Advanced social awkwardness 101: I barfed on the 6 line

When it says "take medication with food," trust me. Take the medication with food. Also, while I'm sparing you the details (they are gross), I will say this much: I have a burgeoning theory that people in situations such as mine put off some sort of "bad things are about to happen" pheremone, because as soon as I knew I was going to vomit, everybody else seemed to know what was going down. Or coming up, as the case may have been. Way to let me by and pretend not to be fazed, subway riders.

Th (first) last tango in New York - OR- No, no, please go right ahead and believe the Hype

Amidst a sequence of rather unfortunate...erm, things...going on in my life, I managed to have quite a bit of fun this past Sunday night. My de facto Tango partner, Betsy, came to town with her friend as a stop on a whirlwind roadtrip of the East Coast. It turns out there are easily four or five places you can go to do Argetine Tango in New York city for free or cheap every single night of the week! So, we picked going to the southstreet sea port for some outdoor, under the stars tango fun. It was great, and there were a ton of people, and they were all very nice. One couple even agreed to teach us a fairly complicated but really sweet looking move called the Bolleo. Much fun was had, and Betsy was safely placed upon the mighty FungWah bus to parts north the following day.

Today, I attended a really interesting event at Lincoln Center. It was an "auteur study" of, and discussion with, Hype Williams, the director of pretty much every good hip-hop video ever, most notably Missy Elliot's "The rain"

(and many others of hers), and Kanye West's "Goldigger." It was 1) really bizarre to watch those videos mentioned, along with others like Jay-Z's "Big Pimpin'," while being at Lincoln Center; 2) fantastically interesting to be guided through a study of symbolism, theme, and cinematography in one director's hip-hop videos by a New York Times music critic - seriously, who knew this stuff was in there? Also, Irv Gotti was there and got up to speak, and he was hilarious to listen to. Hype Williams was very humble, and sort of softspoken, but overall the event was time well spent.

Celebrooklyn Brelebrate. Er, wait...OR, My head asplode!

This weekend involved far too much moving of heavy things. Inga Katinka moved in, and The Fanciest American picked up some of his stuff for his move to Long Island. Therefore, while all the cool kids went to coney island for the siren festival, I punked out and went instead to Celebrate Brooklyn.



I went to CB last year with 'Lil Shari Strauss, who snuck me into the VIP area; that was a great time, and so was this. CB s held scant few blocks from my place, in prospect park, lasts for several weeks, there are a ton of good bands, and the audience demographics are more to my liking (fewer hipsters and scenesters, more crepe-paper parties, BBQs, and families hanging out). See? Photographic illustration. It has a sort of "super-sized southwest detroit" feel.



And it's either ridiculously cheap, or free. I opted for free, because you have more space. It gets crowded in the fenced in area, and apparently I wasn't the only one skipping out on a not-exactly-whopping $3 ticket price.



It was a great even. I saw a band called, i think, Group Sonidoro, or something. They played North Mexican salsa music, and were followed by Nortec Collective - which could rightly be called Nerdtec Collective, as it was mexican nerds mixing bad salsa with bad techno. Still, a very fun event in all. I'll most likely go back soon.

And yes, I am posting this at like 4:45 in the a.m., because it was so painfully hot and high pressure here today that I developed an Eye Exploding Headache. So I came home from work and passed out until almost 2 a.m. Lousy global warming.

Settle down, you.

I'm not doing so well at this readjustment thing so far, but I've been reminded that it's only been a few days. And that New York is weird.

The latter reminiscence came from a "taxi" driver. I purchased a very heavy - though not as heavy as the one i wanted - do-it-yourself chest of drawers. The box said my purchase required 3 or 4 people to lift it, so I, of course, figured I could carry it home on my own. I lugged it through the store. The Target employee at the door, however, suggested strongly that I take a taxi, and he called out to someone just outside. The "taxi" turned out to be some guy's SUV. A homeless man tried to help me to the car, which prompted the driver to carry on at great length for the ride home about how he hates "crackheads" and how they scare off his customers and can steal anything, even things that are bolted down - "that's that crackhead strength," he says - and how King of New York was the greatest movie ever and they don't make movies like that anymore. He also has a theory about how crackheads run carwashes and use hot wax as a scam. It took a lot not to laugh, even though the whole thing was completely ridiculous.

It also took me something like three hours to put the stupid chest of drawers together, but whatever, it's done and looks nice.

Back to feeling weird. I was thinking a lot about it this morning on the subway, when suddenly a man in a stained t-shirt and sweatpants, badly for want of a wash and shave, stumbled onto the subway. "I'm in the big time now, hoo, boy, I am in the big time now," he said. Then he sat down and started to sing "ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall" just loudly enough to irritate everyone. So I guess, technically speaking, I could be doing worse.

It lives! Or, Return of the Brooklyn!

One of my old Aikido senseis imparted to our class, during a lecture one day, that should we find ourselves in an unusual or uncomfortable situation, and we're having trouble figuring out what to do, we should "draw our own compass."

Well, that's fine advice, and it's served me well these many years. But if you had put me in front of that class that day, my advice would have gone like this: "If you find yourself in an unusual or uncomfortable situation, and you're not sure what to do...go see you some dinosaurs! Preferably eating each other. Also...



Say hello to some creepy monkeys!



And watch a a group of people who don't know they're about to have a whale fall on them.



Maybe I should stick to being a student of Aikido, and not become a teacher ever. Today I attended the American Museum of Natural History on 79th and Central Park West. Yesterday I got into Brooklyn after an all-night dance party - in my honor - at Jose's. Andrew and I painted my new room, and spent most of the day interviewing prospective roomates. We settled on a Swedish architect, who, when asked if she was friends with the Swedish chef, did not miss a beat in replying that he was her father. I think she'll do just fine.

Leaving was particularly bittersweet this time, for reasons I'll write more about when I have the emotional capacity to do so. For now I'm off to have nightmares about this exhibit (pictured below) from the museum.




So farewell, messy old apartment.
Hello, soon to be messy new/old apartment!