NYC

Last week I went to New York to feel anonymous, but mostly I just felt like cattle. On Sunday I took the 7 a.m. train into Penn Station, where I proceeded to wander in circles for two hours before figuring out which direction I needed to go. Basically the first thing I did upon arriving in the most famous city in the world was to walk up to the movie theater on Broadway (which has a better IMAX than the mid-town theater near the train station) and see TRON: Legacy in 3D. I hadn't slept at all the night before, since I'd routinely been staying up until the hour at which I had to leave for the train, and so it took some effort to stay awake even during such a sense-enveloping film experience. TRON is a weird movie to watch while tired; I would nod off during some bit of exposition and be quickly jarred awake by some strobe-y bit of CGI or a squelch of the Daft Punk score.

After the film I took a long route, via Central Park, back downtown and met up with my old friend A., who works at a bike shop. We met up with some of his friends for burgers and beers and then caught the subway over to Brooklyn. We drank some more and hung out at his place, and then went out. I was pretty fucked up at that point, but I remember meeting his girlfriend S. at a place called Alligator Lounge, where they serve you a personal pan pizza with every beer you order. I ate two! Next we hit the hipster hot-spot bar/arcade known as Barcade, where I vaguely remember playing a series of classic arcade games thirty seconds at a time (Centipede is hard when you're seeing triple). Eventually we stumbled back to S.'s apartment and passed out.

The next day we had an amazing brunch of lox bagels and mimosas (and I played some Nintendo 64; it's weird how many N64s I encounter when I'm in the city) then went back to A.'s to drink more champagne and hang out. My friend D. had arrived in the city a little before noon and immediately set about seeing movies all day. We tried to connect and meet up for a flick, but it took me awhile to get my shit together. Eventually I parted ways with A. and S. and went back to Manhattan, but I was unable to get to where D. was seeing his second film, so I told him to call me whenever it got out. I decided to go over to Rockefeller Center. The previous day, I'd stashed my suitcase at a storage place for a few hours, but now I was lugging around my bag along with my regular backpack, so I basically occupied the space of a very fat or pregnant person. Trying to move through one of the most crowded blocks in the city four days before Christmas was, as friends would later tell me, a foolish decision. Even so, I was undeterred.

I wandered into one of the buildings in the plaza, looking for a restroom, and proceeded to accidentally set off an alarm. I was embarrassed, to say the least, although the guard who hassled me was cryptic in his reprobation, repeatedly asking, "Why'd you do that?" I don't know, buddy, I was experimenting with social spaces. In his defense, he was probably tired of dealing with dumb tourists who aren't naturally attuned to the rhythms of the city; in any case, he directed me downstairs toward the "concourse," which is a fancy word for "underground mall." After another bout of circling I found a place that piqued my interest: Nintendo World. The current celebration of some arbitrary Mario anniversary has left the store bedecked in even more self-indulgent regalia than I expect is normal; I ate up the themed decor as they'd intended every nerd to, I suppose (spotting yet another N64 in the outside display). They have genuinely cool stuff there that I would have bought had I not insisted on being so thrifty during the trip (only buying booze, subway passes and the occasional meal, I spent a good two hundred bucks over three and a half days), but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The mini-museum they got in there is pretty cool, there are vintage Nintendo playing cards (or at least replicas) from their 19th century origins, a few hand-made sketches by the properly hero-worshiped Shigeru Miyamoto, and, in a bit of unexpected patriotic poignancy, a charred, blackened Game Boy from the Gulf War, triumphantly running Tetris at full speed. I played a bit of the new Donkey Kong (awesome) and talked for a bit with an employee about the Super Mario Bros. film. (I saw the legendary flop once, when I was about six, with my brother. The guy said that Nintendo not only disowned the film; nobody owns the rights anymore. My housemate recently got a copy in a holiday gift swap; I’m pretty excited to watch it soon.) After that I went over to the Lego store, which was amusing for about three minutes.

Having had my fill of comically oversized Christmas decorations, I made my way to Times Square, where a man randomly complimented my Afro. The M&M store caught my eye and I killed a good fifteen minutes exploring its entire three stories of sugar-worship. I’m as big a fan as anybody of mercenary cultural idolatry, but M&fuckingM’s? I’d prefer if the distinction of what is being celebrated weren’t entirely pretend. I’m sure it’s very exciting that you can go there and fill up bags with the little candies in any color of the rainbow (a funnily less-appropriate set-up can be glimpsed at the Lego store; choking hazard, guys) but Jesus, people. They all taste the same. I glimpsed the Disney store down the street but I’d had my fill of cynical commercialism for the evening. Mercifully, D. texted me shortly directing me back toward Brooklyn, a mere one stop away from where I’d set out earlier that day. I hustled out east, my increasing mastery of the metro re-inflating the confidence balloon that had earlier been punctured by the Rockefeller incident. I found D. and Other D. at a little Chinese place. Other D., who lives in the Lower East Side with his folks, met up with D. (out from PA, where he lives with his parents—ah, post-grad) to check out an apartment but the realtor apparently stood them up. We ate and chatted; I tried to take stock of the situation at Other D.’s place. Apparently D. was meant to stay with him but Other was having a tiff with his parents and was unsure of the wisdom of inviting friends to stay the night. My nervousness increased; with Other D.’s place unavailable I officially had no place to stay. We went back to the building, which was pretty nice, but the guy never showed.

We went to Williamsburg to meet up with C., and then went over to P.’s apartment. P. was the next-best bet for available floor-space, so I began trying to modestly turn on the charm. We hit a bar for some drinks (and I grabbed a fish taco from some famed Brooklyn truck), parted ways with C. and grabbed a train back to Manhattan. We were headed toward the apartment of a friend of a friend of Other D., where some show was taking place. We caught the last few songs (it was an interesting kind of electro-pop thing with an appealingly deep-voiced female vocalist) and then I tried my best to mingle. In addition to the beers we’d grabbed at a shop prior, they’d left a bottle of Ketel 1 on a windowsill, which we took full advantage of. I like sipping straight vodka, and that’s a fine brand. The problem was that, since arriving and walking around in the freezing wind for hours over two days I’d forgotten to properly apply lip balm, and the outside of my mouth had become awfully chapped, so every sip included liquor painfully seeping into the cracks in my skin. It was incentive to drink faster, I suppose. After chatting with my friends for a while (I received an unexpected/distressing first-hand explanation from D., of all people, for my failure to maintain romantic involvement with a recent female interest) I met the woman in whose bedroom the show was being held. She was cute and good-humored and I couldn’t quite place her charming accent (later explained to be Australian by way of London and somewhere on the East Coast). She listened intently as I rambled at length about my bullshit studies, and we took off before I could embarrass myself in any significant way. We found a nice little lounge and hunkered down to relax before heading home. Blessedly, P. consented to let D. and I stay at her place, and we proceeded to get more concertedly drunk. I got a Tecate and the bartender showed me something called a “dirty ashtray”—you fill the rim with lime juice and then season with salt and pepper. When you crack the beer it all foams up and the first gulp is exotic and intense. D. somehow offended the guy in a way neither of them could explain; he ended up tipping the guy ten dollars without being sure why. At around 2, we all (us, the barkeep, and the enthusiastic tattooed woman who was the only other customer) went out into the street to watch the lunar eclipse. It took a few minutes for us to realize that none of us were sure what we were seeing.

The next morning we got what P. claimed was the cheapest decent breakfast in town; even though D. was paying for me (I covered the cab the previous night) I somehow spent like seven dollars just on tip. Fucking New York, man. We took off from P.’s and headed to Bushwick (I think) to meet a realtor. After a few minutes of waiting in the cold, cold wind we finally found the proposed building, a wildly extravagant sort of constructed artists’ colony in the midst of an otherwise run-down neighborhood. The realtor was a mildly shifty Hasid, J., who pitched the building pretty craftily, although I could see D.’s proverbial mouth watering already. (I think he was sold when he saw the private screening room right across from the gym, even before checking out an apartment.) As J. chatted hurriedly in Yiddish with his associate, the building manager, we looked at three separate places but eventually D. realized he couldn’t make it work financially, and J. took us over to a more modest place. I looked out the back window and was almost sure I could spot the same depressing junkyard (literally, a trash heap in someone’s yard) that I’d seen from the opposite angle at A.’s place the other day. After looking at a similar place next door and some contract-finagling (Other D. couldn’t get out of work for this extremely important bit of future-planning) D. managed to put some money down on the place and we parted with J. We went to a weird Mexican corner restaurant where I seemed to face a communication barrier with the servers even beyond the language thing. D. hypothesized it was a front for some kind of operation. But I got a fish sandwich!

He realized he was late to meet with another realtor and so we took the train back to where we’d just been before J. drove us to the bank, got some directions from a passerby that we found to be incorrect after walking about six blocks, during which D. insisted on stopping in every other shop to try and buy a “loosie”—a single cigarette—despite the wind being too heavy to even light one, and finally gave up and headed to Manhattan to meet up with our respective cousins. We got some coffee and drinks and parted ways; I found my cousin’s place and headed up. Cousin was in the midst of working on finals, but the beers I’d brought put him in a feisty mood. He kept insisting we should go to some club where they don’t let you in, I guess, unless you’re wearing the correct clothes. I tried to explain that that wasn’t really my speed and that we should just hit a dive bar and then see a movie, but it was rendered moot when his neighbor came over and said he had three women at his place and to please come over to help entertain. I was pretty gone at that point but basically we went and drank beer and Jäger and chatted with cute Asian-American chicks while watching music videos on the guy’s giant television; all in all, not a bad night. I awoke the next morning having no memory of going to sleep the previous night; it was early so I watched Saved By the Bell and VH1 until I felt it was appropriate to wake my cousin and say goodbye. I had intended to leave the following evening but I had kind of run out of cheap things to do and was bleeding money, so I resolved to change my ticket. After waiting in a long line at Penn Station I went out to see if I could grab a movie before my train but there was nothing interesting playing in the next hour, so I got some pizza and decided to check out Macy’s. I’ve never been in that store before, but two days before Christmas Eve is not really the prime time to do so. When I referred to myself as “cattle” at the beginning of this piece I was mainly thinking of that experience. Since there was nothing in there I was actually interested in, I just killed some more time at Border’s and then headed back to the station. On my way to check the departure board I was accosted by a horribly pitiful woman who pleaded with me for some money; she was short for a ticket and insisted she was “licked” if she missed it. I offered her half of the twenty she needed but accidentally revealed I also had a full twenty in my pocket. I’m not the most obstinate donation-refuser; annoy me enough and I’ll give just so someone will shut the fuck up. Her horrible, piercing cries of “Oh, pleeeeaaase” were enough to sway my hand to fill her ticket price, although I insisted she give back the ten I’d given; I don’t care if you’re hungry, ma’am, I’m hungry. We’re all hungry. Whatever, I’d probably have spent it on booze, anyway.

The train was delayed almost an hour (I found out later there was some kind of medical emergency en-route) and so I went into literally every news stand and book shop in the place, trying not to stick out. (And I hated being among those crowds that eerily stare up at the departure board, hypnotized.) Finally, I made it onto the Amtrak and was on my way home, tired but satisfied.

It Is A Thing

Tonight I went to my friends' house over in a different place and had some drinks. I had tequila mixed with lemon juice and then vodka mixed with lemon juice. Then I came home and ordered Dominos. I waited a while, drank a couple Guinnesses and watched Buckaroo Banzai with my modmate; the guy came and guilt-tripped me into kicking the tip up a dollar. He was right, but still. Then I had some gin.

Anyway, tomorrow (today) I have to read some more theory. Then something will happen, I don't know. See you later!

Pennsylvania

Over the weekend I traveled to Bethlehem, PA with my three friends who grew up there. I didn’t really have any business inviting myself along, but I don’t know when I’d get another opportunity to go and I’ve long been curious about this place I’ve heard so much about. They tend to talk of Bethlehem like it’s any other bullshit American town but it’s actually a lovely and interesting area, and I couldn’t help but wish I grew up in such a rich environment. We stopped in Red Hook, NY on the way to pick up W.’s twin brother S., and had some pie his roommate was entering into a contest the next day. (I wonder how he did.) Chelsea Clinton was apparently getting married in nearby Rhinebeck, though we didn’t see any fanfare on our route. We got into Bethlehem late. The boys pointed out the famous local steel mill that had been converted into a casino, with the shimmering Vegas-like sign ostentatiously splayed over a giant defunct crane, as well as another site where a scene from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was filmed. (We had tried to watch the film one night during the last week of school, but I couldn’t get through it even while roaring drunk.)

After we dropped off B. and D. and stopped for a visit at a diner where I awkwardly interacted with their high school friends, I crashed at the twins’ house; S. went to bed while W. and I stayed up watching Cheers and waiting for their older brother who works the late shift at the Crayola factory. W.’s extremely nice suburban house was spacious and incredibly clean, and his large bedroom was spotless, full of hundreds of meticulously organized books. I wasn’t terribly surprised. The next morning I had an ascetic breakfast of coffee and a small piece of homemade coffeecake, then set out on my own. I wandered around for a few hours checking out the charming main drag and the historic district, then I made my way across the bridge to the humbler part of town. Two separate SUVs stopped to ask where they might find the Eagles’ training ground before I made it onto the Lehigh University campus. Lehigh is built quite literally on the side of a mountain, and it’s difficult to traverse. (I wonder if the rich kids who attend the school all have personal golf carts or something.) The first building I wandered into was some kind of campus center and after a minute of snooping around I was faced with a closed door informing me that certain areas were off-limits due to the Philadelphia Eagles’ presence. There was an unattended cooler full of water and Gatorade, and, though I hadn’t eaten or drank anything since that morning and had been walking around in the sun all day, I was too bashful to thieve some cold drinks from a national sports association.

I briefly checked out the (casually majestic) library, then started my way up the mountain. After a few minutes I found myself in the fraternity/sorority sector, an eerie, abandoned uphill neighborhood of small mansions with giant Greek letters adorning their façades. I always thought my school had an odd on-campus residency system, but this was truly bizarre: a lavish, school-sanctioned party ‘hood, seemingly removed from any sort of administrative reserve. I was on my way to some kind of “village” and the summit of the mountain (and, presumably, the foretold Eagles training ground in the athletic area) when B. called. I went back with him to his dad’s house in Nazareth, where we walked to an “Indian tower” by a graveyard overlooking a vast cornfield and then watched part of Love Actually. Eventually his sister showed up, along with a large, aggressive dog, and we drove to a party in some little upper-class hamlet.

I wasn’t particularly looking forward to this part of the day; all the grown-up house parties I’d ever been to were boring affairs full of tiresome, obnoxious Jews, but I was so hungry at that point I didn’t care. Free dinner, right? The food turned out to be great, and so did everything else. I was warmly welcomed by the gregarious older women throwing the party, given hugs and liquor (I took a shot of something warm and syrupy called a Slippery Nipple) and soon I was in high spirits. It grew late and we parted with the sister and dog and drove back to B.’s mom’s house in Bethlehem. We had primo ice cream and sat out on the porch drinking more of his mom’s homemade beer. D., whose parents live a few blocks away, stopped by to say hello. He seemed shaken; he’s been going through some depressing personal shit and has been in a deep funk lately. B. and I took a walk and talked, in a mood of drunken candor, about our demons and reservations about the upcoming year. I unknowingly took a leak on a church on the way back and passed out at 2:00 in the sister’s tiny bedroom.

I awoke 6 hours later, having been told of plans to bike to breakfast. Soon we went outside, where I was introduced to my ride: a bizarre adult tricycle that looks like this, except the seat is a more reclined harness and the headrest is just a padded pole:

I got the hang of it in a minute, although I couldn’t quite figure the gearshift. Riding the thing in traffic was alternately fun and terrifying. On a hill it was like a controllable luge, which is still pretty scary; I was leaning back and so close to the ground that I couldn’t be totally aware of my surroundings. Still, I enjoyed gripping the upright handlebars, pretending I was in some kind of futuristic one-man submersible vessel, like Snake Plissken or something. We went to a café called the Blue Sky, which is owned by skydiving enthusiasts, although I was told it had that name before the current owners. Everybody got some fancy pancakes but I just had some coffee and wheat toast—I feel bad when I’m dining on a friend’s parents’ dollar, and in any case I needed something simple to soak up my hangover. I should emphasize that I haven’t been drinking coffee for three months; the caffeine propelled me through the long weekend on little other nourishment. We took a long way home, stopping to observe the modest skate park across the street from the casino, and by the time we made it back I was covered in sweat (with a change of clothes still in my overnight bag in W.’s trunk across town), nauseous, and with my hangover headache worsened by the trike’s non-headrest. I still managed to enjoy the day. B.’s sister came over and we were joined shortly by a family friend with a surprisingly quiet, solemn 8-month-old baby. We were all entertained for a few hours by the baby’s antics and then I spent the rest of the afternoon reading the New Yorker, drinking more coffee and homebrew beer, rifling through B.’s book collection and so on. We watched part of Three Kings and then met up with D., taking a walk to an empty swimming pool and playground. Eventually W. swung by and collected us, and we headed home. I’m glad I went. It’s fun to see how the other three-fourths live.

Summer

It's July. Yesterday was the 4th; we visited our friend down the street and drank beer and played croquet (I lost). Later we climbed a mountain to look at all the firework shows in the area. It was fucking exhausting.

I still haven't been hired anywhere. It wouldn't be so bad, slowly going broke, if I didn't spend each day listlessly puttering around the house wondering what the hell I should be doing with my days. I add to that the knowledge that I could be spending my time in some local air-conditioned store making $9 an hour and occupying myself with mindless activity that serves some end instead of endlessly replaying the same virtual football scenarios on old videogame consoles, breaking to smoke cheap cigarettes and surfing the web between short bursts of unenthused reading.

I turn 21 in a month, and I'm not sure how to feel about it. On the one hand, 21 WOO GET EFFED UP etc. On the two hand, each of these last few birthdays has its sad side; getting older, slipping further and further from ultimate youth is a disorienting feeling. I guess I'll see how it goes when I get there.

At least there's been some good movie-watchin' going on at my house. Today we watched the Marx Brothers' A Day at the Races. I think it's a mite too long, but damn if Harpo and Chico's piano playing scene isn't transcendent.

Lil' Sis

Summer! I don't have a job. Oh god.

Sister had her Bat Mitzvah last weekend. It was okay. Family, yay! Lots of leftover num-nums and beer, yay! Going back tomorrow, I guess. I have to go empty my bank account to pay for rent. Enjoying the moment, while it lasts.

Things R Winding Down; I Meet Some Jew

The school year is almost over and I might be eff'd. I have to finish a lot of shit in the next couple weeks, while also somehow finding a job to fund my summer living sitch. I suppose it could be worse, although that’s become a phrase I’ve repeated to myself troublingly often in the last few weeks. Anyway, blah blah blah, drinking, depression, you know the score.

***

So I was leaving the dining commons today, having gorged myself on a late lunch of potato soup and chicken parm, when I saw a trio of Orthodox Jews ambling along through the dorm quad ahead. You rarely see such types around these parts—their particular Weltanschauung (I just learned that one) doesn’t exactly mesh with the H-shire vibe, oddly enough. I think the last time I saw black hats on campus was first year, when a couple dudes from the UMass Hillel knocked on my door and gave me a cheap plastic Hannukah menorah. They asked if I’d like to light it with them. I told them it was a violation of the fire code.

I thought I could just slip by these three but, of course, their ringleader, a gregarious and full-bearded gentleman, came right up and started talking, assuming we both knew that he just smelled my Hebrew-ness. He introduced himself as Rabbi Shmuel Kravitsky, the leader of a local group called Chabad Nation, handing me a business card featuring his mug in a sorta spray-paint tag style and the slogan “the time has come.” (The time for bad Adobe Illustrator design work, I suppose.) His group is a cross-five-college alternative to the nominally regular campus religious groups. Our campus Rabbi is a gay Reconstructionist who’s known to bring sushi to holiday events, so the concept of religious alterity takes on a poignant political inversion here; this guy’s seemingly desperate solicitation suddenly didn’t seem so random.

The gist: everyone’s invited, nobody will ask you for money, come hang out and learn, pray, etc. I told him the pertinent personal info: from Connecticut; knew a few Rabbis; Jewish identity currently stagnant. I know next to nothing about the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, but I think it’s weird how these days a kind of forced notion of “hipness” pervades even centuries-old religious traditions, as though late-period MTV commercial groupthink had become a dominant sociological mindset. (It hasn’t, but try telling that to the harried fanatics who run shit like this.) Honestly, even if I disagreed with most of the ideological tenets of a religious-social group, I’d be more inclined to show interest and respect if it was pitched to me with a character of timeless solemnity rather than with weirdly out-of-touch, falsely laid-back youngperson wordplay. The substance of my five-minute, mostly one-sided conversation with this guy was largely obscured by his aggressively en vogue, “popular” communicative style, with repeated references to a promised weekly “Hookah Schmooze” in the gazebo, as he continually referred to me as “dog” like some crazed Semitic Randy Jackson. There’s a distinctive divergence in modern youth-oriented Jewry; there are the Conservative phalanxes consuming flocks of impressionable kids, like locusts, with comfortable, lazy conformity and there are the too-clever post-ironic Gen-Y brats who follow a childhood of undisciplined pop consumption with refined, candy-colored entreatments to the wider cultural dialogue in a self-contradictory bid for exceptionalism-cum-acceptance. (See: the smug, oversexed assholes at Heeb magazine.)

And then you have motherfuckers like Shmuel Kravitsky. Whatever, at least he was an enthusiastic pitchman, even if his faux-eagerness and personable demeanor were fairly transparent. He kept saying how weird it was that I’d never run into him after three years of college, especially in a school as small as mine (“The kind of place where everyone’s slept with his friend’s friend’s ex-girlfriend,” he said, after which I coughed politely) and especially after I told him I wasn’t as frequently high as many of my fellow students. He pointed to a tree blowing delicately in the wind: “There’s a saying in Kabbalah, about every leaf falling where it was meant to be. I think it was meant that we should meet here.” I’ve never studied Kabbalah’s mystical Zohar books and I’d hope they have more to offer than trite bullshit like that, but okay.

Later I checked out the Chabad Nation website, which has a picture of him with his wife and little kid—his wife, Ariel, is an alumna of my college and now runs this thing with her husband. She’s also kind of foxy. (Maybe that whole “rigid, prescribed social custom” deal ain’t so bad.) The website provides a good illustration of the oddly misguided, out-of-touch populist sensibilities guiding these kinds of enterprises. Here’s a hot tip, Jew-boys: don’t assume the biggest guns in your popular-appeal arsenal to be pictures from your most recent “Purim Party Bus” tour, complete with shots of Rabbi Kikeberg in Rastafarian regalia (craaaazy!). Also, don’t post the Smith paper article that describes Kaballah as “the school of thought embraced by everyone from Madonna to Britney Spears.” Not the most celebrated or widely emulated public figures these days, dudes, just saying.

Lately I've been entertaining this High Fidelity-style chicken-or-egg inquiry regarding my disposition. Which came first--the malcontentedness or the lethargy? Am I unhappy and thus unable to get shit done, or is my listless and unmotivated mindset the catalyst for my depression? This is some deep fucking shit, readers. I can remember--with some haziness and slant, I'm sure--a time when I was deeply involved in my academic duties, mainly as a kind of nebulous regimen whose goal I trusted would materialize in due time. And yet I was no more or less happy than I am now, as I recall. Sometimes I make steps forward in some endeavor that is either immediately satisfying or, I imagine, will produce an effect conducive to future satisfaction. For any number of reasons, these efforts peter out swiftly, and I'm left in the aborted remains of personal growth. I use this as an excuse to feel bad, and sometimes drink, which works, I guess. I don't doubt that this constitutes a lifestyle for some. I just wonder if evolution in any measurable form will present itself at some point. One can't help but expect to be "thrown a bone," as the lexicon goes.

I'm Alive

I know, I know. I haven't written in this space for a good two months. Suffice to say that times have been largely dark, and I couldn't bring myself to revisit them even in the interest of cathartic disclosure. The spring semester just started, and I'm warily optimistic--it's a real make-it-or-break-it kind of moment. In any case, I'm dealing with my stress the only way I know how--copious amounts of booze and videogames.

I woke up this morning feeling even shittier than usual, and I think that last night's activities (drinking plus wandering around in the freezing cold) may have taken a larger toll than I expected: that's right, for the first time this year, I may actually be sick. Tonight there is going to be a huge party on campus--I wrote about it last year, somewhat disparagingly--and I intend to rock out and drink tons and go out into the still-freezing night air for a cigarette once or twice, so maybe I'll be dead tomorrow.