The sputtering of a CPR patient finally drawing a ragged breath

April-to June sure doesn't feel like that long a time in the grand scheme of things, but nevertheless I find myself under a rather altered set of circumstances from my last posting. Or even from my last year of posting, hampered as it was by the snooty "no blogs" policy of the job's Web Portal sentinels. Instead of trotting out some Faulkner-eske paragraphs on what the hell is going on, let's just try some simple bullet points.

- I quit the law firm. Paralegaling is for people who keep organized and like to work late, I decided after a year and a half.

- I'm taking chemistry at Pace U., taught by a wild, tenured, heavily greek-accented professor who paired me up in lab with an 18 year old Princeton engineer who pounds red bull and will burn out within the next 18 months and a nice-seeming orthodox jewish guy with a big beard, a withered right arm and a notable limp. I carry the beakers.

- I am tending to a balcony garden of a dozen geraniums, one tomato plant, and an amarillus. I wanted a dog, but plants don't shit on your floor or get you arrested for cruelty/abandonment charges- I sometimes forget to give myself water.

- I have a car in the city, the family Town & Country set to be retired to a summer life on Martha's Vineyard but running one last tour of duty. I'm currently at #322 on a waiting list of 450 for a parking spot in my Co-op's lot. So I get to deal with alternate side regulations. And yes, assaulting a traffic attendant in the state of New York is a felony.

- I'm a paid-dues member of the World Adult Kickball Association (WAKA), playing on the Cheetos with the first game this thursday at 7:30pm on Central Park Field #3. If you're passing 62nd street, be warned.

Ok, Here's a Punchline.

Paris Hilton: Your Punchline Here

Lord & Taylor’s invite to Paris Hilton’s perfume launch today (on their 2nd floor from 1-2pm) features a long ode to the heiress that ends with, “Now you have the opportunity to share a bit of the magic that is Paris Hilton. Find out what it smells like to a be a Star.”

Oh, I think we can guess what it smells like. And our inner copy editor noted that they mistakenly added an extra “a” in that last sentence.

[via Gawker]

Well, I'm no copy editor, but imagining 'Eau de Skank,' I could go out on a limb and guess that in addition to the extra "A", the last sentence is also missing an "S" from "A Star."

Har-har.

Daniel-San Politics

Pat Morita once told me the following sage bit of advice:
"Man walk on road. Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk down middle, sooner or later, get squished... just like grape."
The crazies on either end of the spectrum get louder every day...
On the extreme right, we're being told today that Spongebob Squarepants is gay and will damnably burn forever, at least as soon as he leaves that Pinnapple Under the Sea which Satan is finding not very combustible at all.
From the extreme left, it's a nationwide strike for France, where unions can't stand the idea of work weeks longer than 35 hours.
And I'm not even going to touch the real, scary news. At least not until Pat teaches me how to punch.

News Flash

As you may or may not be aware, there is a fast-circulating rumor that Fitness-Celebrity John Basedow, of 2 min. spot TV commercial fame, has met an untimely end while vacationing in Phuket during the recent geological tumult. (See press releases.)



However, for the last two weeks, his well-oiled body and too-large head (see Alexander post re: bad dye jobs) have continued to terrorize broad swaths of basic cable programming. The huckster appeared on television in October more than either presidential candidate, and the campaign has not wavered in the slightest despite his purported demise. I began to grow suspicious; was his final wish really to have twin legacies, one targeting a double threats to our fat reserves and another as a target for the acrimony of 20something humor for the rest of non-Tivo history? Or were the purported internet news stories perhaps more Jayson Blair than New York Times...

Seeking answers straight from the chiseled jaw of the horse's mouth, I braved the www.fitnessmadesimple.com website. Between inspirational Basedow quotes and convincing pitches for nutritional/workout videos, I found the following IMPORTANT NOTICE:


Tom Friedman frequently describes how people are fooled into believing what they read "on the internet," because it comes with the rubric of credibility and science. I would always think "oh, you silly little Indonesian children." But now I understand what he means. When it's something you want to believe anyway...

We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of the dreams.

Love That Dirty Water...

The dry air of the Northeast winter has killed my tan. The skin is going to all peel off, and I'm a little upset about it. So I made the rational choice-- booked a ticket to Miami for the long weekend in February. Only to keep things true to my style, I first made sure to get the weekend wrong, and actually book my ticket for the week before the long weekend. Thanks to that little clerical error, I now get 3 long weekends in 4 weeks, or as the rest of the world would call it, a french calendar. I've never been to Miami (phonetics: mee-ah-mee), but my friend Hugh stopped there during his drive from Texas to Boston, apparently because it was on the way, and said I will love it and to bring lots of pastels. Right now I think my only pastel accessories are in my bottom drawer at home in Massachusetts-- a little plastic bag filled with colored elastic bands I would use to decorate my braces from grades 6-8. And they say the early teen years can be awkward. Ha!

Spent the weekend in Boston to catch a show of some high school friends and then play designated driver for my brother and pals out of Cambridge, the official host city of the DUI Olympics. On the iditerod back to the car from the club, we were accosted by a man who accused us of stealing his pizza, passed by three 50something women and a black guy who was either gay or a very low-rent pimp all arm in arm and badly singing Jackson 5 "ABC", and a man who had managed to open his car door but got no further before needing to lean against the frame and relieve himself on the inside of his own door, keys still in the lock.

And the football was everything I expected it to be. Pats-Steelers party this Sunday will be the one-year anniversary of the drunkest I've ever been in New York: the all-night sloshfest at Zum Schnider after the Colts win last AFC championship that found me in on the LES frozen stuck to the sidewalk by the beer that had been poured down the front of my pants. I remember throwing up on a red car and landing in a trash can with my pants off, but not much else. Go, Pats!

Costa Rica

I´m on the pacific coast a couple hours west of San Jose. Who knew they have internet in Central America? The keyboards are funky. Ok, other than that, I swear i´m not the type to blog while on vacation. Be back soon. Happy New Year.

Wait, what day is it?

besos

Oh, the Weather Outside...

If you heard that alcohol numbs pain and then saw my recent drinking pattern, you'd think that this week I'd been caught in a serious barbrawl or hit by a car or had one of those eye exams where they put acid-stinging anethetic drops on your pupils and then stick the rod with the blue light on the end into your eyeball. (My glasses mysteriously broke Saturday night, and I needed a new prescription.) Get a grip, Andrew.

So I've rocked out my two holiday office parties now (one for the department and one for the firm) and have come to the following conclusion; litigators are scary drunks. I found myself last night at 11pm for the smaller office party in a karaoke bar belting out "Hungry Like the Wolf" with the firm's new youngest partner, who I think in a week or two will be my new boss. She'd mentioned she used to have Duran Duran posters all over her walls, so the stupid part of my brain went over and signed us up for a duet. Then I sloshed 7&7 all over her suit while howling and making claws with my hands. Go me. Rather than burning bridges after I cross them, I like to make sure they're well-demolished before I even get there.

It also doesn't help that through some Christmas Miracle of scheduling, this morning's hangover coincided with "Bring your Kid to Work Day." I'm just trying to sit here with my Post and coffee and not be noticed, but has reached the point where I am going clothesline and dropkick the next tyke who runs screaming past my desk I swear to god.