shore recap and other miscellany
Jason posted on February 29, 2008
After five glorious and lonely days down the Jersey shore, I am back in New York City. And I am happy to report that the book…she is finished.
[Please note that “finished” is a relative term that can mean anything from “perfect” to “this is a mess and needs to be completely re-done, dick.” However, the large part of what I have to do is done. For now. And I’m really happy with that and really happy with the result. My parents…well, we’ll see. Now begins a process that could last days, weeks, or months. Keep your fingers crossed.]
Anyway, a random collection of thoughts from five days in seclusion, spent not shaving and drinking a crap-ton and on other myriad contemporary topics:
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I am amazed at how regular my days were down the shore:
- Wake up around 12:30pm, go to Wawa to pick up the paper, then head over to the diner for creamed chipped beef with tater tots and tea;
- Come home and nap for two hours (2pm-4pm);
- Wake up, shower and make a milkshake (4pm-5pm);
- Read, dick around, study my fantasy baseball sheets (5pm-6:30pm);
- Go out, pick up dinner and booze, eat (6:30pm-8pm);
- Drink and work on the book (8pm-5am).
That’s it. Almost every day, exactly the same. And I could have continued with this schedule for the rest of my life and been totally fine with it. Not having internet is really freeing and in and of itself a mini-vacation; you’d be amazed at how clear your mind becomes when you don’t have access to Gmail, MySpace, Facebook, Yahoo fantasy sports, ESPN, CNNSI, craigslist and wikipedia. If these things hadn’t consumed 71% of my life over the past five years, I’d probably be writing my fourth book, own a home, have a good-looking broad for a wife, be driving a luxury sedan, and be in much better physical shape. Alas, as it turned out, I’m me: no home, wife, car; one not-yet-published book; and arguably the worst body of any 28 year old with excellent cholesterol. I do have several fantasy championships to my credit, so not all is lost. I guess.
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NYC people: As I mentioned to a friend yesterday, do you realize that the rest of the world is paying $2 and $3 per beer, whereas I don’t blink when a bartender in NYC asks me for $5 for a pint of Bud? Where is the fairness in this?
I went out to a bar to have some dinner my first night down the shore and pints of domestics were $2.50. On a Friday night. Big spender I am, I then switched and had four pints of Smithwick’s at a whopping $3.25 a pint. A pint of Smithwick’s at the diviest bar in Manhattan will cost you $5, but it more likely would fall somewhere between $6 and $7. But down the shore, $3.25. Wowza.
Where do NYC bars get off charging so much for booze? Oh wait, because they can. One of my "if I were a billionaire" fantasies is that I’d open a bar in NYC that would:
- have a short IQ test at the door to restrict the entrance of morons and/or people from (parts of) Long Island and New Jersey, i.e. people could choose one of several categories - like literature, history, business, art, science, math, etc - and if they couldn’t answer 2 of 3 questions correctly in their chosen area, questions of not unreasonable difficulty, they wouldn’t get in (scores would be recorded so that you’d only have to do this once to gain entry);
- no one who can bench press over 250 pounds allowed;
- if you claim to be a “freelance [graphic designer/fashion designer/writer/producer/photographer]” but the only check you cash each month is one that comes from your parents, whose wealth and community standing are surpassed only by their disappointment in your bisexual and cocaine-based Lower East Side existence, you must drink elsewhere;
- if you are wearing a button-down shirt, that’s fine; but if two or more buttons are unbuttoned and you’re not wearing an undershirt, you have a better get chance of getting an audience with the pope than of admittance to this bar;
- hipsters would not be safe, but since they’d be harder to apply rules to than douchebags (i.e. all d-bags wear unbuttoned shirts without undershirts; all hipsters do not wear top-hats, though many do), there would be an Affectation Scale. If the doorman or staff member believes that you’re trying to hard to look cool or hip, you are out. I would be the final judge, as I would always be at this establishment, sitting at the end of bar, drinking pints of Bud in my pajamas.
In addition to the exclusion of people who fit the above description, another plus of the bar, the main one, would be that the music would be terrific (obviously) and VH1 Classic would be playing everywhere (duh), but that booze would be cheap, as cheap as possible to keep the bar from not losing money (I’d be a billionaire, remember, and would not need to make money). There’s just no justice in paying $5 for a pint of Bud when it costs that bar 30 cents. No justice at all.
(Also, the bathrooms would be spectacular - people would come from all over the world to poop in the shitters, they’d be that amazing. Trust me.)
(And hey, if every one of you donates $11,000, I could be a billionaire in a few days! If each of you donates $100,000, we could open this place this Saturday night! Let’s make this happen – together.)
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Previously, whenever I’d write something, I would listen to jazz. For one, it makes me feel smart, which is very important for someone with so little self-esteem and zero confidence in his abilities. But secondly, it’s good music that does not draw your attention: a nice, fourteen minute John Coltrane song without words in much more conducive to getting work done than a two and a half minute White Stripes song, followed by a four minute Marah song, then four minutes of Joseph Arthur, etc.
However, my knowledge of jazz is limited and I’ve had the same jazz playlist for the past, oh, three of four years. And while it’s 80 something songs and nine hours long, it still was getting a little stale.
While writing the book for this second time, I made a breakthrough in the form of a new writing playlist called Weird Music. This consisted of songs primarily from four bands: My Morning Jacket, Midlake, The Arcade Fire and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs (I know – it could also be called “Hipster Highlights, 2003-2006”). But why these bands and this playlist works is because it’s ambient without being engaging. You can listen to it, appreciate it and know that it is good, but it doesn’t take your mind away from what you’re focusing on.
I have no joke here (sorry about that), but if you’re looking for something to listen to that will allow you to focus on other things will still maintaining a semblance of rocking out, throw together some songs by the bands listed above. “Weird Music.” You’ll thank me for it.
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I swear to God that if I drink even four ounces of apple cider, I should do so either on or next to a toilet. Good lord. Is this just me, or is apple cider generally concerned a laxative? I bought a half gallon for 99 cents and consuming it may have permanently altered my digestive system. I mean, wow.
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While down the shore, I only had internet through my work blackberry, which meant that I could read personal emails but not respond to them and could only be contacted at my work email. So essentially, I had no internet. Despite this, I was able to pull off some tremendous trades in fantasy baseball. This year, after eight years, my buddies and I are starting a three-player keeper league, naming our keepers this year. Last year, I dominated the league (not a brag; a statement of fact), so the result was that I had about eight guys that could have been keepers, among them Chase Utley, Ryan Braun (two who I knew I’d definitely keep), Lance Berkman, BJ Upton, Alex Rios, and three of the top six pitchers: CC Sabathia, Brandon Webb and Eric Bedard (I’m leaving off guys like Eric Brynes, Carlos Guillen, Jorge Posada and Takashi Saito, because, while their contributions were invaluable, they are not serious keepers in a three player league).
So what did I do? I sent BJ Upton to my buddy John for his fourth round (so seventh round overall) pick and Erik Bedard to my buddy Ricky, who’s a sportscaster in Austin, for his second round pick (so fifth round overall). Add in that I traded Chone Figgins in-season last year to Site Guy Brendan for his fourth round pick this year and I have seven picks in the first four rounds of our draft this year (one in the first, two in the second, one in the third, and three in the fourth). Yowza. And again, bear in mind that these trades were finalized after dozens of emails and hours of negotiations that went well into the night – I sent a announcement to the league about the Bedard trade just before 2am on Monday night/Tuesday morning – all while barely having internet and cell phone service, and writing a fucking memoir in North Wildwood, New Jersey, a beach town, in the last week of February.
The moral: I am awesome. Seriously. I can’t tell you how hard I am right now.
(By the way, I’m keeping Utley, Braun and Webb. I wanted to keep Berkman, but Ryan Howard, Hafner, Tex, Victor Martinez, Beltran, Magglio and Carlos Lee will be available in the draft – Howard and Magglio because we kicked out a guy who didn’t pay attention for about four years and he had Howard and Maggs on his team last year. With that much offense – I mean, with Berkman, that’s eight legit guys in a ten team league – it came down to Webb vs. Sabathia, since a number of people were already keeping pitchers. I chose Webb because of his consistency and because he’s much thinner, but it was a tough call. My logic was that if I kept Berkman and had an early pick in the first round, I’d grab Beltran or Hafner but by the time it got back to me in the second, all the top-flight starters would be gone and I’d have to go to war with someone like John Smoltz or Aaron Harang as my ace, when every other team had a legit, no-question-marks starter as their number one. And Smoltz and Harang would be best-case scenarios, considering how pitcher-happy the guys in my league are. If I made a mistake on any of my keepers, hopefully I can make up for it with my extra picks.)
(Have I mentioned how hard I am right now?)
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I flew to LA last night, where I am today. What’s best: I flew first class, getting a free upgrade. Yes, all those miles flown and money that Delta extorted off me last year so that I can tell people I meet that I’m bicoastal is finally starting to reap some rewards (even though I’m essentially destroyed financially). And I learned something: flying first class (domestically) is really not that big of a deal. The seats are bigger, but sitting in an extra row is not that much of a step down; the food is free, but the “chicken” I had may have seriously damaged my intestinal tract; and the booze is free, but upon landing I had pick and drive a rental car. So it’s good, if it’s free. But considering my coach ticket cost $330 whereas a first class ticket would have cost just under $1100, it’s totally not worth it.
(However, compare this to when I flew first class to London on Virgin a few years ago, and coach looks like a holding pen for monkeys with bladder infections. Good lord. Virgin first class had a full-size bed and a smoking hot stewardess giving massages. Delta first class means you share the bathroom with 20 people instead of 80. I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth – if that’s even the proper expression – but remember when first class meant you were truly worth more than the human beings sitting behind you in coach? Sadly, those days are gone.)
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The Eagles signing of Asante Samuel is an unequivocal and absolute fucking disgrace. It’s not even that the contract is gaudy, - even though it is, but at least it’s somewhat close to market value - but to give almost $60 million to a cornerback when they have more pressing needs is majorly, majorly upsetting to me. And while he’s had a good career, he was DOGGED in the Super Bowl and will forever be remembered as the guy who got beat on one of the most famous plays in Super Bowl history. Bottom line: it was man-on-man, Samuel on Tyree, and if makes that play, the game is over and New England wins (well, it would have been 4th and 5, but still). Also, if he had made that pick on other play, NE would have won. TWICE, in the sport’s biggest game, he had the opportunity to SECURE THE CHAMPIONSHIP - AND HE BLEW IT. And the Eagles just gave him $60 million. What the fuck.
Enjoy your $60 mil, dickhead. And welcome to Philadelphia.
(I am so enraged right now that my weekend is in danger of being ruined. Seriously.)
(Also, and I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been covered in the press ad nauseum, but did the SB teach us nothing if not that the key to a successful pass defense is a successful rush? And look how much Clements and Lewis helped SF’s secondary this year - oh wait, they didn’t at all. Jesus Christ. The only hope I have is that Asante gives the d-line an extra half-second to get to the QB and thus get the sack, but c’mon. I am SO SO angry right now. I can’t stop TYPING IN CAPS. Damn it.)
(Finally, I dare anyone to defend this move to me. It is indefensible. Sorry, there are two ways it’s defensible: 1) If this somehow springs us to sign playmakers on the offensive side of the ball; 2) If someone comes to my house and blows me twice a day, every day, that Asante Samuel is an Eagle. If one of these two things happen, I might be ok with this signing. Might.)
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Six Songs
“Stuck Between Stations” The Hold Steady
I pimped this song fairly recently, but the line “She was a really cool kisser and she wasn’t all that strict of a Christian” really gets me. One, because I grew up in a Catholic neighborhood and around Catholic girls who didn’t put out (not that I’d know, since I certainly wasn’t the one pushing these limits). But two because how refreshing is it to kiss someone new and find that they’re actually good at kissing? Is it me or are others finding that as we get older, people get worse at kissing? Note that I’m not saying that I’m a good kisser, but at least I have an excuse: when I kiss someone, I’m usually almost clinically dead from alcohol and/or beef patties, so it’s a miracle that I can actually use my arms and legs, let alone successfully kiss a woman. As for sex, I gave up on trying to be good at that a long, long time ago – in college and shortly thereafter, sex was about working for it, trying to be good, and possibly even employing a laser light show to make the lady happy, but now I just kinda want to go to sleep and take my Bayer to prevent the hangover. But back to making out – I used to think you either had it or didn’t when it came to kissing, but now, with the frequency and seeming abundance of bad kissers out there, I’m thinking that once you get a little older, laziness or indifference or the awareness that this it’s merely a necessary step to pee-pee and peach time is making people bad kissers. Shame, really. Making out is so much fun.
“Stay Where You Are” Ambulance Ltd
I like this song.
“Parachutes (Funeral Song)” Mates of State
Might pretty, and yet slightly annoying.
“American Squirm” Nick Lowe
I don’t like the title, but if you can resist singing the “Deep deep, into the night” part over the “It goes on and on and on” outro while driving around in your car, you are a stronger person than I (I’m also pretty sure that Elvis Costello is singing these back-up vocals).
”Sway” Bic Runga
I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m totally captivated by this song right now. Also, the girl who sings it is very, very attractive. Which helps.
“Don’t Go Away” Oasis
When I started at college in 1997, I was determined to study abroad. I’d had an obsession with England since I had heard my first Beatles album a few years before, and my high school years were spent consuming every piece of music by the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Cream and Eric Clapton, and to a lesser extent the Rolling Stones and The Who. Considering my academic interest in Tudor and Stuart Britain, it was only natural that London would be the perfect place to study.
So I went about my research, but not by going to the study abroad office. Instead, using the magic of America Online, something very new and exciting at the time, I would chat with students in London to find out about their schools, their lives, and the city in general (I should mention that I did not drink my freshman year of college, which should explain much of the rest of this story). However, because chatting with male students would be downright gay, I only emailed/IMed with girls.
One of the girls I struck up a particular friendship was a girl named Amanda, who had just started at the school I would eventually study at, University College London. We’d shoot weekly emails to each other and if we caught each other online, we’d chat about the usual stupid stuff; me asking about London, the food there and the music, her asking about the US, New York City (even though I was in Boston), and TV shows; both of us talking about law and lawyering, which at the time we were both interested in.
In January, just about two months before spring break, I was approached by my friends Katie, Tracey and Katie. Through the STA Travel, they had found a spring break travel package deal to London that included round-trip airfare and seven nights hotel for some ungodly cheap amount, like $500 a person. They asked me if I wanted to go, and while my initial reaction was, “Um, totally,” I was reluctant to spend a week in a foreign city with three girls (Again, I didn’t drink at the time; if three girls asked me now to go to Europe with them for a week, I’d pack so much hash that we’d be showering together by the third day and would come back all four of us married). So I approached my friend Griff, who was always up for anything, to see he wanted to go. As expected, he said yes.
So we began to plan for the trip to London. I told Amanda about the idea and she was excited about the prospect of me coming to London and getting to meet me. Even though the internet and AOL was new at the time, I was a little nervous about this, about meeting someone from the internet (again, the 180 degree swing on this issue is amazing). I was concerned first and foremost about my safety – what is she was actually a British thug masquerading as a girl? – but my concerns were also driven by my penis: What if she was beat? In 1997, people didn’t have digital cameras and hundreds of pictures of themselves on their MySpace pages. I had a digital picture of myself, because one of the guys in my dorm and taken a roll of film and got the pictures put on disk, so I was in one of those with two buddies. But that was rare.
But Amanda and I had already been talking for two or three months by that point, so if I was going to be in her city, just about two miles away from where she lived, it would be horribly rude not to meet her, not to mention really bad karma. I didn’t know how I could come right out and ask her if she was attractive or ask her to send me a picture, so I preemptively sent my picture to her, under the guise of “This is what I look like, so you can recognize me!” Upon receipt of the picture, she made no comment on my appearance, but said only that she didn’t have a picture but would work to get one for me.
By this time, my friends were fully ingratiated in the situation and with the story, and this was universally decried as a bad development. No picture had to mean that she was busted. I tried to reason that lots of people did not have digital pictures of themselves, but this counter-argument fell on deaf eyes. She had to be beat, they said. No doubt.
Lo and behold, a week later Amanda sent me a picture of her – and it was one of the most disappointing moments of my young college career. Not because she was beat, but because the results were inconclusive. The picture was a black and white group photo that she had cut herself out of and re-pixilated, so the result was blurry pic. All the guys in my dorm gathered round to check out the picture and opinions ranged from “she could be hot” to “she could be fat” to “I think she has a lazy eye.” Just all over the place.
Nonetheless, Amanda and I kept emailing and eventually, my four friends and I headed to London. Our first day and a half was a complete wash and all of us suffered with jetlag (it was my first trip abroad, and the first for some of the others as well). On the third day, I got a hold of Amanda on her “mobile” and hearing her voice, feminine and accented, not only allayed my fears but also put a pitter-patter in my heart: she sounded cute! Like a Spice Girl even! Terrific!
Amanda invited me over to her dorm room the next day to hang out, and I asked if I could bring a friend along (and my 28 year old self interjects: “What the hell are you thinking? A girl asks you to come over to her dorm room and you want to bring a buddy!?! Jesus Christ! Why don’t you just show up in diaper for Christ’s sake!”). That next evening, Griff and I were walking around Bloomsbury, trying to find Malet Street.
After we gave her name to the desk person at the dorm, the air was rife with anxiety. This girl was nice, but I still had only the faintest idea of what she looked like. What if she was a beast? What if she was hot? What is she and I and Griff and her friend were gonna do it? Would it matter what she looked like if that was the case? Why am I sweating so much?
I heard “Jason?” in a soft, British accent and turned around and there was Amanda. And she was extremely, extremely…hot. Like, unbelievably hot. Like hotter than any girl I had seen in the whole city of London in the previous four days. When I saw her, I heard something fall to the ground and wasn’t sure if it was my jaw or Griff’s lifeless body collapsing behind me.
Amanda was short, maybe only 5’3” or so, but everything about her appearance was really very impressive. She had long reddish brown hair that hung thickly over her shoulders, and dark blue eyes and slightly mousey features that made her achingly, unbearably cute. But yet she had a body that made me tremble. She wasn’t dressed slutty, which only added to her appeal. She wore a gray sweater that seemed to say to me, “You have no idea what kind of magic is happening under here” and a skirt that still stands the perfect example of why skirts were created in the first place. Throw in the knee-high boots she wore that were all the rage at the time, and this, Lord, this was designed with me in mind. When I saw her, the only desire I had in that moment, which may well have been the only desire I’d have for the rest of my life, was to put my hands on her warm, bare, pale stomach. As a teetotaling, virginal, 18 year old college freshman, I was certain that I had found everything I’d look for and need in a woman. Check, please.
I don’t remember the thirty or so seconds after initially meeting her, but soon Griff and me and Amanda were in the elevator going up to her room, making awkward small talk. When Amanda stepped out of the lift before us and started to lead us down the hall, Griff and I did the typical guy thing, looking at each other behind her back and saying (silently):
Me: [mouthing] “HOLY CRAP!”
Griff: [mouthing] “Are you kidding me?”
Me: [mouthing] “Do you believe this? Do you fucking believe this???”
(She smelled like flowers, too.)
We arrived in Amanda’s room and she introduced us to her friend, whose name I can’t remember. However, her name could have been “Jason Mulgrew” and I don’t think I would have remembered it, so focused was I on Amanda. When we got into the room, a single dorm room with a twin bed and one chair, I was the odd man out and stood (Griff got the chair and the two girls sat on the bed). Amanda poured glasses of wine all around and since I was standing – and now drinking, which again, I didn’t do at the time – I took it upon myself to do some terribly awkward and terribly unfunny “stand-up.” This was not intentional, but rather a survival instinct: here we were, in this tiny room, drinking wine, and I was standing in front of this amazingly beautiful woman whom I’d been getting to know for months, completely unaware of how striking she was, and so it was time for me to “turn on the charm.” It started with a single joke, then turned into another, less funny joke, then soon I was monopolizing the conversation, glass of wine in my hand like a microphone, sweating and making joke after joke after joke, each one less well-received than the one before, each one making me all the more urgent to make another to make up for the previous bad ones; I was like a loser at the blackjack table, betting more and more on each hand, hoping to win back his losses. Griff was in hysterics (not so much because I was funny but because I was so badly bombing) and Amanda and her friend were polite, but, simply, I messed up. Needless to say, even in the long history of Unsmooth Moments in the Life of Jason Mulgrew, this was high up there.
Possibly because I’ve repressed the memory, I don’t recall how long we hung out in that room or how it ended, but I know it was a school night for the girls and it couldn’t have been more than an hour or an hour and a half. But I do know that when we walked out of there, it was with a promise to get together again and a heart full of love. I was in love. I couldn’t tell you a word that Amanda had said that night, now or minutes after I walked out of there, but it didn’t matter: I was in love. It was a done deal.
Unfortunately, so was the rest of mine and Amanda’s time together. I don’t believe she consciously avoided me (bless that ol’ repressing memory), but though we tried to hang out again, played phone tag, and even ended my nights in London with hour-long phone conversations, we were never able to connect in person. I went about enjoying the rest of London with Griff and the girls, but always my mind was on Amanda, seeing her again, giving her a ring to see what’s up, giving her a ring to marry me, naming our gorgeous and intelligent children. Sooner than I’d have liked, our last day was upon us and our group of five was on the train back to Heathrow. It was at Heathrow that the last scene of our classic love story would play out, in the form of a long phone call from the airport, waiting for the plane to board. We said our goodbyes, said it was nice to have met each other and bemoaned the fact that we didn’t see each other again. But we would talk soon when I got back to the States.
But that was, as they say, it. We emailed when I returned home and even spoke on the phone once or twice, but soon our correspondence dried up. Just about two years later, when I went to study at UCL, we emailed and I called her a few days after I landed, but we then didn’t speak again – not once – in the six months I was in London, even though I was going to the same school that she was. Whatever “moment” we had had certainly passed, and I never heard from her again.
I don’t think about Amanda and this situation often, since it was now eleven years ago. But whenever I hear this song, I can’t help but to do so; a maudlin love song about a relationship broken by distance, and an extremely popular song in 1997 – and one that Griff christened mine and Amanda’s song after witnessing our brief “love” “affair”. I know now, in my wise old age and with the benefit of years of experience, that I am a sucker for any sort of long-distance love or relationship; my romantic tombstone will someday read: “Here lies Jason Mulgrew, who oft confused inconvenience with Fate.” The tragedy built into separation is too much for me to resist, and I suppose that I like the idea of God keeping me from my beloved, as if the strength of our emotions is so great that He personally has to step in to keep she and I apart, that no less than His intervention could do so. But now I’m me, the 28 year-old, non-home owner, pissing away his money on high rent and booze, and Amanda is a memory, forever extant in the recesses of my mind, revisited in a song.