trip thanks, work fun, road trip, facebook, hboo, music, gdt
18 April 2008
First and foremost, thank you for all the suggestions that you guys provided me for the forthcoming "Mulgrew Men Conquer America: World’s Worst Road Trip" extravaganza. I’m still trying to process all of your hints on routes, cities, hidden gems, and must-sees, but each email has been duly noted and separated into a special folder. As I mentioned, we’re still only in the beginning stages of planning this trip, but I won’t hesitate to ask more pointed questions of those of you who wrote in with specific suggestions and towns.
I had dinner Wednesday night with my dad and brother and one thing is apparent for this trip: there is no way that my dad is not bringing a gun. Like, none (none more black). I know I joke about my dad and his love of guns, but my brother and I spent a significant portion of the dinner trying to explain to him why a firearm on a cross-country drive is a bad idea. He wants one both for protection but also because he likes the idea of getting out of the car at various points across America and shooting things, like trees or cactuses or prairie dogs. My argument, which I believe is very sound but fell on resolutely deaf ears, was that the risk of bringing with the gun far outweighs the rewards - shooting a tree somewhere in Arkansas is not worth spending a night in jail in Texas after we’re pulled over for speeding and the police officer sees my dad sleeping on his .357 like it’s a pillow. Once when my dad left for one of his many smoke breaks during dinner, my brother turned to me and said, "You know we’re wasting our time, right? He’s probably just going to say he’s not going to bring one and hide it." So that’s great.
(Speaking of my dad’s frequent smoke breaks, here’s a scene: We’re in my apartment getting ready to leave for dinner, which we do after my dad finishes his cigarette. We walk down the stairs and out the door and boom – my dad lights up another cigarette. He had just put one out not fifteen seconds earlier and knew we were going to hail a cab to go up to the restaurant. And he knows that I live in Little Italy, where, one a warm spring Wednesday evening at 7:45pm, cabs are everywhere. So then we have to wait for him to finish another cigarette, his second in less than ten minutes. I mean, really? We’re talking Marlboro Reds here, not crack. Good lord.)
************
I’ve been spending a lot time at work lately, which means I’ve been spending a lot of energy on ways to entertain myself at work.
1) A big part of my job involves marking up presentations and handing my mark-up to our design group who will then input my changes. For these presentations, we (analysts) take care of the substance, they (the design group) handle the style.
While my mark-ups mostly consist of notes and edits handwritten directly on the presentation, many times they will include riders that I will email to the design group in the form of a Word doc. These riders are emailed in Word because they’re usually too long to write onto the presentation. So I’ll email the design group, say "See attached Rider 4a", and they’ll pop open the Word document and find an incredibly boring paragraph that says something like:
"The recent influx of capital from sovereign wealth funds in Asia into US financial institutions has vastly changed the market landscape…"
or
"In the past five years, private equity firms have played a significant role in defining M&A activity both in the US and abroad. Industry giants such as…"
Very, very boring – most of the time, I have no idea what it means. But lately, I’ve been fantasizing about sending riders that are slightly different. That is, I email my design group, say "See attached Rider 4a", and they pop open the Word doc. But instead of seeing the above, they see something like:
"I FUCK FOR CHEAP!"
or
"MY DICK TASTES LIKE BIRTHDAY CAKE!"
I don’t think they’d make those edits.
2) The bathroom on my floor at work is set up with only two urinals. So if you’re peeing at one and someone walks in, he’s going to pee next to you. I don’t really like this. Maybe it’s because I have a small bird or I’m generally a self-aware/self-conscious person, but I have difficulty peeing next to someone that I don’t know but that I do work with.
So I thought about it and there’s one sure-fire way to make sure that no one will pee next to you ever again: when you’re standing at a urinal pissing, stand there looking down at your junk in your hand, and mumble quietly to yourself, "Oh no…oh God…oh…oh no…oh…oh god…" with a pained, almost resigned expression, while you pee.
(The barely audible level and the pained, almost resigned expression is key. Generally, I think that if any guy is pissing and he notices something wrong with his dick, he may not say anything aloud, but his expression will be very alert and alarmed. By just sort of shaking your head and mumbling, man…that’s just messed up.)
I don’t know if you guys think this is funny, but I think it’s just the tops. Because of this, my plan has totally backfired. No, people aren’t now going out of their way to pee next to me, but now whenever I’m pissing at urinal and a guy comes up next to me to pee, in my head I start thinking about mumbling and saying "oh god…" and shaking my head, and immediately start cracking up and having to stifle my laughter. Really, turning beat red and letting out an occasional uncontrollable grunt of laughter while you’re peeing next to someone is kinda just as bad as the mumbling. Whatever.
************
Below is an intact email that I sent to my buddies earlier today. Only names have been altered to protect the innocent.
—–Original Message—–
From: Mulgrew, Jason
Sent: Friday, April 18, 2008 12:41 PM
To: ‘Pat’; Bill; Joe; Site Guy Brendan; Dr. Chris; Jeremy; Kyle; ‘Brendan’; Brian; ‘John’; Mike; ‘nevin’; Ben; ‘Bryan’
Subject: road trip!!!!
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/24513
Anyone else want in?
(Really though – see you in hell, Aliza.)
************
It only took me about a year and a half, but I’m finally into Facebook.
I shouldn’t say that I’m into it – I may not be aging very gracefully or getting very mature, but I’m a little conscious about the fact that I’m almost 29 years old and actively using social networking sites made for teenagers and college kids. But fuck it – I only have about a year and a half left before it all goes to shit, so whatever.
The fundamental problem with Facebook is that by default everyone is private – you have to go out of your way to make your profile available for public viewing. I ask, therefore, how is one supposed to stalk members of the opposite sex without befriending them first? This was the best part of MySpace, which I’m visiting less and less, seeing as I’ve stalking pretty much everyone possible on that social networking site.
And when I think about it, I can’t explain the allure of Facebook at all, except to say that it’s different and new (to me – I’ve had an account for two years but only recently it seems like my long-lost friends and some of you have been hitting me up for friend requests, thus drawing me in). At any rate, if nothing else, it’s another way to pass the time at work. And I guess it’s a good thing that it’s harder to stalk on there than on MySpace.
(I guess.)
************
Our society is not shy about using the word "genius" to describe those of marginal talent or flashes-in-the-pan, often neglecting the true geniuses among us. The good people at Honey Bunches of Oats have been producing delicious cereals for a number of years, starting with their original Honey Roasted variety, which still stands up as an amazing cereal. In the last year or two, they introduced Cinnamon Honey Bunches of Oats and I was so moved that I wrote that all of you must try it, but only if you’re interested in life-changing cereals that make you appreciate yourself, others and the earth more.
But just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, recently the geniuses at HBoO have come out with a new cereal: Chocolate Honey Bunches of Oats. After my initial excitement subsided, I became skeptical: would this be an instance of too much of a good thing? I love HBoO and I love chocolatey cereal, but I also love having sex and pooping and wouldn’t necessarily combine them (I don’t think).
Well, leave your worries at the door, my friends – this cereal is the balls. It has the crunch, texture and sweetness of the original HBoO with only a slight (but glorious) chocolatey taste. But the best part – the chocolate cereal milk left over. Wow. Seriously, once more – Wow.
I tip my hat to the good people at HBoO, true geniuses. They took a delicious cereal in their original and improved upon it in the cinnamon incarnation, then improved upon it again with the chocolate incarnation. The only possible way they can improve on the chocolate cereal is "New Honey Bunches of Oats – With Real Diamonds!" It just can’t get much better.
************
Six Songs
"King of the Pavement" Joseph Arthur
Wow – this one got me. I downloaded this just on Monday and already it has 22 plays. It’s chilling, gorgeous and sounds like New York in winter. Though not a typical love song, I added this to the "Let’s Make Out or Something" playlist, but then immediately took it off because I don’t want what I do while making out to defile the beauty of this song.
(Also, Joseph is having a record release party for his second EP next Saturday, 4/26 at his gallery in Brooklyn. I went to the gallery opening and it was one of my favorite nights – and not just because of the open bar. I felt like a real New Yorker – without feeling like a douche - with all the art and interesting people around. And then Joseph and the Lonely Astronauts played a few songs, including one that rocked my life apart that repeats, "You can take everything away from me" or something like that. So yeah, next Saturday should be pretty good – and you get a copy of the EP at show. More info is here.)
(And no, I don’t work for him. But if he wants me to join his band, I wouldn’t object. My calendar is pretty much open for the next few months.)
"Mona" Quicksilver Messenger Silver
If you’re starting a playlist titled "Late 60’s Drug/Fuck Rock," it begins and ends with this song. I almost want to befriend someone named Mona so that I can scream, "Heeeyyyyy, Mona!" every time I have at least three beers. When I listen to this, I also want to grow my hair long, do a bunch of peyote, and do four people (notice the gender-neutral noun) at once. That’s fucking music, man. Totally.
"Come and Stay With Me" Marianne Faithful
Is that a harpsichord? I want one. Terrifically gorgeous song.
"Electric Feel" Mgmt
I want to either grind or strut when I listen to this song. I haven’t figured out which. Maybe both.
"These Stones Will Shout" The Raconteurs
Warning: I have a man crush on Brendan Benson and he’s one of my modern favorites, potentially top-five. Warning Two: When Jack White is on, he’s pretty much unstoppable. Most of this album, including this song, is unstoppable. When I first downloaded the album, I had to stop listening after three songs, and told my old roommate Brian is was kinda like when you’re getting a blowjob and you spooge (which is lovely) and the girl keeps going, trying to drain your dick like she’s some sort of spooge vampire, and you have to tell her, "Ok – that’s enough" and pull her off because all the overstimulation is too much and it doesn’t feel good any longer. That’s how I felt after three songs of this album – I had to take a break, recuperate, grab a sandwich, and in 30 minutes I was ready for more.
"Why Do You Let Me Stay Here" She and Him
Zooey Deschanel’s voice in the first verse is quite annoying, but it gets more palatable as the song progresses and it actually becomes a lovely little song. Hipsters must have flipped out for this shit when it first came out. Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward? Good lord. All they need is to have a show sponsored by Vice Magazine and Gawker Media featuring stand-up by David Cross and a reading by Chuck Klosterman and the entire Lower East Side might spontaneously combust, leaving NYC with a serious shortage of graphic designers, waiters/waitresses, trust fund-kid poseurs and total fucking pussies. I don’t even want to think about this.
(From the "Rock Bottom’s What You Make of It" department: Zooey’s older sister, Emily Deschanel, aka Bones, once appeared on an episode of Law & Order: SVU playing a cellist who was raped. You can tell a little bit from the picture, but she has INCREDIBLE boobies – and you know I don’t throw around capital letters like that unless I’m really serious. Anyway, in the episode, she’s getting changed and you get about a 1.5 second shot of her boobs (in her bra) and it’s fantastic. Since I have SVU on my Tivo list, this episode has attained "Save Until Manually Deleted" status, so I can look at that 1.5 second glimpse of Emily Deschanel’s boobs whenever I want. So there’s that. Yeah.)
************
Tomorrow night is the Gentlemen’s Drinking Tour. Fifteen dudes in tuxes, roaming around, getting blasted. Fathers, lock up your daughters.
[Have a good weekend.]
I had dinner Wednesday night with my dad and brother and one thing is apparent for this trip: there is no way that my dad is not bringing a gun. Like, none (none more black). I know I joke about my dad and his love of guns, but my brother and I spent a significant portion of the dinner trying to explain to him why a firearm on a cross-country drive is a bad idea. He wants one both for protection but also because he likes the idea of getting out of the car at various points across America and shooting things, like trees or cactuses or prairie dogs. My argument, which I believe is very sound but fell on resolutely deaf ears, was that the risk of bringing with the gun far outweighs the rewards - shooting a tree somewhere in Arkansas is not worth spending a night in jail in Texas after we’re pulled over for speeding and the police officer sees my dad sleeping on his .357 like it’s a pillow. Once when my dad left for one of his many smoke breaks during dinner, my brother turned to me and said, "You know we’re wasting our time, right? He’s probably just going to say he’s not going to bring one and hide it." So that’s great.
(Speaking of my dad’s frequent smoke breaks, here’s a scene: We’re in my apartment getting ready to leave for dinner, which we do after my dad finishes his cigarette. We walk down the stairs and out the door and boom – my dad lights up another cigarette. He had just put one out not fifteen seconds earlier and knew we were going to hail a cab to go up to the restaurant. And he knows that I live in Little Italy, where, one a warm spring Wednesday evening at 7:45pm, cabs are everywhere. So then we have to wait for him to finish another cigarette, his second in less than ten minutes. I mean, really? We’re talking Marlboro Reds here, not crack. Good lord.)
************
I’ve been spending a lot time at work lately, which means I’ve been spending a lot of energy on ways to entertain myself at work.
1) A big part of my job involves marking up presentations and handing my mark-up to our design group who will then input my changes. For these presentations, we (analysts) take care of the substance, they (the design group) handle the style.
While my mark-ups mostly consist of notes and edits handwritten directly on the presentation, many times they will include riders that I will email to the design group in the form of a Word doc. These riders are emailed in Word because they’re usually too long to write onto the presentation. So I’ll email the design group, say "See attached Rider 4a", and they’ll pop open the Word document and find an incredibly boring paragraph that says something like:
"The recent influx of capital from sovereign wealth funds in Asia into US financial institutions has vastly changed the market landscape…"
or
"In the past five years, private equity firms have played a significant role in defining M&A activity both in the US and abroad. Industry giants such as…"
Very, very boring – most of the time, I have no idea what it means. But lately, I’ve been fantasizing about sending riders that are slightly different. That is, I email my design group, say "See attached Rider 4a", and they pop open the Word doc. But instead of seeing the above, they see something like:
"I FUCK FOR CHEAP!"
or
"MY DICK TASTES LIKE BIRTHDAY CAKE!"
I don’t think they’d make those edits.
2) The bathroom on my floor at work is set up with only two urinals. So if you’re peeing at one and someone walks in, he’s going to pee next to you. I don’t really like this. Maybe it’s because I have a small bird or I’m generally a self-aware/self-conscious person, but I have difficulty peeing next to someone that I don’t know but that I do work with.
So I thought about it and there’s one sure-fire way to make sure that no one will pee next to you ever again: when you’re standing at a urinal pissing, stand there looking down at your junk in your hand, and mumble quietly to yourself, "Oh no…oh God…oh…oh no…oh…oh god…" with a pained, almost resigned expression, while you pee.
(The barely audible level and the pained, almost resigned expression is key. Generally, I think that if any guy is pissing and he notices something wrong with his dick, he may not say anything aloud, but his expression will be very alert and alarmed. By just sort of shaking your head and mumbling, man…that’s just messed up.)
I don’t know if you guys think this is funny, but I think it’s just the tops. Because of this, my plan has totally backfired. No, people aren’t now going out of their way to pee next to me, but now whenever I’m pissing at urinal and a guy comes up next to me to pee, in my head I start thinking about mumbling and saying "oh god…" and shaking my head, and immediately start cracking up and having to stifle my laughter. Really, turning beat red and letting out an occasional uncontrollable grunt of laughter while you’re peeing next to someone is kinda just as bad as the mumbling. Whatever.
************
Below is an intact email that I sent to my buddies earlier today. Only names have been altered to protect the innocent.
—–Original Message—–
From: Mulgrew, Jason
Sent: Friday, April 18, 2008 12:41 PM
To: ‘Pat’; Bill; Joe; Site Guy Brendan; Dr. Chris; Jeremy; Kyle; ‘Brendan’; Brian; ‘John’; Mike; ‘nevin’; Ben; ‘Bryan’
Subject: road trip!!!!
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/24513
Anyone else want in?
(Really though – see you in hell, Aliza.)
************
It only took me about a year and a half, but I’m finally into Facebook.
I shouldn’t say that I’m into it – I may not be aging very gracefully or getting very mature, but I’m a little conscious about the fact that I’m almost 29 years old and actively using social networking sites made for teenagers and college kids. But fuck it – I only have about a year and a half left before it all goes to shit, so whatever.
The fundamental problem with Facebook is that by default everyone is private – you have to go out of your way to make your profile available for public viewing. I ask, therefore, how is one supposed to stalk members of the opposite sex without befriending them first? This was the best part of MySpace, which I’m visiting less and less, seeing as I’ve stalking pretty much everyone possible on that social networking site.
And when I think about it, I can’t explain the allure of Facebook at all, except to say that it’s different and new (to me – I’ve had an account for two years but only recently it seems like my long-lost friends and some of you have been hitting me up for friend requests, thus drawing me in). At any rate, if nothing else, it’s another way to pass the time at work. And I guess it’s a good thing that it’s harder to stalk on there than on MySpace.
(I guess.)
************
Our society is not shy about using the word "genius" to describe those of marginal talent or flashes-in-the-pan, often neglecting the true geniuses among us. The good people at Honey Bunches of Oats have been producing delicious cereals for a number of years, starting with their original Honey Roasted variety, which still stands up as an amazing cereal. In the last year or two, they introduced Cinnamon Honey Bunches of Oats and I was so moved that I wrote that all of you must try it, but only if you’re interested in life-changing cereals that make you appreciate yourself, others and the earth more.
But just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, recently the geniuses at HBoO have come out with a new cereal: Chocolate Honey Bunches of Oats. After my initial excitement subsided, I became skeptical: would this be an instance of too much of a good thing? I love HBoO and I love chocolatey cereal, but I also love having sex and pooping and wouldn’t necessarily combine them (I don’t think).
Well, leave your worries at the door, my friends – this cereal is the balls. It has the crunch, texture and sweetness of the original HBoO with only a slight (but glorious) chocolatey taste. But the best part – the chocolate cereal milk left over. Wow. Seriously, once more – Wow.
I tip my hat to the good people at HBoO, true geniuses. They took a delicious cereal in their original and improved upon it in the cinnamon incarnation, then improved upon it again with the chocolate incarnation. The only possible way they can improve on the chocolate cereal is "New Honey Bunches of Oats – With Real Diamonds!" It just can’t get much better.
************
Six Songs
"King of the Pavement" Joseph Arthur
Wow – this one got me. I downloaded this just on Monday and already it has 22 plays. It’s chilling, gorgeous and sounds like New York in winter. Though not a typical love song, I added this to the "Let’s Make Out or Something" playlist, but then immediately took it off because I don’t want what I do while making out to defile the beauty of this song.
(Also, Joseph is having a record release party for his second EP next Saturday, 4/26 at his gallery in Brooklyn. I went to the gallery opening and it was one of my favorite nights – and not just because of the open bar. I felt like a real New Yorker – without feeling like a douche - with all the art and interesting people around. And then Joseph and the Lonely Astronauts played a few songs, including one that rocked my life apart that repeats, "You can take everything away from me" or something like that. So yeah, next Saturday should be pretty good – and you get a copy of the EP at show. More info is here.)
(And no, I don’t work for him. But if he wants me to join his band, I wouldn’t object. My calendar is pretty much open for the next few months.)
"Mona" Quicksilver Messenger Silver
If you’re starting a playlist titled "Late 60’s Drug/Fuck Rock," it begins and ends with this song. I almost want to befriend someone named Mona so that I can scream, "Heeeyyyyy, Mona!" every time I have at least three beers. When I listen to this, I also want to grow my hair long, do a bunch of peyote, and do four people (notice the gender-neutral noun) at once. That’s fucking music, man. Totally.
"Come and Stay With Me" Marianne Faithful
Is that a harpsichord? I want one. Terrifically gorgeous song.
"Electric Feel" Mgmt
I want to either grind or strut when I listen to this song. I haven’t figured out which. Maybe both.
"These Stones Will Shout" The Raconteurs
Warning: I have a man crush on Brendan Benson and he’s one of my modern favorites, potentially top-five. Warning Two: When Jack White is on, he’s pretty much unstoppable. Most of this album, including this song, is unstoppable. When I first downloaded the album, I had to stop listening after three songs, and told my old roommate Brian is was kinda like when you’re getting a blowjob and you spooge (which is lovely) and the girl keeps going, trying to drain your dick like she’s some sort of spooge vampire, and you have to tell her, "Ok – that’s enough" and pull her off because all the overstimulation is too much and it doesn’t feel good any longer. That’s how I felt after three songs of this album – I had to take a break, recuperate, grab a sandwich, and in 30 minutes I was ready for more.
"Why Do You Let Me Stay Here" She and Him
Zooey Deschanel’s voice in the first verse is quite annoying, but it gets more palatable as the song progresses and it actually becomes a lovely little song. Hipsters must have flipped out for this shit when it first came out. Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward? Good lord. All they need is to have a show sponsored by Vice Magazine and Gawker Media featuring stand-up by David Cross and a reading by Chuck Klosterman and the entire Lower East Side might spontaneously combust, leaving NYC with a serious shortage of graphic designers, waiters/waitresses, trust fund-kid poseurs and total fucking pussies. I don’t even want to think about this.
(From the "Rock Bottom’s What You Make of It" department: Zooey’s older sister, Emily Deschanel, aka Bones, once appeared on an episode of Law & Order: SVU playing a cellist who was raped. You can tell a little bit from the picture, but she has INCREDIBLE boobies – and you know I don’t throw around capital letters like that unless I’m really serious. Anyway, in the episode, she’s getting changed and you get about a 1.5 second shot of her boobs (in her bra) and it’s fantastic. Since I have SVU on my Tivo list, this episode has attained "Save Until Manually Deleted" status, so I can look at that 1.5 second glimpse of Emily Deschanel’s boobs whenever I want. So there’s that. Yeah.)
************
Tomorrow night is the Gentlemen’s Drinking Tour. Fifteen dudes in tuxes, roaming around, getting blasted. Fathers, lock up your daughters.
[Have a good weekend.]
