Stuck on my eyes

DID YOU KNOW? William Frawley, who played Fred Mertz on I Love Lucy, stipulated in his contract that he would be allowed absence from filming of the series so that he could visit New York any time that the Yankees were playing in the World Series. This happened seven times during the nine seasons of I Love Lucy.

My own personal postsecret is comment cards at grocery stores. Grocery shopping is already pretty much my favorite pastime, and combining that with the voyeuristic thrill of minute excerpts from the daily lives of total strangers is just dangerous.

And so was I enraptured by the comments section of the monolithic Whole Foods in Union Square, with regular customers complaining about overcooked scones in the morning or the lack of agave-sweetened lemonade on the drink counter. In stark contrast to the chain's touchy-feely image, the responses from management were remarkably Palinesque, picking out key words and rhapsodizing on unrelated themes. "We offer a number of agave-sweetened coffee drinks and hope that you will continue to purchase them." In conclusion, I pretty much could have spent five days in the Union Square Whole Foods writing short fiction about the lives of the people who posted these comment cards and how they decided to protest their insufficient responses.

Luckily, this wasn't all I did in New York, no. I had five people to visit and I had three goals and I managed to do all of them. Really! All of them. And you know? That makes a pretty good outline for an entry.

1) Visit Caroline.


Oh, did I visit Caroline. I was first encouraged when she said "I usually meet people at the train station at 145th Street, but then I remembered that it's Sam." And, yo, I did find my way to Cedar Point in a police car and to Molvena, Italy via Molveno, Italy and seven thousand buses through the freaking Alps, so Harlem at 7 PM should not be too much of a problem. I ate all of Caroline's manicotti as we talked about every single student she has, and I tried to be like "sometimes my students want me to spend extra time after office hours" while she was like "sometimes my students breakdance in class; but that's okay, at least that means they aren't punching each other, and at least I don't live in the school district where you can't distribute stapled handouts because the students will pry out the staples and use them as weapons." Once again, you can call me Mario, because I just got 1-up'd.

I slept on Caroline's fold-out-aero-couch, which is apparently a new fad that I had theretofore never heard of. My phone rang like 82 times just sitting in her apartment, which is a trend that would continue throughout the weekend.

2) Visit Jed.


So let me just say that I have always been afraid of the New York subway system, like ferris wheels or people walking behind me, so even though all I had to do was take an express train, I was still pretty proud of making it from Harlem to Brooklyn fast enough that Jed was still in the shower when I arrived. Other than pizza for breakfast and the realization that I really like puppies but really, really hate cats, the rest of our visit was kind of, well, not blogsworthy.

A) Go to Pommes Frites.

I read an article recently on whether it's okay to take food on the subway. Apparently in Paris they are really strict about it. They did a survey of French people and one woman was like. "NON. Not even peanuts from a bag." All I could think of was that time that Mitra and I were marathon-rushing to a party at Veena's house but we stopped at Pommes Frites on the way and decided to take them on the subway, and we dropped our sweet chili sauce in front of someone who was sleeping and he kept moving as the train hit bumps and the entire subway car was just transfixed, watching him and collectively praying that the next bump would not send his heel into not-so-sweet chili. The moral of the story is no, not even peanuts from a bag.


But Belgian fries with Caroline and Ben went a little bit better. We stopped in and got a poutine and a large fries and three sauces. I mispronounced "poutine," I think. I have had a lot of faith in my French-pronouncing abilities since I correctly indentified someone as "quebecoise" last summer, but this totally shattered it. Kind of like Pommes Frites' BELGIAN (82,000 prospective MIT students wrote to correct me the last time I blogged about Pommes Frites) fries totally shattered my taste buds. Holy God. They are delicious. Everything about them. It is the best thing that has ever happened to the potato. Ever. Even better than using one to power an alarm clock or something.

3) Visit Howard.


That is not actually a picture of Howard; first we went to 30 Rock and I met Elmo on the way. I actually love this picture because seriously, that is one butt-ugly Elmo, and also he wasn't even pretending to be Elmo, he was just like "Gimme money. Thanks for your donation." in a gruff New York accent. Additionally, there were like three Elmos within a two-block radius of 30 Rock. Crazy. If I were younger than eight, my childhood would have been absolutely ruined.

According to Sam's Mom, my childhood was ruined when I watched a PBS documentary explaining that the sun was eventually going to expand and expand destroy the Earth. She said I just kept crying and crying for hours and she didn't know what to say other than "You'll be dead by then, anyway."

After taking some pictures of the tree, which I did only because of the "Ludachristmas" episode, we headed into the NBC store to meet up with Howard. There were no "Me want food" t-shirts and no Kenneth the Page. But it was still okay.

Then we went to Max Brenner, where we set the world on fire; kind of literally, they give you a grill with your fondue set so that you can toast marshmallows and then fondue them, but if you're an MIT student basically you want to see if every piece of food they served you will burn, and also see if chocolate can catch on fire, and also... well... burning. Burning, burning.

I headed home for my last night at Caroline's and we watched Princess Bride and oh man did you ever notice that Buttercup is pretty much worse than useless throughout the entire movie? Whatever, she's redeemed by Carol Kane.

B) See Equus or Gypsy.

So I headed to Howard's that morning and we had soft-boiled eggs at Le Pain Quotidien and I nearly cried because the perfect soft-boiled egg will make you do that. Kind of full, we headed down to Times Square and braved the extraordinary cold and rain at TKTS in hopes of getting some discount tickets. Score! We scored! We got 50% off tickets to Equus! They cost $60. Man. Making "I saw Harry Potter's Harry Potter" jokes is kind of expensive. I was also kind of disturbed by the massive visage of American Idol reject Ace Young staring me down in Times Square. God, he was atrocious. The three Puff Daddies and Helen Keller were bad enough, and now I have to see Ace Young.


No, really, Helen Keller. She led us, silently, to ramen, which I have previously blogged about, but let me just say steaming pork velvet again, because that was amazingly good. Oh man. Amazingly good. Through a felicitous series of events involving mistaken museum directions and important future-deciding phone calls, we were able to kill time until Equus actually started at 3 PM. We sat down just in time for the first portentous freaky chords and horse dancing, and I personally was enraptured until the ending portentous freaky chords and horse dancing and the line "There is now, in my mouth, this sharp chain. And it never comes out."

Less enraptured were the people behind us, who were eating barbecue chips for the first five minutes until Howard dirty-looked them out of it, and the people a few rows in front of us, who had the same cell phone go off three times during the performance. Seriously, people. I know I'm just blogging out my anger instead of confronting you about it, but that's what my generation was raised to do. You suck.

Speaking of (online expressions of anger, not speaking of sucking), I was just invited via facebook to the "world's first virtual gay rights march" online. Okay. I need to process that. For a little bit.

4) Visit Joe.


And I did that too! I rule. Joe took the train up from Princeton and we met up with him at the MTV store and then we went and got some French food and I had duck and it was pretty well done although it needed some salt but whatever! It was good stuff. Duck. We walked around for a while, and got some hot cocoa and walked around Central Park, and it was really icy and I could have died, for any number of reasons, but you know, we made it work. Then we walked a bajillion icy blocks to Magnolia Bakery where I took this picture and we talked about my secret plan for wealth and fame that is too secret to even reveal here on this blog, and then Joe went home to Princeton mumbling something about eigenvalues.

5) Visit Bethany.

So in a previous blog entry I already told you about the soup dumplings; what I didn't tell you is that I woke up on a mattress on Howard's floor at around 10:30 AM, fashioned his incredibly soft sheets into a Rami Kashou-inspired dress, walked to the bathroom, took a shower, and was subsequently forced to eat a chocolate chip cookie for breakfast, and then soup dumplings for lunch, and then I had to meet up with Bethany for more soup for Lunch 2. Man. What a day. I threw myself into a closing subway car on the way to meet up with Bethany, and well, I just felt really accomplished, like I had somehow finally mastered New York public transit. I rule.

I forgot to take a picture of Bethany, which was unfortunate because she was wearing the cutest jacket ever, of all time, ever. I mean. So cute. We talked for an hour or two and I found out that she is working at Planet Hollywood and exceeding my salary as a graduate student just in tips, and that she is living a relatively low-drama life, and that she is trying to make it big, and that I have confidence in that, and that American Idol auditions are a waste of time, and that some people from high school are crazy crazes! But yeah, it was a good time. I love catching up with people more than anything. Not 30 Rock. But most things.

C) Have cocoa in Central Park.


AND IT WAS SNOWY. Oh man. This was fantastic. I didn't actually have cocoa in the park with Howard, but I had done that last night, when it was dark outside, and let me tell you, Starbucks' Signature Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate should die. It is atrocious. Anyway, it turns out that Central Park is very slippery when temperatures are below freezing, and Eastern European people like visiting it. I guess it's the economy. At least they are good at walking on frozen ground.

From there, Howard had to field a phone call, so I made a quick change and then Tom Cruised it down to a pizza place near Union Square, to meet up for a "yay no more Teach For America" dinner when I found out that there were even more students that I didn't hear about on Friday night, which I had previously thought inconceivable (oh man, bringing Princess Bride back, so much organic unity, right here).

After a tour of six grocery stores in search of a noodle restaurant, we finally met up with some of Caroline's friend-of-friends, and that was pretty good, and kind of confirmed my "don't not be friends with Caroline rule." From there Caroline headed back home to pack and I headed over to Whole Foods to await instructions from Howard and, well, reread comment cards.

Then Howard and I, well... you can extrapolate the remainder of our evening from Yelp, because this entry is already too long and I'm flying out of Baltimore in like twelve hours, but suffice to say that I did manage to wake up the next morning in time to catch my train out of Penn Station and complete three-fourths of my Christmas shopping for Sam's Mom. I know. I am so good at multitasking. Among other things.

New York, this was your last chance, and hey, you did pretty well. I credit the snow. It made you really beautiful and probably also covered up most of the horrible pervading odor that I usually associate with you. But yes. I had fun. Much. I will return. Sometime. Go New York.