Do any of you guy readers wear tank-top undershirts? And, if so, can you explain what the hell that’s about?
So far as I’ve always understood them, undershirts are meant to keep you from sweating through into the outer shirt. But I – and I think I’m not the only one on this – mainly sweat from the armpits; that’s why we put deodorant there.
So, if a tank undershirt specifically doesn’t cover your armpits, than what, exactly, is the point?
who didn’t get the memo that today was apparently ‘sudden change over to fall weather’ day?
For the past four or five years, I haven’t bought a pair of jeans. Instead, I’ve shopped in my younger brother’s closet. Unable to resist buying new pairs, my brother David has happily passed along his ‘hand-me-ups’ as they’ve been displaced by newer editions.
The problem: my brother’s waist is about an inch and half larger than mine. And while I’ve taken to simply cinching down the excess with belts, a slew of female friends have recently pointed out that, in short, it looks retarded.
So, I set out to buy a pair or two of new jeans. And, in the process, I discovered I’m no longer really a 30-30, and closer to a 29-30 instead.
After extensive searching, I made a second discovery: while 30-30 jeans are easy to find, 29-30’s don’t seem to exist. Drop to a 29 inch waist and everything comes solely in 32 inch length. So, realizing I’d already spent embarrassingly long on the jean search, I quit while I was ahead and picked up two 29-32 boot cut pairs from Banana Republic.
Which sent me, after washing each pair twice to counter initial shrinkage, off to have the jeans tailored.
Previously, I’d simply taken any about-right length as good enough. Now, faced with the chance to trim to perfect size, I could angst about a whole brave new world of jean fitting concerns.
Shorten them to fit with a pair of oxfords, and a set of flat-bottomed sneakers drags the back of the jeans an inch and a half underfoot with each step. Flip things around to fit the sneakers, and the jeans look like high-waters with anything else.
So, after a week or two of serious consideration, I simply gave up, had them tailored at some arbitrary length mid-way between the sneaker and soled-shoe ideal, and set about re-convincing myself that the whole thing isn’t even vaguely important in the broader scheme of my life
For borderline obsessives, too much choice is a dangerous thing.
The problem with sushi is, by and large, you get what you pay for.
With expense account in hand, anyone can find truly excellent sushi here in the Big Apple.
But below a certain threshold – say, $50 a head – even we sushi snobs give up chasing perfection, settling instead for fish that’s reasonably fresh, for attempts at preparation not so bad as to (in the words of my high school Japanese teacher) “dishonor Japan”.
Which made the discovery of Mizu (29 E. 20th St., between Broadway and Park) particularly exciting. On two occasions in the past week and a half, I put myself at the mercy of Paul, their young, bespectacled, head sushi chef, and ordered ‘omakase’ – an assortment of sushi and sashimi at his discretion – with astoundingly good results.
Though we totaled in at less than $30 a person both times, the arrays of fish included such items as whole Aji, real ‘white tuna’ (from escolar rather than albacore), and translucent raw scallop, all rarely found outside of the most upscale stops. Even the basics – like salmon sashimi, or tuna hand rolls – were prepared expertly enough to distinguish Mizu from the crowd.
Add to that a young, energetic clientele, relatively classy decor, and waits short enough to make even weekend walk-ins a realistic possibility, and you’ve got an up-and-comer doubtless destined for success.
Having learned my lesson from past early calls, I’ll be stopping in often over the next few months, before the rest of you bastards catch on and I need to start lining up reservations weeks in advance.
Tuesday evening, I grabbed drinks with a West Coast entrepreneur friend passing through the city. A few years younger than I, he already runs a company that’s fast closing in on the million dollar sales mark.
But if it was a reminder that I’ve long since been displaced from the ‘boy wonder’ end of the startup spectrum, I was at least consoled to find age – or, rather, an additional few years of an effective liver-training regimen – has its advantages.
My friend emailed this morning:
Good meeting up with you on Tuesday night. You were definitely right about the Russian vodka; it sneaks up on you.
So here is what I gathered from other sources about the remainder of the evening after we left from margaritas. First I began by drunk dialing a ton of people, one girl 8 times throughout the course of the hour. I wandered through Times Square, telling people on the phone that I had no idea where my hotel was. I stopped in a bar and bought a Corona, so I could use the bathroom, but never touched the drink. While I was walking, some gay guys started trying to pick me up, or so I told people on the phone. Who knows if by then I was just hallucinating. Apparently security kicked me out of some place where I was walking and then I stopped at Sbarros and grabbed two slices of pizza. Nobody really knows how I ended
up back at my hotel, could have walked, could have been a taxi. And then I proceeded to puke my guts out.The funny part: when I woke up in the morning, I really had no idea what had happened, and until I started thinking about what I had done the night before, about 2 hours into the day, I had even forgotten that I had puked. Never a good sign.
I, on the other hand, made it home that night in time to bang out some late-night emails before hitting the hay. Looks like I haven’t hit forced retirement quite yet after all.
In the wake of Katrina, I’ve read countless interviews of New Orleans musicians who’ve been called upon nearly nonstop to perform at jazz funerals.†
For those not familiar with the ritual, a jazz funeral begins with musicians accompanying mourners†to graveside, underscoring with slow marches and somber dirges.† The body is ‘cut loose’ from earthly ties, laid peacefully to rest.†
Then, the musicians and mourners raise horns and voices to the heavens, singing the spirit upwards with the raucous music of the French Quarter, of the pubs and dives and dance halls of Storyville.† The musicians and mourners dance in the street and sing and eat and party until they collapse.
As one well-known jazz historian explained, “we celebrate and laugh at life.† So we must celebrate and laugh at death.”
Which, I think, is exactly right.† Or, at least, exactly what I want. When I kick the bucket, don’t give me somber memorials.† Skip the eulogies and quiet tears.† Once I’m in the ground, play and sing and drink and eat.† Party until it hurts.
This weekend, the first I’d spent in New York in over a month, I set out to wade through the pile of home errands accumulated in my absence. One was a run through Duane Reade, our local drug store, to replace toothpaste and detergent and light bulbs and a basket-and-a-half of other odds and ends.
One item on the list: a new head for my Braun electric toothbrush.
For years, electric toothbrushes, like driving to the gym, struck me as pointlessly lazy. But after my mother forwarded a handful of studies demonstrating how much better electric brushing works than its manual counterpart, I broke down and bought one.
I bought the Braun in June; by July, it was broken. Or, at least, partially broken. While the on/off switch no longer worked, I inadvertently discovered that whacking the thing into the side of the sink still did. Whack once to turn it on; whack again, and it’s back off.
Thrilled as I was by this discovery, I soon realized the turn-on whack also sent toothbrush-top paste flying, usually directly onto the bathroom mirror.
So, obviously, I took to applying the toothpaste directly to my teeth. A nearly flawless solution.
Still, walking down the toothbrush aisle in Duane Reade, I couldn’t help but notice, next to the $9.99 replacement head, a $24.99 replacement of the entire toothbrush – head included. And, for a moment at least, I took the new Braun off the shelf, and considered leaving my sink-whacking, teeth-toothpasting days behind.
Then I realized the $15 difference also just happened to be the precise cost of two six packs of Brooklyn Lager. So, obviously, I put the new Braun back, grabbed the replacement head instead, and headed off to the liquor aisle.
It was the only rational choice.
This is a travesty. Less than ten posts in two months?
How hard is it to write this crap? I’ll tell you how hard: not very. Not very at all.
But, somehow, I still managed to fall completely out of the blogging habit. Now, the good old days, when this site was a regularly updated compendium of smarm and self-obsession in the City, are just distant memories.
For the past week or two, I was ready to admit defeat, to put this site out to pasture.
But then, I re-read some of the archives, and it reminded me, by God, I am a fucking genius.
So, I’m back. With a vengeance. To quote the post that kick-started me out of my last serious blogging breakdown, three years back:
“Yes, boys and girls, like a veritable phoenix rising from its digital ashes, the daily dose of vitriol returns.
“Sorry mom, but it’s cheaper than therapy.”