what i wanted to do

coming to work this morning, i made the usual trek from subway to building. it’s all underground, and the entrance to my building is a revolving door in the lower level concourse of rockefeller center.

i’m assuming you know how a revolving door works. you push, and walk forward, and the door spins.

unless, of course, you are the type of person who doesn’t push the door.

the type of person that doesn’t do your part.

here’s how that works. it’s a busy door, and there’s someone ahead of you pushing, and there’s usually someone behind you pushing, and so you just stand there and walk forward, and let someone else do all the work. there’s a possibility that if there’s no one behind you, the door could stop revolving and you’d be stuck. and then you’d have to push, or stand there until someone behind you pushed.

and that’s what happened this morning. this woman just walked in the door in her slot without pushing, the person in front of her pushed the door, and she depended on me to push from behind so that she wouldn’t have to.

call me picky, but i think that behavior like this is indicative of a deep personality flaw. whoever she was, i’d bet she carries that attitude over into her everyday dealings, and that wouldn’t be pretty.

i so wanted to not push the door, and leave her standing there. but i’m a basically nice guy, and so i pushed.

maybe i shouldn’t have.

the meat tray, part 2

nearly two years ago i wrote about my joy in receiving an enormous tray of meat as a prize in a raffle.

kirk and i were in reading, pennsylvania visiting his parents, and returned to the scene of the crime. the local fire company has an occasional sunday breakfast as a fundraiser. it features salted mackerel (can’t say i’m a fan of salty fishy breakfasts) but they have normal breakfast food as well.

and they sell chances for meat trays, a dollar a chance.

it was my first time returning since winning my original meat tray. i bought my one dollar ticket.

and in a room of at least a hundred people, i’ll be damned if i didn’t win the meat tray again. i’m two for two in the meat tray prize department. can’t get much better than that. what are the odds? at least 100-to-1 for winning each one. and lightning striking twice? pretty cool.

so sitting in my fridge, i have sausage, hamburger, pork chops, chicken, and steak. some of it is destined for the freezer, of course.

i think that eating meat must be my destiny.

justin bond and the monks

sunday and monday, i attended back to back theatrical events that showcased the variety of opportunities for fun in new york city.

on monday night, i was at joe’s pub for the inaugural talk show with justin bond. justin bond is the performer who portrays kiki of kiki and herb, who i write about all the freaking time. his guests were michael musto the gossip writer, jay brannan from shortbus, and jane adams, an actress who most recently starred in “little children”.

it got off to a bit of a slow start but got progressively more interesting and hilarious as the evening wore on. the highlight? most definitely justin’s performance of “god hates fags”, a song he got off a (who knew?) anti gay “christian” website.

don’t get me started.

anyway, here’s the clip in all its glory, straight from you tube:

jay brannan also sang a song, but it’s not up on you tube yet. it was called (i think) “half a boyfriend”–he has a gorgeous voice and plays impeccable guitar. someone sign this kid up!

we’re going back next week as well–it’s john cameron mitchell from hedwig and shortbus, debbie harry from (of course) blondie, and someone else whose name escapes me. well worth the $20 + two drinks to see.

sunday night, at the polar opposite of the spectrum, we saw the gyuto monks from tibet at town hall. not what i would have picked for myself, but kirk wanted to go so i went too. and it was marvelous.

they do this deep-throated guttural chanting that sounds like three notes at once. and when you get twenty of them doing it at once, and throw in some native instruments like drums and bugle-y horns and steel drum-y things, you get a very unusual and surprisingly calming sound.

i loved it.

not as much as i loved justin bond, but still. two great nights in a row. can’t ask for more than that.

we have wii, and you can too

i couldn’t stand it any more. i’ve been wanting a wii for months, and my hit-and-miss approach to various nyc stores wasn’t working. and i wasn’t about to pay the ebay premium for a console. so i visited the nintendo store in rockefeller plaza on friday, and asked how to go about getting one.

“show up at 7am on monday morning and get in line,” i was told.

ok then. ok then.

cut to this morning. thinking that the coldest morning of the year, the day after the super bowl, might be a good time to wait in line to get a wii?

maybe a bit foolish. there was some logic. i thought there would be fewer people than usual.

boy was i wrong.

i got there at 7:15am–close enough, right? it was, i think 14 degrees, with a wind chill on top of that. and there were already 10 people in line ahead of me. some of them had been there since 5:30.

in chatting with them, though, i was assured that i was there early enough, and i’d get one.

i’ve waited in lines in freezing weather before, most notably when i bought mets tickets at shea on the first day of ticket sales. my reward that time was meeting former met ed kranepool. cold weather waiting has been good to me.

so i decided to stick it out.

it wasn’t too bad. i’d worn several layers of thermal clothing, so i was pretty warm. i thought two pairs of socks and a thick pair of shoes would be adequate, but my feet damn near froze standing on the cold concrete. i took to standing on one leg at a time, like a frigging flamingo.

and i chatted some more with the other people in line. they were young, of course, and enthusiastic, and had all kinds of advice about which games to buy and which accessories to buy and why to buy a wii and not a playstation or an xbox and all that.

the young woman in front of me was particularly interesting. she used to work in direct action for greenpeace, and so we chatted about greenpeace versus peta and their direct action methods. which ended up in a conversation about the evils of corporate america, and greedy people, and the loss of small business in new york. a pleasant conversation.

several people walking by asked us what we were in line for. her response? we’re waiting for wiis, she said. it shows a level of commitment, she said. it’s like a little community, she said. you enjoy it more when you wait for it, she said.

and then, at about 8:30, a guy walked down the line of people, handing out rolls of cash. he gave a wad to the young woman in front of me, too.

he skipped me.

“i’ll be waiting outside,” he said to them. “bring them right to me when you get them.”

oh.

sometimes, when i think i’m older and jaded and worldly and nothing can surprise me, i get surprised, and i realize that i’m not as clever as i think i am.

the doors to the nintendo store opened at 8:45. an hour and a half wait. not bad.

there were four cashiers inside, waiting to sell the small stack of wiis behind the counter. clearly the majority of the people in line (a line that by that time stretched nearly a block) were going home empty-handed.

three of those four cashiers were taking cash, from all the shills in front of me. the remaining forlorn cashier spoke, quietly, evidently not expecting a reply.

“is anyone paying with a credit card?”

no one in front of me was, so i stepped past them all, got my wii, got an extra controller and an extra nunchuk, bought an extra game called “trauma center” which looked fun, and was out of there.

i’m looking forward to playing my wii. i’ll let you know how it is.

i’m sure that all those wiis bought with cash will be eventually be enjoyed as well, when the profits are made and the premiums are paid.

i’ll bet i enjoy mine a bit more, though.

must be something in the dirty water

oh, boston. i’m glad you aren’t my home. the home of public officials so stupid that they can’t tell the difference between a lite-brite and a terrorist bomb device.

basically, it was guerilla marketing in a couple of dozen cities over the past few weeks. none of the other cities were idiotic enough to think that al-qaeda was disguising their next attack on america as mooninites from aqua teen hunger force.

and so the great city of boston arrests the terrorists, i mean, the guerilla posting guys, who then give a press conference the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the beatles came to america. from cnn:

Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens were released on $2,500 bail, said Mike Rich, their attorney. The next pre-trial hearing is scheduled for March 7.

Both men were cooperative with authorities, and neither has a previous criminal record in Massachusetts, Grossman said.

In a news conference, Rich told reporters he had advised his clients not to discuss the incident. Stevens and Berdovsky took the podium and said they were taking questions only about haircuts in the 1970s.

When a reporter accused them of not taking the situation seriously, Stevens responded, “We’re taking it very seriously.” Asked another question about the case, Stevens reiterated they were answering questions only about hair and accused the reporter of not taking him and Berdovsky seriously.

Reporters did not relent and as they continued, Berdovsky disregarded their queries, saying, “That’s not a hair question. I’m sorry.”

now that’s some classic stuff. john lennon would be proud.

update: here’s the video