, but Ziggy’s pretty cool. I open the door for him, tell him to come on in. It takes him a minute, but he ventures in, we hang out.

About two minutes later, Ziggy the cat walks over to a box I use for recycling paper and jumps in. Cats being cats, I think to myself. Adorable… Until I hear the sound of a stream of liquid. Ziggy urinated in my paper box. I’m not happy.

I immediately take the box to the garbage and throw it out. I guess he thought it was a litter-box.

I get back upstairs, do my dishes, come back into my room, and find Ziggy sitting on my bed, looking at me funny. I shoo him off (I hate animal hair on my stuff, and I’m kind of mad at him already) and get back to the nothing I was doing before. But, I take a closer look, and now realize Ziggy has pissed on my bed! And I just changed the sheets last night, they were brand new!

So now I’m angry, and also wondering why this cat thinks it’s cool to do this. Is my room so disgusting that animals think it’s ok to deficate in it? And now that cat is standing outside my door crying to come in. Never again cat! My room is not a toilet!