One New York Life

I complain about Manhattan a lot to anyone who will listen. It’s kind of dirty, it’s over-expensive, I have to ride a subway to work every morning with roughly 500 other people in my car, I can’t have a car, groceries are overpriced, and 1,000 other things. The problem is — every once in a while Manhattan drops a ridiculous night that can only happen in a city where bars are open until 4 am, Late Night Happy Hour exists and happens from 12am to 3am, around every corner is a neighborhood bar you’ve never been to, no one ever has to drive, and a group can turn swapping two favorite bars in to a night out. The last time this happened was a friend’s bachelor party that began with a Mets game and ended yelling curses at Sean William Scott and his entourage (true story). It never happens when you’re expecting it.

Two of PLR*’s co-workers moved in to a new apartment on Wall Street. This lovely 500-square foot studio/office apartment comes in for the bargain price of $2600/month. This is being shared by two guys… see above for the list of things that really suck. The evening began as a house-warming party. As it’s Manhattan, the housewarming party began promptly at 10pm. The supposedly low-key evening featured bottles of wine, cases of Coors Light, and bottles of sangria. By midnight, it had started to border on ugly. By 12:05 someone had uttered the words no-one really needed to hear.

“We’re going out.”

Now, keep in mind. I’m not a fancy guy. I travel like a homeless person and I don’t generally spend my free time in club clothes. When PLR’s group decide to go out, it’s generally to a place where they can shake their collective asses. My ass does not shake. I know my limits. Ass-shaking is well beyond those limits. Regardless, the group was going to a club near Irving Place which, fortunately, is pretty close to Pete’s Tavern. I told the group where I would be and took the non-club people with me. We giggled at the club folks’ desire to wait in line to be allowed to drink and went to get some cocktails.

Should the night have ended after a few rounds at Pete’s and a cab ride home, we wouldn’t be here right now. After waiting in line for far too long, the 2nd group met back up with us for a few rounds. This was followed by a sentence which I don’t think I’d ever heard uttered after 2 am in the history of ever.

“Let’s go do Kareoke.”

Train-wreck potential just went off the charts.

We wind up in 3 cabs going to a bar called 2nd on 2nd. Now, I’ve never been to a serious kareoke bar. My kareoke experience has been “Kareoke Night” at a bar near my old college, bowling alley kareoke night, and my 30th birthday party. I have never been to a bar whose raison d’etre is kareoke. Not only that, but one of PLR’s co-workers IS A REGULAR THERE. To the point where he was known by the bartenders and the kareoke DJ.

Have you ever had a moment where you were really drunk, but something so bizarre happens that your brain actually forgets it’s drunk and you’re suddenly stone cold sober? It’s happened to me three times in my life. This was one of those times. I walked in to this place — this glorious, glorious place — and walked in to see the whitest person I’ve ever seen terribly rapping to a song I didn’t know. This was followed by a guy trying to pull off Celine. It was amazing. On the list of “this isn’t actually happening, I’m really in a movie right now” moments, this ranked up there white trash fight at Atlantis. I could do nothing but sit in awe of the awesome.

We eventually closed this bar, which is conveniently placed across the street from a diner. At 4:15 am, when your party sees a diner, it goes to the diner. There is not a debate… it just happens. Apparently, your body knocking all alcohol out of your system in 8 seconds takes a lot of energy, because I ate at an unprecedented level. I ordered like food was free. I expressed my disdain for the lack of bacon.

We walked out of the diner and it was light out. PLR and I got home at 5:34 AM.

Nights that you plan somehow never turn out to be epic. I’m not sure why that is. Nights that just happen spontaneously always turn out to be the most fun. Nights like this are what keep me from thinking I’m wasting my time. This night doesn’t happen in Albany. It sure doesn’t happen in Mechanicville.

At some point, I’m actually going to have to admit that I kinda like it here.

—–

* – Ms. L has filed a protest at being called Ms. L, so she will henceforth be referred to as PLR. Should you see her in real life, this is now her nickname. You should refer to her only as that. No longer by her first name. She wants to call her own nickname, she’s stuck with it

Ms. L and I had no intention of going to this but we wound up with free tickets. We’ll pretty much do anything for free which is why Free NYC and My Open Bar both rule.

I will admit to being a bit tentative on about this show. These shows using a bunch of songs to tell a story have a history of not being what I expected. When we went to see Movin’ Out a few years ago I was expecting a story about growing up in Jersey, getting shipped to Vietnam, coming home and getting high all the time, and eventual redemption. I got that — but it was a ballet. I was not expecting a ballet.

So, I was pleasantly surprised to find this wasn’t a ballet but more in line with what I was expecting Movin’ Out to be. It follows the history of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons from their inception in Jersey through almost the modern day using songs to highlight different parts of their lives. Frankie Valli, surprisingly, is almost a supporting actor in the whole thing. Tommy DeVito is really the lead of the whole thing and narrates it… sometimes from the sidelines and sometimes Zack Morris Style in the middle of the scene .

The Good

• The cast we saw was excellent. Our Tommy DeVito was part of the original cast and hadn’t left yet (he has since left as of 9/28/2008, which should tell you how long this post has been sitting in the “draft” section with bullet-point notes). The Frankie Valli was fantastic. I was never in to Four Seasons songs because I’m not in to falsettos, but the guy we had hit every note and could have been Frankie Valli.
• There was more comedy then I was expecting, including a whole bit with Joe Pesci. Pesci claims to have been present at the formation of the Four Seasons and appears as a character in the play. There’s a bit where Tommy deadpans to the crowd “Joe Pesci — yeah, ‘dat one” and the character enters talking in a Joe Pesci voice. It’s funny.
• For me, Broadway stuff is enhanced when you know the music. In this one, I could know the music without going out and buying a cast recording without knowing whether or not I’d like it. I already knew all the music and dug a lot of it. It should be noted that not ALL the songs are Four Season’s songs — just most. My Boyfriend’s Back, for example, makes an appearance. Almost all of them are songs you pretty much know whether you want to or not.

The Bad

• While I’m happy the dancing in the show was at a minimum (non-existent really) they could have given the guys a couple more moves while standing behind the microphone. They have a specific “move” that they did during every song and it became funny more than anything else.
• The crowd. I know, I know… Manhattan snobbery. I get that this show is well-supported by tourists and the like, but at one point a 45-year-old woman was screeching and helicoptering her coat over her head like a Terrible Towel. Maybe I don’t get it, but I didn’t freak out when I went to see a Pearl Jam cover band.

The Rest

Not the best show (Wicked) I saw in 2008, but a perfectly acceptable way to spend an evening and not be completely bored. My grandmother saw it in Vegas and loved it, so if you’re stuck for a Christmas gift and your grandmother’s visiting New York, go for it. I probably wouldn’t go again or recommend it as the one show you need to see if you’re in New York — but if the touring cast comes to a town near you and you want to spend a nice (Oh What A?) night with dinner and a show, go for it.

Funny story about this show. Ms. L’s birthday is in November. Last November, I gave her a “voucher” saying I would buy tickets for this show on the day of her choosing as her birthday present. I figured this would work out well because we were about to hit the holidays (her birthday’s 11/7) which is quickly followed by tax season. I didn’t want to buy tickets six months out because I hate doing that.

To make a long story short — sometime in October, they announced the show would be closing on January 18th, 2009 and I realized that we’d never gone and her new birthday was about to come up. So, while I saved money on last year’s birthday, I wound up buying double birthday this year. I did my job as a man and picked a day and said “this is the day we’re going” and, of course, I bought the tickets on the night of her company Christmas party. It’s never easy.

A quick plot summary — kids hit puberty in late 19th-century Germany.

The Good

• Some of the songs are really good. The problem is — it’s only some. It’s written by a more modern musician and it shows. There’s no real overarching theme that threads through the show to tie parts together. The musical listens like an album. That’s fine, but it listens like an album with a few really good singles (Mama Who Bore Me, My Junk, Totally F*cked, Those You’ve Known) with a lot of fluff and filler. There was nothing to grab on to and take from the show. When you leave Phantom of the Opera, you remember the overture.
• There were naked boobs! I wasn’t planning on it, but it was a pleasant surprise.
• It was very funny. If I went in to it expecting a comedy, I would have been very happy. They do the awkward teenagers discovering their bodies thing very well. The song My Junk is set around the various students in awkward situations — one has a stacked piano teacher he’s drooling over, one gay student awkwardly propositioning a confused fellow student, and the whole scene is set around a guy at center stage looking at an erotic postcard with a sheet over him while — uh — moving to the rhythm. It works out tremendously (intentionally) funny.
• The stage layout was tremendously unique. There were two or three dozen seats actually ON the stage at stage right and stage left. The supporting chorus singers sat in the crowd as students and occasionally would pop up when the time was right. I thought it was going to be distracting when I initially saw it but it worked.

The Bad

• All the show’s adults are played by one man and one woman. I understand why — the adults are really only small supporting characters — but I found myself occasionally confused about which person they were supposed to be at any given time. That isn’t to say the actors weren’t good, it’s just that there were times where they could have legitimately speaking as more than one person.
• I really didn’t like our Moritz. I don’t know if this is the choreography, but the actor wanted to be a rock-star a little too badly. He held the microphone on the stand with the base of the microphone to the side like Steven Tyler and seemed over-the-top even for Broadway. It just didn’t work for me. In his defense, I didn’t like the entire Moritz storyline which could have tainted him for me. By the way,
• I really didn’t like the entire Moritz storyline. The character kills himself because he fails out of school but the whole failing-out is stupidly arranged and badly told. He spends half the first act desperately freaking out about passing his mid-terms. He passes but the headmaster of the school decides that Moritz shouldn’t be promoted so they arrange for him to fail his final exams. They give no real explanation for this short of “everyone can not be promoted.” Uh, why? Especially since the lead character, Melchior, is explained as the rebellious and morose student hated by the headmaster. They let him go but conspire to expel Moritz whose only flaw seems that he’s jumpy and overly nervous? While he’s in the worst spot of his life, he runs across his old friend Ilse and they talk about old times and she invites him over for some “catching up” and companionship. He says no and then kills himself. But as he’s killing himself he’s talking about how he doesn’t really want to kill himself and should go see Ilse. But… dude… she just left and said she wanted to hang out?
• Then after the suicide, the story out of nowhere cuts to the girls talking about their eventual weddings as they tease each other about the boys in town. Then one girl suddenly goes in to a song about getting molested by her dad. Like — I understand that it happens, I understand that it probably happened more often per capita in the 1800s, but the song was totally out of place. Like, up to this point they’re delivering masturbation jokes and talking about vagina essays and erotic postcards. Then, surprise, we’re talking about a girl getting abused mentally, physically, and sexually by her father. The whole sequence is out of place and doesn’t fit with the rest of the story.
• We got a “this show is two years old and is closing in a month” cast. These guys were getting their Broadway feet wet. I’m not saying they were bad, but they didn’t blow my shoes off like the Les Miserables cast.
• The songs just weren’t solid top to bottom. While there were a couple of very fun standouts, the rest got lost in the shuffle. There’s something to be said that I walked out of theater humming the “There’s only us/There’s only this” tune from Rent. There was just nothing that popped out of this show to make me remember it.

The Rest

The musical is a pared down version of a play. Maybe the play describes some of the events with more detail. I found myself confused by the timeline and found a lot of the story threads rushed together and disjointed. The lead storyline was fine. Melchior and Wendla meet, make out, get pregnant, get separated, and one dies. I can appreciate that. I can even appreciate some of the side storylines, but there was no big tie-in at the end that brought it all together. Combine that with there wasn’t even a really a musical theme to tie the songs together and it felt more like listening to a concept album with live videos than a musical with a story.

They tried to sell this to New York as a Rent for the new generation. It could be like Rent if you took out Jonathan Larson’s ability to take the actual structure of a musical and modernize it with recurring themes and a storyline that all made sense at the end. Duncan Sheik (yes, the Barely Breathing guy) seemed like he took the play and wrote a soundtrack.

In retrospect, I find it baffling this won Tony Awards and took Best Musical in 2006. Looking at the nominees, I realize it wasn’t exactly a heavyweight Avenue Q vs. Wicked fight, but jeez.

I’m glad I got to see it before it closed, but it doesn’t get the Golden TDL Recommendation or anything.

Walking from my office to the subway today, I started to overhearing a cell phone conversation going on behind me. The guy was somewhere in his early twenties and on the phone with his dad. His dad was obviously giving him crap about having not called in while which created the following exchange.

Kid (petulantly): Well, yeah I’ve just been busy.
*pause*
Well, my schedule’s hectic, there’s a ton to do.
*pause*
(defensively) Well, not everyone’s a double major in art school.

If the father did not respond with something along the lines of: “Yeah, some people go to actual schools to get real jobs” I’m supremely disappointed.

After about a 4.5 year wait, Ms. L and I finally bit the bullet and spent the money to go see Wicked. In much the same way that everyone who liked movies said I had to see The Dark Knight, everyone who’s seen Wicked has been universal in their praise. General consesus has had it as the best show anyone’s ever seen on Broadway. For myself, I caught one song on XM’s Broadway station in 2003 and a couple more in 2004. When we moved to New York, this was one of things we wanted to do. Unfortunately, tickets are about a month wait and never on discount lists. Her aunt and uncle coming in to the city and wanting to see it finally gave us the motivation to plan something two months in to the futue.

Worth every penny.

There really isn’t much I can say about the show that hasn’t been analyzed and re-analyzed. I will say that the book is (unsurprsingly) different than the show. From what I’ve read about the book, it’s a bit dark and complicated. The stage show seemed much less interested in anything other than getting these two characters together and exploring their relationship and the definition of good and evil as quickly possible. At the core of it, really, is “are people evil because they’re evil or are people evil because someone tells you they’re evil?” Elphaba (and the audience) thinks what she’s doing is the right thing to do. The Wizard does not. The audience travels with this character who is doing the right thing but whom the establishment has framed as evil — or wicked.

The one point that I would make about this show is that, when it came out, critics and reviewers were quick to peg it as a study of racism first surrounded by other things. I didn’t think it’s really a study on racism. It’s more about outcast-ism. Elphaba is a symbol for any kid picked on in school for any reason — be it because he’s the fat kid, the kid with glasses, the poor kid, the black kid, the white kid, or the kid with braces. There is a particular moment in the middle of the first act where the “popular” kids set her up by convincing her that the black, pointy hat that becomes her trademark is cool and in style so she shows up at a dance wearing it and everyone points and laughs at her. She deals with it. The fact that there are a lot of people who identify with that particular moment is what makes Elphaba one of the more wildly popular and most identifiable characters on Broadway. More people identify with this moment than could ever identify with racism because they’ve either been there or know someone who’s been there. You can’t help but root for her because she gets what’s going on in the establishment and why it’s wrong. Any person who never spent a second as part of the “In Crowd” knows that feeling.

While I had a few problems with the show — like the random potion bottle that Elphaba’s mother drinks in the No One Mourns The Wicked opening and appears again at various times it’s never quite explained — the rest of the show is so good that you can ignore the things that were obviously cut for time. The story they put together is tight and tells what it needs to.

Also, I give major points to the Broadway people for putting out a cast recording that didn’t give away much of the show. Ms. L got the Wicked cast recording in 2004 and we’ve probably collectively listened to it a thousand times and neither of us saw most of the plot turns coming. And, while I fully understand the whole new world of jokes this opens me up to the folks who have already penalized me countless Man Points for the other non-manly things, it’s one of the better CDs I have. The two girls on the cast recording (Idina Menzel – Maureen from Rent and Kristen Chenoweth – Olive Snook on Pushing Daisies) are really, really good. What can I say — sometimes I get bored with rock or pop and want harmony and chicks who can sing. It’s one of the reason I spent a good six weeks obsessed with the Les Miserables cast recording.

While the story does retcon a lot of the Wizard Of Oz movie (including things going on in other parts of the witch’s castle when Dorothy and her friends are trapped, why she melts when water is thrown on her, why she lights the Scarecrow on fire) and does its best to crack jokes about the movie (“It’s a pair of shoes — GET OVER IT!!”) it’s well worth the time. If you’re expecting a straight book to stage adaptation, you’d be disappointed (or not if you thought the book’s ending was too depressing). I’m glad I finally saw it, I’d recommend it to anyone, and I really hope that the movie adaptation with Menzel and Chenoweth comes to fruition

It’s odd how backlogged this thing has gotten with my random vacations and days off and such. I made a note to write down some thoughts on Mike and the Mad Dog when I first heard about the break-up a few weeks back. While it’s extremely old news now, I really want to start blowing through the 12 columns I have backlogged here.

I listened to Mike and Chris for the first time ever on YES in 2003. They were just about the only thing on in the afternoon when I used to go to the gym on my lunch hour. For whatever stupid reason, I remember the conversation. They were talking about the NFL and how it’s likely they’d move to some sort of subscription service within the next ten years. Mike’s stance was the NFL had no reason to offer their games to people for free if they could make more by offering them for subscription. Chris said that they had the was fan-unfriendly and they should do what’s right. This was a bit before the NFL had become the fan-unfriendly juggernaut it is today.

I didn’t like them much at first but got in to it more the more I listened. When I first moved to New York and had to work at home for the best six months of my life, I started listening every day. After I had to go back to the office, I started listening on wfan.com until copier corporation X bought my company and decided we weren’t mature enough to balance streaming radio with our workday. It was (and I guess still is) still the only sports’ talk radio show I like.

The best reason I can come up with is because, while they are a little overbearing at times, they have something that other talk radio shows they don’t have. All talk radio hosts are pretentious to a certain degree. These guys are certainly no different — but their pretentiousness is different. If I had to guess, it’s a function of the fact that they’ve been around and been number one for so long that their show is essentially the same as it was in the 1990s. Their show existed long before ESPN and Fox decided to get in to radio and long before everyone decided the recipe to success was to be Opie and Anthony with some sports talk thrown in. They don’t have the Boomer Esiason/Mike Golic “you’ve never played so you don’t know as much as me” attitude.

I’ll be the first to say that their schtick can get old after a while. I’ll also be the first to say that if you aren’t a baseball fan the show’s appeal would disappear quickly. But the multitude of haters out there who say they were hacks or who suggest they suck are stupid. You don’t stay on top of the radio business in the New York market if you’re terrible. Without the success of these guys your favorite sports talk radio show wouldn’t exist. These two guys did remotes from the Super Bowl when they were the only guys there.

I will say that I think the right guy got the chance to go national. Dog’s antagonizing schtick has a better chance to catch on nationwide than Mike’s. Dog also has broader interests. Tennis, golf — all things that will give him a better chance to connect with a different audience. Mike, on the other hand, is a fan of New York sports and has been a Yankee fan all his life. I don’t think he much cares what goes on outside the five boroughs. It’s arm-twisting to even get him to talk about the Bills or Nets.

That said, Mad Dog Radio will be the first show simulcast on both XM and Sirius — so I at least look forward to give it a shot.

Since I moved to Manhattan I’ve been sort of a reverse food snob. That is: I wouldn’t shop at stores like Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s because I figured that it was for ridiculously stupid organic snobs who wanted to spend $12 on a head of lettuce. You know what else cleans a head of lettuce? Fuggin washing it.

Of course, that’s left Ms. L and I to shop at one of the other super market chains in NYC. Removing the sketchy discount places and overinflated bodegas where you’re just as likely to find a decent six-pack of beer as a can of Chef Boyardee that’s actually PAST the expiration date — that left two places.

In this corner, there’s Gristede’s (pronounced Gris-TEE-dee’s or, for purposes of this piece, Nasty’s). Nasty’s has been “feeding New Yorkers for over 100 years.” If you take a look at This handy map and take a gander in the bottom left-hand corner where there are two stores within two blocks of each other, my apartment is handily located smack in the middle of those two locations. These, by default, have become our primary super market. When we need a $5 gallon of milk or a $6.50 box of Cheerios… Nasty’s is the place to go. Nasty’s also has the irritating habit of carrying different things between the two stores. Nasty’s North has the better $12.99 per 6-pack beer selection, better produce selection, a bakery and deli section, and ground chicken. Nasty’s South has a better deli, less lines, and better meat.

In the other corner, there’s the Food Emporium, a Manhattan. The Food Emporium is much closer to what I’m used to calling a supermarket. There are two within reasonable distance from me. One is on the outer edge of walking distance (I say outer edge because I then have to carry the groceries home and honestly, kids, a gallon of milk gets heavy about halfway through a 20-minute walk) and the other is a subway ride away. The Emporium within walking distance has a great deli, good seafood, good produce, and a good selection of stuff. The Emporium in Union Square has the beer selection (which has slowly climbed in the last few months from the originally very reasonable $8.99/6-pack to the Nasty’s level $12.99/6-pack) and the prices in general have slowly climbed to be equal to Gristede’s.

As an obviously huge fan of local super markets, I continued to suffer through them rather than try something new. That’s how I keep it real, yo. Then something wacky happy. I stumbled upon the newest “how did it take this long for someone to do this” website at Beer Menus.com. The site’s goal is to get the beer list for all of Manhattan’s and Brooklyn’s bars and allow you to both find a bar and see the beer list or search for your favorite beer and find what bars around you serve it. Great idea. Immediately, I tried to search for Sixpoint which is by far my favorite the New York City microbrewery. When searching for Sixpoint, however, a hit came up for the Bowery’s incarnation of Whole Foods.

Re-he-heaallly?

It turns out the Bowery Whole Foods has an entire beer store with growler stations letting you buy half-gallons of various NYC brewed beers. On top of that, there’s an entire beer store surrounding the growler station that lets you buy beer at actual reasonable prices. The growlers are $7.99 and the sixers are $8.99. Since we were there, we did our week’s shopping and guess what? Cheaper than both Nasty’s and the Emporium and even threw its hat into competing with Fresh Direct.

So, thanks to beer, I’m a Whole Foods convert. Is there anything alcohol can’t do?

Nothing makes me more angry than the fact that my apartment doesn’t have actual windows. It has sliding glass door sized set into one wall starting at waist level. So, of course, the building supplies air-conditioners since there’s no earthly way any air conditioner would work in the window.

Saturday was 95-degrees and, wouldn’t you know, the A/C doesn’t work in this worthless apartment. No problem, call down to the super. The super doesn’t work weekends. Called him after work today. He leaves at 5. So, for those keeping track at home; the first three days of the first extended heat wave of the year have featured Tom with no A/C and windows that barely open.

For F*ck’s sake.

Two years ago, I made tentative bar-hopping plans coinciding with the New York City Marathon. The general idea was to start at the bottom of First Ave and work our way up the street until it started feeling a little too close to East Harlem, then work our way back down. For whatever reason, this fell through and I ended up staying in my apartment to watch football. Last year, we didn’t really even attempt plans.

This year, however, forces aligned properly. A friend of a friend (conveniently, the same one whose apartment I looked at, decided to throw a marathon party. His apartment overlooks First Ave, which means we had a great view of the runners from the third floor. He also had a fire escape and a refrigerator full of beer.

I headed out about 11:00 am to try and get there by noon. I figured that most of the normal, human runners would be passing by there about then. I got to his apartment about 12:15 pm (after having to let three 6 trains pass by the 59th street station because they were too packed to get on. The irony that, in the time it took me to take the subway from my apartment uptown, some runners had already finished 3/4ths of a marathon was not lost on me). If I was remotely athletic or cared about running, it might bother me. As it was, I got out to a packed First Avenue just as the bulk of the normal runners were coming through. After shoving through the crowd and reaching the blessed front door of the apartment, I went upstairs.

The host had a full spread of snacks and beers and his windows were wide open allowing easy access to the fire escape. This, my friends, was the way to watch the marathon. No crowd, no shoulder to shoulder, and only drunks that I wanted to associate with bumping into me. So, after having some bagels and cheese and such, I stepped out onto the fire escape and proceeded to shout encouragement to people who had their names on their shirts. This was incredibly more fun than it had any right to be. Just random name shouting followed by “WHOOOOOO!!!!” and “LEG IT OUT!”. I will say, if I was seventeen miles deep and was being told to “leg it out” or “dig for it” by someone with a mouthful of bagel with a double-fist of beer, I’d probably want to spit in their eye. As it was, it got progressively more fun to shout names and then try to figure out the correct ethnic pronunciations. Carrrrrrrrrrlos, Pedrrrrrrrrooooooooo, Helmut, Jedvic, Guuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuy, and Aaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnaaaaaaaaaaaa were amongst the favorites. This shortly devolved into random things the person was wearing if a name was not available… such “yeah, balloon tied to your back guy!” and “go, shameless promo for Dunkin Donuts dude!”.

There’s something to be said for cheering people on and not being forced to associate with the masses on the side of the street. I’ve decided that, if I ever do Times Square for New Year’s, this is how I’ll have to do it. I need a balcony, a constant source of alcohol and food, a bathroom, and a distinct separation line between me and everyone else. That’s the way to do it.

Of course, after this party, I’m even MORE disappointed that we couldn’t work out a sublet for this place. I’d have been excited to host this party for the next couple of years. On the bright side, I’ve checked something else off my “things to do in New York” list. Hopefully I’ll also be able to finish up “go to a Knicks game” and “go to a Rangers game”.

So I handed in my keys to the old place today. I’m officially moved. I still haven’t started receiving mail at the new place yet. I filed my change of address last week and, surprise surprise, it still actually takes 2 weeks to get a forwarded mail request done… even if you’re moving within the same zip code. The conversation went something like this.

Me: “I need to file a change of address.”
Guy: “Fill this form out. When do you want it to go into effect?”
Me: “Tomorrow.”
Guy: “OK, it will take about two weeks to process.”
Me: “But I’m moving down the street. I’m still in the same zip code.”
Guy: “Doesn’t matter.”
Me: “Of course it doesn’t.”

The move mostly went off without a hitch. The movers were late (for the second time running) but, in a twist that I didn’t see coming, they pushed for their tip before they actually moved anything (as opposed to the leg-breaking Russians who negotiated for their tip before they brought the stuff up from the truck… this seemed much more effective). Y’see, we used a company called Flat Rate Movers, who are supposed to send someone to your apartment to “estimate” the flat rate. They do this by pieces of furniture and apparently by how much stuff can fit into their industrial sized boxes. Ms. L spoke with them and, since we have very little furniture following the incident, they gave her a quote. The quote assumed 1 box (and, when I say box, it’s huge… something like 10 by 15) of stuff. Of course, when the movers got there, they discovered that our stuff will need 3 boxes. So, after telling us they’d have to call the main office and figure out how much extra to charge and they weren’t sure if they could move everything and a lot of quick talking in Spanish which I didn’t understand (but assume it was some talk about baseball, stupid gringos, pretending to sound panicked, and discussing how much they could suck out of us) they came back with “we don’t have to call the company, we’ll take care if it if you want.” Which was code for: “how much extra will you float us to take everything now so you don’t have to go through the hassle?” Turns out $50/guy (3 guys) was enough… which was fine because we were planning on giving them $30/guy anyway… I love Mexicans.

New twist on the moving, each building wanted a $300 cash deposit from me, which meant I had to walk to the bank, withdraw $600, and walk home… on the streets of New York… with half a grand in my front pocket. I can think of roughly 150 things I would rather do than walk around with that much cash on me. Fortunately, I likely looked enough like a paranoid crack addict looking for a fix that I was certainly left alone lest I draw the attention of the NYPD.

After getting here, my goal on the first day (obviously) was to get the Internet and cable set up. Points for Manhattan… when you have actually 2 competing cable companies, none of this nonsense about waiting a week for a cable hookup to come. The cable guy was here when I got here. Wired up the cable and the Internet before the movers even showed up.

A day after we got here, Ms. L left for Orlando. She called it “Senior Staff training.” I called it “conveniently getting out of Dodge to skip out on all the unpacking.” I, of course, reminded her about the time she decided to start a fight with me just long enough to bail on helping me paint my townhouse. I asked her if it would be a running theme: having “work trips” whenever any sort of labor is required. She said no… I say when it comes time to paint this place that she’ll conveniently have that trip to India to meet her Team India Accountants.

However, it actually didn’t work out to be that bad. I basically got to spend a couple days setting up the apartment how I want it. I also discovered that I have significantly more floor space in this apartment than in the old one. Now, granted, I still don’t have a couch or anything, but I have gaping wall space where I can finally get some sort of DVD shelving.

So, Thursday night I got home from work and spent the night unpacking clothes. I can officially say this: gentlemen, you have not suffered until you’ve unpacked the girl’s clothes and tried to put them away. To set the stage: our old apartment had two small closets in the bedroom and a coffin sized closet near the front door. To this we added two four-drawer dressers and one two-drawer dresser. On top of that, we have four plastic bins.

Now, the new place has a walk in closet in the bedroom and a coat closet that’s about six feet wide. I take up, officially, one dresser and about 3 feet of the walk in closet. Stupidly, I assumed both dressers and the walk-in closet would be enough. After filling the dresser with just shirts… Just shirts!! I moved on to the closet. After filling the closet, both dressers, and all four bins, I then started on the laundry. As I was pulling clothes out of the dryer I had one thought:

Where the f*ck did these clothes fit in the old apartment? I was trying to figure out what dimensional portal I missed in the old apartment where these clothes were stored. After I finally finished the laundry I walked in to the living room and noticed four more black garbage bags, I could do nothing but stare. I think I looked like Brett Favre after a concussion. There couldn’t possibly be more clothes in them… yet somehow, there were. Is there a magic girl power that I don’t know about? Like… do Bags of Holding and Portable Holes actually exist and I missed a meeting? If so, I’d love to have one. I had the same moment yesterday with books. On our bookshelf in the old apartment, it was interspersed with books and random decorations. As I was putting the books up on the shelf this time I still have a good 50 books sitting on the floor and the shelf is completely full. Where did all this stuff fit?

It’s starting to wind down now… finally. Tomorrow I have to set the DVD player and video games up. Then, I get to finally get a couch and a bed and hopefully finally put the incident totally behind us. There is an hour long massage waiting for me somewhere when this air mattress finally dies a burning, horrible death.

Of course, I’m relatively certain I’ll have to move everything somewhere else when she gets home, but for now… Miller time.