Wednesday, March 3

answer me why?

morning commutes into the City can be annoying, tiring, aggravating, angering, etc. For instance, yesterday i got onto the smelliest E train at 42nd Street. i mean, i've been in smelly cars before: sometimes it's pungent food or (usually) the noxious smell of pee. This time though, the smell was reedonkulous. it was a very smack-you-in-the-face body odor and it was unbearable. when riding on NYC subway cars, you can usually tell the NYers from the non because they have stoic faces in the face of the unusual. in the face of panhandlers, kids peddling candy, fights breaking out, NYers keep completely straight faces as if nothing happened. however, on this particular day, about 80% of the car had their noses buried into their jacket collars or scarves; and about 25% of the people were having physical reactions to the odor. it was so offensive that even when i stepped off the train and got to work i still had the feeling of being dirty, as if the smell had somehow attached itself to me like a thin layer on top of my skin. ::shiver:: even now, the memory haunts me...

Sometimes, on those rare occasions, the commute can also be entertaining. for instance, a few days ago i had missed my initial bus to work and was waiting for the next one. my bus stop is right outside of a 7-Eleven and is a high traffic area for kids on their way to the middle and high school. i also happened to be wearing jeans to work that day. as i waited, a yellow school bus stopped in front of me and opened it's doors. i was confused for a moment until i realized: the driver thought i was a student waiting for the school bus. not bad for a 27 year old i guess. or is it?


i've recently been reading the book Eating a Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman. i had NO IDEA what the book was about when i picked it up at the library. i just thought the cover was interesting and then i read the inside jacket and my interest was piqued enough to at least check the book out from the library. i figured if it sucked i'd just stop reading it.


the 1st chapter entitled "Something Instead of Nothing", asking the question "why do people feel the need to answer questions?" was mildly interesting. there was one part that i found particularly interesting:
"I'm not sure that we aren't seeing the emergence of
a society in which almost everyone who isn't famous
considers themselves cruelly and unfairly unheard.
As though being famous, and the subject of wide attention,
is considered to be a fulfilled human being's natural
state-and so, as a corollary, the cruelly unheard millions
are perpetually primed and fired up to answer any and
all questions in order to redress this awful imbalance"
-quote from Chris Heath in Eating the Dinosaur
this concept feels true. look at this blog for instance, and all the millions of other blogs out there. everyone's just spilling over to share their opinions, their ideas, their voice. hence the appeal of appearing on reality television.


i had no idea when i started to read it, that the book is a collection of essays. which was a pleasant surprise because i don't know if i could a read an entire book about interviewing and why people answer questions. i haven't finished the book yet (i'm currently on the chapter about ABBA) but i heartily recommend it. the topics are entertaining and completely relatable. they're relatable because they feel true. his topics have a very Murphy's-Law-feel to them and often they're concepts you've discussed yourself with friends or had fleetingly thought about at one time or another.


my favorite essay is "Tomorrow Rarely Knows" which discusses time travel. it touches upon every concept you've ever discussed or thought about time travel and then explores it a little more. but that's not why i like it. for me personally, was extremely relatable. at one point, Klosterman talks about having the fantasy of reliving his entire life while still possessing his present-day mind. and i have that fantasy ALL THE TIME. okay, all the time is exaggerating it a little. but i do think about it on more than one occassion. it's just such an appealing idea to me but i never delved into exactly why, aside from the obvious. but Klosterman provided a motivation that, while not a great revelation about me, still seems pretty spot on:
"I used to have a fantasy about reliving my entire
life with my present-day mind...I imagine the bizarre
things I would have said to teachers in junior high.
I think about women I would have pursued and stories I
could have written better and about how interesting it
would have been to be a genius four-year-old. At its
nucleus, this fantasy is about never having to
learn anything. The defining line from Frank Herbert's
Dune argues that the mystery of life 'is not a question
to be answered but a reality to be experienced.' My
fantasy offers the opposite. Nothing would be
experienced. Nothing would feel new or unknown or
jarring. It's a fantasy for people who want to solve
life's mysteries without having to do the work...

The desire to travel through time is electrifying and
rational, but it's a desire of weakness... People who
want to travel through time are both (a)unhappy
and (b) unwilling to compromise anything about who
they are. They would rather change every element of
society except themselves...

It takes a flexible mind to imagine how time travel
might work, but only an inflexible spirit would
actually want to do it. It's the desire of the depressed
and lazy."-excerpt from Eating the Dinosaur
...and cue the choir of angels and the light bulb suddenly lighting up above my head. while i've had the fantasy plenty of times, it's Klosterman that revealed why. hmm, i don't feel depressed, but lazy? spot on. i admit it, i have an i-wish-everything-would-just-fall-into-place attitude about life most of the time. kudos to you for revealing my inner psyche Chuck Klosterman!

Monday, March 1

hangovers need starch

there's always something daunting about going into a new place for the first time. there's something even more daunting about doing it during midtown lunch. the hustle-and-bustle of a midtown lunch spot can be intimidating when you're the newbie. if you don't understand the ordering methodology or dawdle too long about what to order from the menu, you inevitably feel the death glares from all the regulars standing behind you as well as from the person standing behind the counter taking your order.

::shiver:: NYC can be a harsh place when it comes to food. luckily for me, i tried El Papasito on the day the snow storm started, so no one was really venturing outside to get food.

i was slightly hungover from the previous night out at Go. i'd planned to meet Kiddo there for drinks and then head over to meet She and Egg for dinner at Klong. however, as always in the legal profession, work caused me to change my plans. i ended up being 30 mins late (not counting that at the last minute i rescheduled for another 30 mins, so in total it was an hour) but luckily for me Kiddo was also running late, not to mention Egg was over an hour late after that (but he works at a big-time law firm so he's forgiven because we expect that). needless to say, by the time i got to Go i was in dire need of a drink. Egg and i have decided we're going to give Go a shot as our new go-to spot (no pun intended, honestly). they have a great drink deal of sake and 16 oz. beer for only $6.50. the price has risen significantly tho since the 1st time i was there (which was probably a year ago). the drink deal used to be $5.00. if Go keeps raising it's price i'll have to stop going (again, no pun intended).

by the time Egg and She showed up, i was 2 orders into the drink deal. we decided to forego Klong (although i will go one day-i promise you that. who can resist delicious affordable Thai food and $16 bottles of wine?) and just eat at Go. being economically aware that i wanted to spend most of my money on drinks, i only ordered 2 items: a yellowtail and scallion roll ($5) and deep-fried tomato wrapped in bacon on mashed potatoes ($5). O-M-G. completely unhealthy but totally amazing. there's only 2 pieces per serving but it is so good. the outside's all crispy bacon and then the inside's the soft tomato, which is also hot. YUMMY. because it was so good i offered the other serving to Egg to try and in exchange he offered me 1 of his salmon skin rolls. so not an equal trade. the salmon skin roll was salty, which i guess is good when paired with beer, but definitely not the equivalent of my deep-fried-bacon-tomato-yumminess. it's the one that got away... ::forlorn::

afterwards we headed over to Spot Dessert Bar because i've been reading about this place for a while and it was conveniently located almost directly across the street. i kept going on about how the chef for Spot is very well-known for his desserts but i couldn't remember his name and just kept randomly spewing out famous chef names, and still getting them wrong. but now i know: Pichet Ong. rolling into Spot at around 11ish doesn't bode well for them having everything on the menu. by the time we got there they were sold out of a few things, but we made do. compared to the meal and drinks we had at Go, Spot doesn't seem as good a deal. things on the menu ranged from $4-8, but since they only serve dessert, it does seem a bit pricey.

She ended up ordering the Vanilla Almond Coconut cupcake with a side of Coconut Sorbet. together they had a coconut-y flavor, but i thought the cupcake just tasted like out-of-the-box vanilla cupcake. and it was smaller than i expected, but that may just be because NY creates this assumption of a ginormous cupcake so when you get one that's regular-sized you're always underwhelmed. Kiddo ordered a Ginger Oatmeal Raisin Cookie which was bigger than expected and pretty delicious with a strong ginger kick. i ordered something like a Chocolate Banana Mouse-Pudding thing (i can't remember exactly what is was and it's not on the menu on-line. i DO know i did not order anything that had poached honey pear. or at least i'm pretty sure it didn't. and i distinctly remember bananas being there. but then again, i was drunk). either way, i thought my dessert, whatever it was, was just ok. it also ended up being the most expensive out of everything we ordered, maxing out at $8.00. Egg ordered the Thai Coffee Float and specially requested they add boba to it, which, after checking, they were willing to do for an additional 75 cents. Egg referred to the concoction as "perfection".

the next day, i woke up and found myself trudging to work as the snow storm officially arrived in NY. not fun. on top of that, a sake+beer headache started to creep up on me as the day progressed so i decided i needed to eat a hearty lunch with lots of starch/carbs to counteract the way i was feeling. i was gonna hit the 53rd Street Halal Cart since it's right across the street from my office but my co-worker suggested El Papasito instead. i was enticed by the concept of a $6 lunch special and was convinced after i read about the place on Midtown Lunch's site. i ordered the Stewed Beef on Rice and Beans which is served with a side of bread. i could only eat half of it before i started feeling sleepy from such a heavy lunch. the beef was good, not super tender, but better than most. and the rice and beans were also yummy. it's a good deal for $6 but i wouldn't call it the best food ever. but that might just be because i was feeling all crappy from my hangover.