recaps
In the past twelve or so days, I
- said a final goodbye to my old roommate and friend Brian, who recently made the move to LA. This goodbye consisted of going to dinner with a friend and then meeting Brian and some other friends at a bar, shitting at said bar, shitting again at the bar, then leaving the bar to go home so that I could poop and vomit and lay on my couch with a wastebasket next to me, as the pooping and vomiting zapped me of all strength and I needed to make sure I would make a mess on my couch. When I apologized to Brian the next day for my lameness the previous night, he said my goodbye was "exactly like [he] envisioned it." Pretty much.
- celebrated Christmas in typical Mulgrew family style (read: gambling and drinking until 4am) and tried to break the record for most kielbasa sandwiches consumed in under two hours (I only got to four, which is kinda sad). Best gift: cash, as always. Second best gift: a delay pedal for my guitar from my brother that records and plays back up to sixteen minutes of music. Goodbye productivity, hello tremendously bad guitar "compositions" with names like "Stars of My Heart" and "When I Sing, I Sing Songs Like These Love Songs (Which Stand Before You, Prostrate, Iridescent)" and "You Are Art/I Am You."
- spent a night at a random Holiday Inn Express along I-95 in a whirlpool room eating an "Oreo Explosion" sundae I got to go from the local Friendly’s. I don’t think this one requires additional explanation, but all three of these things – Holiday Inn Expresses, hotel rooms with whirlpools in them, and sundaes from Friendly’s – are vastly, vastly underrated. Sitting in that whirlpool and eating that sundae while Beck’s "Scarecrow" was playing on my iPod speakers…I mean, that was pretty much the high point of my life. Also, I think I just figured out why I’m single.
- spent a day and night in Boston, tooled around the city, got a haircut, ate at Abe & Louie’s steakhouse (which, aside from the top ten crab cake and maybe the best dessert I ever had – the special blueberry pie with vanilla ice cream – should really change its name to "Abe & Fooey’s", since that’s what you’ll be saying when you walk out of there, due to the downright embarrassing sides and ok steak), and spent five hours drinking scorpion bowls and watching karaoke at Hong Kong bar in Faneuil Hall. I miss those fucking scorpion bowls.
- spent two nights at a country club on the Cape celebrating the love and wedding of my dear friends Molly and Nevin. The wedding was awesome; perfect location on a sexy country club, good friends, good band, good food, good booze – really, that was how you throw a wedding. And I learned something: Since my family has no money, unless my bride or bride’s family has money (which I pray every night is the case, as "Lots of Family Money" is inching closer to getting put above "Working Eyes" on my list of traits in an ideal mate), I am probably getting married in someone’s yard. My mom is one of six kids, my dad is one of ten, and I have lots and lots of friends, so for me to even have a B- wedding, it’ll cost about $438,000. So I’m just getting married in a yard somewhere. Fuck it.
- spent ten hours in a car in the rain returning from the Cape. During this trip, I stopped at Friendly’s for a second Oreo Explosion sundae (this time I added marshmallow, which was arguably my best decision of 2007). Except for nearly falling asleep at the wheel several times, I did not mind the drive one bit.
- was so consumed by teeth pain for my entire vacation from the Hot Whopper I got almost three weeks ago, sleeping in two or three hours stretches at a time and being as zombie-like as I’ve ever been, that on New Year’s Eve I made an emergency visit to my former Philly dentist, the wonderful and talented Dr. Alten. I explained the Hot Whopper to him and how I’d been completely out of it since them, sucking down Orajel toothache powder like it was pixie sticks. He checked out my teeth, took some x-rays, and confirmed the worst: I’m a pussy. Actually, he didn’t say that, but rather that my teeth were fine and my pain was being caused by my sinuses. So to recap, I spent over two weeks barely sleeping and in a great deal of tooth and sinus pain, all because I didn’t use Afrin before a flight. I’m heading out to LA in a few weeks. You can pretty much guarantee that I’m getting a bottle of Afrin surgically attached to both hands.
- met my friends’ new baby, born 12/28, who officially has a cooler haircut than I do and could probably beat me up. Seriously. He’s got like a lil’ Euro mullet in the back, with a little bit of hair hanging over his ears, and these kind of Caesar-cut bangs. It’s amazing. And he laid there the whole time with his fists in the air, ready to fight (his father once nearly choked me to death, so the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree I guess). I’m so amazed by the whole "friends having babies" phenomenon that I’m speechless – I honestly don’t know what to say. It’s just…wow. If I think about it too much, I kinda want to escape to the Holiday Inn Express with a sundae.
- celebrated New Year’s Day with a lovely Mummers Parade. I thought the parade this year was excellent, even though the three hour delay threw me off quite a bit. And this was – by far – my most sober parade of recent memory, which I have no explanation for. I will have to work harder next year to get drunker.
- returned to New York City and came home to…(wait for it)…find my bathroom and kitchen covered in dried feces and dried toilet paper. For the fourth time in six months, my toilet exploded. Sweet. At least this time, they (my landlord or super or whomever) seemed to have "cleaned it up"; instead of coming home to find actual toilet and waste water lapping slowly into my living room, all the water was gone, hence the dried t.p. and poop. I dropped my luggage off, went to the Italian restaurant owned by my landlord below my apartment, and shortly a fine young Mexican or Mexican-type gentleman was in my apartment, "cleaning" the rest. I then spent two hours and went through an entire bottle of pine sol cleaning the place – exactly what I felt like doing when I got home for a not-very-relaxing vacation and badly hungover. I’m now contemplating suing my landlord. On the one hand, I’m pretty sure it’s not cool for a tenant to have Feces Kitchen & Bathroom Expo four times in six months, each time being reassured the problem has been fixed. On the other hand, if I take legal action against my landlord, I’m pretty sure he’s not going to let me re-up my lease this summer. And that means one thing: Brooklyn. There’s no way I’m finding a two bedroom apartment in Manhattan – downtown Manhattan – for under $2000 a month, which is what I have now. So do I stick it to these goddamn Eyetals for making live in a shit hole (literally) and sue them or do I suck it up, hope it’s fixed, and stay in Manhattan for another year? Decisions, decisions, decisions…
- because of the guilt over the Thai food and the tooth pain, got out of bed and decided to learn how to play the chorus of Living Colour’s "Open Letter To A Landlord," which is one of the more ridiculous and ridiculously performed songs of the past thirty years. When the singer, Corey Glover, sings the line of the chorus, which go, "Now you can tear a building down, but you can’t erase a memory/These houses may look old and down, but they have a value you can’t see," you can literally feel his soul splitting on the record; he is really pissed, pained even, about those houses being demolished. I then spent an hour or so playing along to the chorus and laughing to myself and maybe even doing a little bit of singing and possibly some crying. Then I masturbated to redtube, which is just not getting old, and went to bed. This all went down between 4am and 5am.
…
Also, I think I again just figured out why I’m single. But though not very relaxing, at least I had a great vacation.
