Improv(e) Your Life

I started by Improv 401 class at the UCB on Saturday, a circumstance complicated by several things:

1. I had missed the first class stupidly, due to improperly setting up/checking my Google Calendar and, in a class all about showing a “professional commitment” to improv, that’s pretty bad.

2. I had been awkwardly following/messaging my teacher on Twitter who told me “Thank for the Follow Friday” when I came to the first class, which I couldn’t tell if it was sarcastic or not.

3. That same 401 teacher later saw me do some awful improv at a practice session he audited, followed by my that session’s teacher throwing his notepad in anger on the ground because of me, followed by my 401 teacher leaving the room.

and of course, we wouldn’t be done without:

4. One of the girls in the class and I used to online-date, to mostly aborted effect, which neither one of us seems to want to acknowledge.

Add to all this the general reputation of the UCB 401 class, the sense that out of everyone maybe 2 people will pass the class, the nervousness of trying to be funny, trying to be right, trying to be on game, hoping to dodge the big bad notes and just be good enough to seem good enough to get through.

And then subtract from that this is all insane.

Somehow, from a year ago, when I looked on skeptically at the improv purveyors of New York City as the logical extension of the theater kids from my high school, whom I was neither attractive nor gay enough to join, I have become sucked in to this somewhat pyramid-like structure of learning improv, striving to improve, seeing every show I can, rising through the levels and seeking out gurus to gain some sort of spiritualistic enlightenment, some transformative moment, some moment where I become “good” at improv and thus am validated in life.

When my friend Teddy and I sat around on Saturday, awkwardly waiting for shows to begin, we discussed trying to perform somewhere, to which Teddy replied:

“I’m only looking to perform with serious improvisers.”

Serious improvisers? Isn’t that an oxymoron?

Maybe that was the moment it cracked for me.

Sure there are the famous people, the handful who get put on Saturday Night Live, or end up on their own show or in movies, commercials, whatever. But that’s only a handful and it’s mostly for other things like sketch writing, that are repeatable, film-able and highly able to be disseminated. But these are people who for large part had other things going on, had ambition to craft their own projects, to strike out and make something unique to them, or at least try.

What are the end results for the people in these improv classes that sell-out and promise what? Do they think they’ll be “serious improvisers” performing at shows at these theaters, with no chance of getting paid, with a small audience of students and fans? Do they think that Lorne Michaels will walk in to their class show, or Jon Stewart, and pluck them from an ensemble, like a grape? What is there to hope for, climbing through these systems?

I think there probably is no end result to improv training, no serious wisdom gained except “have as much fun as you can”.

Rather, my experience in life leads me to believe that these classes I’m taking are just another form of the same subculture creation I experienced in my days at Neutral Ground, playing Magic cards.

Nerds, societal outcasts of physical or mental quirks, people who hate their jobs or their lives or their company, escape to this world of improv, where the rules of “being a winner” change from “having a good job”, “a good car”, “a family” to “getting into that 5th or 6th level class”, “getting a compliment from a teacher”, or “doing that indie show in that bar basement”.

Like Magic, there are “pros”, people who make their living at least partially doing this, but also like Magic, they’re few and far between, with mostly associated incomes (acting for improvisers, online poker for Magic players) providing the real backbone of their earnings.

And like Neutral Ground, these places seem like voids for the vulnerable, areas that drift near where there’s that uncertainty in their lives, that need for a community, for a place that accepts them.

There’s something powerful in that, but also something damaging in the way that the “fun” of improv loses its fun in competition and too-set values.

In my experience, I have grown much from taking improv classes and indeed my life has probably improved, as has my acting.

In a way that does resemble something creepy like The Landmark Forum, improv has empowered me to “make strong choices”, “trust your instincts”, “don’t second guess yourself” and “commit emotionally”, but it also leaves me wondering and fearing that sense that at any moment I could be rejected, deemed unworthy and either expelled or relegated to some corner of this new society where I was undesirable and trapped.

It could happen in Neutral Ground, with the “scrubs” and losers no one would even draft with, and it could happen here as well, which is the fear pervading me as I walk into my 401 class, and hope not to be “not funny”.

Because the thing about the society replicated in these places at Neutral Ground and the UCB and others, is that it’s just that; replicated, or modeled on our own.

And just like our own society, there have to be winners and losers, those who proceed and go forward, those who transcend and become famous and worshipped and admired.

It was the irony, back in the day at Neutral Ground, that in the freaks creating their own place where they could set the rules, one tof the first ones would that there would be freaks among freaks, whom even they would shun again.

One last story:

The other day I walked in to see a friend from one of my classes at an upscale clothing store, her place of business.

I had recently had some bad days, lady-wise and it was nice for this young lady to invite me to come visit her.

She poured me some champagne, which she was there to proffer to customers as we talked about silly things, including (inevitably for me) the guys she was into.

“Those guys on Death by Roo Roo are so cute!” She said. “I wish I could sack one of them.”

Ah, how often I’m emasculated, let me count the ways.

“Well,” I tried to reply matter-of-factly. “Those guys are pretty good improvisers, but I bet they’re probably just schlubby awkward dudes in real life.”

“And you’re an attractive blonde.” I added hopefully.

“Aww, thanks!” She said giving me a hug. “But they’re so talented. I just can’t get past it. I don’t care what they look like.”

And in that moment, I realized the improv society I’d lived in reached that peak that Neutral Ground never did: that girls would fuck you based on how good you were at a non-athletic game.

Which made the moment I saw one instructor toss his notepad on my account and the other one leave the room, all the more crushing.

***

Just to harp on that improv thing for another second, the very same dudes (and very good improvisers) of Death By Roo Roo that my friend was so into, seeming to the exclusion of me, seemed pretty fired up when they saw me after a show, asking me about what would happen on Bethenny and what my food tips were.

One of them shook my hand with a gleam of wonderment in his eyes.

How different and strange our worlds must be that the very thing I can’t understand in myself makes me cool to them, while they seemingly have no grasp on how cool and daunting I, as a student of improv, might find them too.

A strange world we live in.

I got recognized too when I went to eat this sandwich, but not from the show. A case of mistaken identity.

“You came by the Ember Room. I remember you. The food to your satisfaction?” A nervous looking manager asked.

“Sure.” I told him gamely playing along. “Great.”

Maybe they’d throw in some free fries.

But they didn’t, though getting mistaken for a food critic was reward enough in itself.

The place I found the sandwich was a joint called “Social Eatz”, a hip Midtown East location known for its weird pop-Amero-Asian food, like their Kung Pao Chicken Sandwich (featured above).

I sat at their bar the first day they had their liquor license and the manager had been explaining to his staff, in the uncomfortable early I’d arrived during, about the particualar drinks of the restaurant.

The sandwich was delicious and arrived near instantaneously to the dissipation of their meeting, a fact for which I was grateful.

The chicken seemed to be grilled as kebabs and came off fresh and brown with a crispy green-y celery slaw. The “peanut” aspect of most “Kung Pao Chicken” dishes was represented in a mild peanut paste smothering the top of the sandwich providing a subtle umami bounce.

The fries were cold though, even though they came quick, and seem McDonalds like in their wanness and uninspired in the watery sauce that came with.

When I asked for Ketchup and they gave me Sriracha, I did something rude and just looked at her till she gave me Heinz.

I’m not proud of that moment, but sometimes, you just need to save a fry.

***

SOCIAL EATZ

Kung Pao Chicken Sandwich- $9

53rd St bet 2nd and 3rd Aves.

EM6 to 53rd St-Lexington Avenue.

***

Uh yeah, one more thing guys. For those of you who wanted to see me on the show last week, sorry. I had a mix-up. It’s actually this upcoming week, I was just thrown by the “on-the-next-episode” segment they had me in just like everyone else, which ended up being two “on-the-next-episodes” put into one.

Anyway, bottom line is watch next Monday if you want. Could be fun.

And Now For Something At Least, Well, A Little Different

I’m tired of talking about girls.

Can’t we talk about something else?

I had some drama this past week and was down in the dumps at a passover seder, including a return to good-form vomiting and trolling the Magnet Improv Theater to see if there was anyone there who was down for some sad-sack friend-time (there wasn’t) and eventually after a late-stage Andrew Parrish bail (who wudov guessed?), I ended up with a 4/5th’s smashed Jonny-Jon-Jon Fostar who insisted both that I link to his Tumblr and that I mention that ” [he] hates white people.”

“What about Asians?” I asked as we waited for some whiskey-sopping sliders to come out from Pop Burger, while JJJ looked around disgustedly at the hipster “probably European” club-going crowd.

“Nah, they earned it.” He said, throwing his hand in something between a slap and a “come-on”. “Plus they own everything.”

I nodded at that one as we got our burgers and got out.

Walking down 14th, I took a look at his Tumblr, which I hadn’t seen before, which represented mostly a series of Webcam-taped rants juxtaposed against a series of animated gifs from late 90s TV shows.

“I get a lot of girls under 16 messaging me asking if I can make out. And then I say yes and don’t reply ever again.” JJJ said, half-tripping over an errant sidewalk tile on Sixth Avenue.

It was nice to know that somethings are different and some stay the same and in Jonny-Jon-Jon’s world all this seemed both plausible and a reminder that his strange rants about hipster-loathing sexuality seemed to make me feel better about my own relative sad-and-confusion.

Or maybe it was just nice to walk and talk with someone for a bit, on such a long day.

Either way, that’s that.

Now, I’ve lost my voice from four-rounds of stomach-acid coating my throat and while it stinks not to be heard, it’s nice at least to know for once that I sound a little more manly and gravelly, down from my usual octave of slight lisping and self-satisfaction.

In fact, I’ve been using the time to try to figure out how to write some sketches for the intro to sketch class I’m taking, which I felt like I was above and which I feel bad right now for not writing for.

It’s a good excuse to watch Frank Stallone (pictured above) on Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! to try to absorb some of their talent or at least some of their form through ocular osmosis in the morning procrastinating getting out of bed.

The structure I’ve learned is to derive sketches out of stories from real life, or things you care about, but I guess it still doesn’t compute in my head how to make the things that happen to me funny, other than just to tell them and see what people think. Maybe I’m so used to telling my stories one kind of way it seems inviolate to use them for another.

Or maybe all of this is just distraction from writing sketches. Or maybe both.

What I know is that I’m back towards feeling that whatever I’m doing must be adding up to something somewhere, that even if I go into a class with some crap, or aren’t funny in a scene or do some stupid stuff with ladies, I’m learning something, getting somewhere, I’m mostly not  just sitting on my ass playing video games.

And in the end, that counts for something.

Or at least it’s a pretty good excuse for watching more Frank Stallone.

Just a sec.

***

Since it seems like somehow this has become the place (since last week) that I talk about my strange interactions with famous people, I thought I might as well post this picture, not taken by me, of my interaction with Christine Teigen.

Ms. Teigen, as mentioned before on this blog, is a “supermodel”, which as far as my limited exposure to them merits understanding, means a “very, very attractive person who is so attractive and cool and stuff that people pay them not just some, but lots of money to be in things like ads.”

And while the whole experience seems somewhat bizarre, as connoted by the picture (especially with the thankfully not so visible stains on my shirt from where I tried to stem my tongue bleeding after cutting it on the inner rim of a can of Diet Coke), I really don’t have anything bad or strange to say about it.

Ms. Teigen wanted to take me out for drinks, with her cool Ozu-referencing friend Sybill. They bought me a bunch of drinks and I told them stories about my life while they said nice things about me.

It lasted about an hour, I was very flattered, she gave me a nice hug and I went back to a party where my life was vaguely the same: girls not noticing me, wandering towards the subway at somewhere between 1-2 in the morning and wishing that I knew which way my life went.

On Monday she sent me some very nice text messages and I sent her some back.

In our meeting, what most impressed me was just that she read the blog and liked it. That someone on that level of stardom actually cared and related.

I wish I had something interesting to say, but she just seemed like a nice person and I was happy to meet her.

But here, for all of you starved for a crazed celebrity, is a picture of Robin Williams who I saw do improv on Sunday night.

(You guys who I invite to come to ASSSSSCAT with me, really should come more often.)

Also, he didn’t seem crazy, he said hi to everyone who waited for him after the show and took pictures and stuff. Really a stand up guy.

Sorry.

***

When I haven’t eaten in the morning, few can escape my wrath.

Take my parents for instance.

They thought they were coming out to get lunch with me, but I told ‘em right.

See, I have hypo-glycemia, as I have explained on these pages before, a condition that causes me to get irrational and irritable whenI haven’t eaten for 7+ hours. I go through rapid moodswings.

So when my parents showed up a half-an-hour late for our lunch date at Thelewala with one of my best friends (Langston Kahn) unexpectedly in tow, I didn’t say “Hi Langston” or “So nice to see you guys, thank you in advance for paying for my meal!” but rather “Why aren’t you sitting yet, I bet you haven’t even looked at the menu.”

That said, once we sat down with the food, we all calmed down.

That’s because Thelewala, which just opened at a cursed MacDougal street location by my house, is one of the best things to have happened to the nabe food-wise in a while.

Proffered forth by the owners of Dhaba and Chola, two of my more beloved places, Thelewala actually advertises itself as “Indian Cart Food”, which I feel like 5 years ago anyone advertising themselves as “cart food” in a store would seem crazy.

Such is the effect of the chowhound and the cool food trucks on New York City.

As a family and whatever crazy-type of super-pagan friend Langston is (“My chi-healer told me he wanted to make a contract for me to work with the goddess of the moon, to unravel some of my intestinal chakras.” Langston told me recently. “Sounds hot.” I replied), we all got a smorgasboard of items.

Clear winners included the Tawa Chicken Fry (pictured above) one of their few curries, spiced with onion and coriander seed and served dry, along with their Thelewala Roll, which was a spicy and slightly more filling spin on the sort of Kati Rolls one might find across MacDougal at the ever-popular KR Company. Everything was easily under 10 bucks an item, and the only thing that was kind of a drag were the “Phucka” (try pronouncing that one and not sounding like an asshole), which were small mini-pooris which you could stuff with spiced potato and “tamarind water”, but which would have used some thicker-than-water tamarind as they’d just drip right through the shells.

Langston and my mom both plugged the Bhel Puri too, though I’ve had that good lots of places.

Even Dan Pleck came with me out on a return trip there, though he opted for a piece of Artichoke instead.

“Dude, let me get a piece of that chicken.” Dan intoned in a jealous dead-pan.

“You’ve made your bed now sleep in it.” I told him, settling down with some hot parathas.

“Well let’s just bite for bite”. And we did, an interesting combination.

Dan just biked away after, but we’d both be back and knew as much.

***

THELEWALA INDIAN CART FOOD (not a cart)

Tawa Chicken Fry w/2 Parathas- $8.00

MacDougal St bet. Minetta Lane and Bleecker St.

ACEBDFM to West 4th St

***

Also, for those of you interested, I’ll be on TV again next Monday, I think. I haven’t seen the episode yet, but if I recall, it’s a pretty emotional one.

Just sayin.

Lady Problems

I sent this picture to my ex the other day, after taking it, passing by a window on Bleecker St.

It’s been around 5 months now since we broke up (since I was dumped, since she left me, what have you) and often I question the effect she still has on me.

After seeing “Puppy Whistle”, Rob Malone’s film at the Anthology, that we were both in together, I was taken on some sort of awed walk by Dan Dickerson, of the sometimes-mentioned-here PA-style Dickerson Bros, who wanted to talk about my still uncomfortable reality “fame” and how I was doing in life.

When I mentioned how hard it had been for me to see her up there on the screen like that, pretty, idiosyncratic, herself and looking me, the me in the film, with loving eyes, her arms around me, Dan took a step back on 13th St.

“Really, bro?” He asked, biting a grin. “After all this time?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “It’s probably normal if you love someone like that.”

“Shit, I haven’t felt that way since high school.” The Dickerson replied. “I mean that girl when I was 16, she really fucked me up.”

And I nodded as we walked both back to the karaoke bar, as Dan kept smiling goofily and I just questioned what it was.

For sure, looking back at my history, I’m a case of emotional and romantic arrested development, having practically hibernated throughout high school in newspaper offices and libraries in order to keep the world and my own insecurities from hurting me.

Apart from strange experiences at a multi-program camp at the age of 12, my awakening to the idea that anyone could even be attracted to me didn’t come until I was 17 and a girl stuck her tongue down my throat while we were sitting on the sidewalk in front of the old Joe’s Pizza.

This explains, or rationalizes to me how I got this way, experiencing a high-school level heartbreak at 23, but it doesn’t wrap things up, not wholly.

As I told my therapist, after the sort of introspection that comes out of not having anything listen to while walking down New York City sidewalks, the times I call out for my ex, pronouncing her two-syllable name into the air or out-loud, softly, are not the times necessarily that I want her to be near me, or that I miss her touch or the way she talked about “floppy ears”, though those times come too.

Nowadays, it’s more the times that I think about the things in my life, I’m not proud or am uncertain of, the moments I regret or my anxiety about my future or lack of direction.

The rushes, or panic attacks, where bad moments flood my eyes and I’m taken out of body back to relive a time where I made that bad decision, where I embarrassed myself, or felt shame.

I realized, I say the word “Eva” where I used to say the words “I hate my life”.

When I used to say the latter phrase, it was like a ward or a dismissal against those bad moments, a disavowal of a time I made the parents of an autistic teenager uncomfortable, or when I made a glib remark at my old, haunted job. When I think about embarrassing myself in front of my agents, or just sitting alone, feeling alone, feeling like no one loves me or wants to be with me right now. That loneliness.

I reach out for the word “Eva” in those moments like I once reached out to punish myself with dismissal.

There was a sense, especially towards the end of our relationship, that seeing her, that having her near me, that knowing there’s that someone who loves and accepts you, that knowing it was someone you felt the same about, like that could be something that could turn around a day, or an hour, or a year.

That reliance of love, on someone else’s, on that phenomenon, is both symptomatic of my low self-esteem (the “miracle” of someone I love loving me) and a difficult to break as I focus on not backsliding into self-hatred in the wake of it all and the loneliness.

Still, it’s made me more weary as I go out in the world, even more a somewhat-misogynist than when Eva would sometimes comment on my stirring-angry statements about unrequited love, about the women who didn’t return my affection, or the ones who hurt my friends (or who I perceived to).

Now, I even shy away from people who seem to flirt with me without affection, who wear it as part of their bearing, or use it for friendliness or charisma. Walking from a screening one night, an old friend tried hanging off me, hugging my neck, putting her cheek next to mine. A girl on set stroked my face as I said good-bye, gave me a hug when I wrapped shooting, asked me questions and looked into my eyes. When I went to see a show alone and lonely last night at the theater, a young lady hugged me, recognized me, put her hands through my hair and invited me over with ebullience and charm and a smile.

In summary, I felt revolted at these experiences. I feel shame when I look back at them. Partly because of my lack of quick understanding of sarcasm or irony, of intent and intentions, of a need to to be loved that feels shaken and confused by these cues. But on the other hand there’s that proximity, that feeling that the dark parts of my life might be re-averted, at least temporarily. That something might come from you looking at me that will help me be better at least for a while.

But that’s not what those people were offering. So instead, I have nostalgia, as I call out my ex’s name, once or twice, as I walk down Bleecker St.

As I take picture of floppy-eared loaves in the window of a bread-store.

As I wish for the absence of love, or whatever it is that still binds me.

As I want something to replace it, this misogyny in me.

Eva, I don’t blame you, for feeling like this was too much to bear.

***

Alright, Chadd Harbold asked if I was going to write about this and I really neither care nor understand this, but I guess let me try to explain.

Jenna Jameson called me a “fuckknob”.

How did this happen? To be honest, I don’t even really know who Jenna Jameson is (weird enough to admit that probably means it true, guys).

Here’s her Wikipedia page (apparently she is pretty interesting), but I didn’t know most of that until just now.

So, anyway here we go:

When I woke up on Tuesday, April 12th, I did what I usually do, which is check my phone, my email and my twitter (and maybe my online scrabble games).

I took a look and saw that friend, Buckwheat Groat and extremely prolific tweeter Ben Perry had tweeted something dissing someone for saying Bethenny Ever After was their favorite show.

Now, regardless of what I think about my own situation and my weirdo relationship to reality television, I am ON that show and Ben knows that and so he shouldn’t be dissing people for liking it like that.

But Ben Perry is not just a prolific tweeter but a wordy one and, given Twitter’s limit on how long a message can be, instead of writing a full rebuttal and erasing his message, I just quoted what he said with a little online frowny face.

Now, as those of you who read the blog can tell, I’m not one much for “emoticons” so my use of one here was probably a mistake, but the intent was something like “Ben, don’t do that, I’m on that show”.

And in fact Ben got that message later tweeting something like “Well, maybe she’s not so bad for liking that show because my buddy Nick’s on it.”

But Jenna Jameson did not appear to get the message and ended up calling both me and Ben “fuckknobs”.

What is a “fuckknob” you ask (and probably rightfully so)? I have no idea, just as I was somewhat weirded out by being called one.

I tried to explain to her the intent of all of this, but it seemed to no avail. She went back to tweeting about parties and LA restaurants and posting pictures of her shoes.

Ben, on the other hand, engaged in a full-out twitter blast war with her, posting salvos and earning hate from her legion of followers including one particular message from her calling him “not worth my time, cocksmoker, go watch pornstar that actually care about your idiot driven awards” for whatever that means.

A couple people tweeted in my defense. Some people on Facebook appeared to celebrate the occasion. I mostly felt confused and somewhat violated.

I felt my twitter account mostly non-offensive and was unsure if she was such a fan of the show why she called me a “fuckknob” (or even, again, what that was). Probably she couldn’t tell or remember that my account was the same as that nerdy, chubby kid on the show wearing his ratty hoodie. I don’t blame her, I suppose.

Mostly, I just wonder of the significance of it all. One girl told me I should feel honored she acknowledged my existence, while someone else asked me if I “printed out and framed” the tweet. I just asked “Why?”

But still, I feel somewhat victimized. Even if my friends seem to celebrate my “fuckknob”-ery.

As it now had entered all of our lexicons.

***

The Kimchi Truck stiffed me the other day.

I thought I could do it all, heading out on an early Sunday morning, racing myself, to finish the first type-up of a sketch for class later, all so  I could go out to the Sunday morning flea-market where the Kimchi Taco Truck was bound to appear.

All I had been hearing about this place from blogs and chowhounders were raves and awed stories of 40-minutes waits braved for a fresh collision of flavors.

But they didn’t show up. Engine trouble, I heard, or something about the battery.

Still I was pissed and unleashed a marginally tamer twitter rant against them after talking it out with my friends at the Schnitzel truck and realizing it probably wasn’t their fault.

So I waited. I bided my time. I’d tried to find moments even in this semi-jobless free-floating existence of mine that I could be set to go down to wherever the truck was early enough to avoid a line, try it out and flee back home for writing.

Today they were finally  in SoHo, I had no morning plans, no shoots or dalliances, I took a shower and was there.

And was honestly, mostly disappointed. The Kim-Cheesesteak, the much-blogged about semi-centerpiece of the truck (apart from the nominal tacos) was merely an average sized affair, with a good roll, but not enough flavor or punch to distinguish it from the clearly superior “99 Miles to Philly”, who provided me comfort food and shelter from bad love-less nights when I lived up by Union Square.

Worse though were the “Spicy Rice Cakes”, which were advertised as grilled, but were in fact wanly boiled in a pot, served rubbery in a red-glop not even warm. They made me feel a little sick even.

Still, I felt like giving the truck one more chance (and was still hungry from not eating all of the rice cakes) and tried the “Kimchi Arancini” which, in fact, were excellent.

Three small Jawbreaker-sized golden nuggets came with a red-spicy dipping sauce and a sensible bed of lettuce to cool them off and to soak up the debris.

Dipped and bitten into, the balls revealed a melange of gooey parmesan, mozzarella and some red-pepper flavor, which made them hard to eat slow.

Perhaps the disappointment and the tease of missing out on the Kimchi truck so many days led to my let-down.

But at least I grew some balls and got some there.

(sorrythatsprettylame)

***

KIMCHI TACO TRUCK

Kimchi Arancini- $4.00

Location varies (Follow @kimchitruck on Twitter)

***

BONUS- WARM-WEATHER SPECIAL

Coffee does strange things to me, even still, but I do get a hankering for a nice iced, especially to lift me out of the drudgery of an unknown day.

Jacques Torres’ Mochas are known for their cocoa-fab excellence in the ‘hood, but they’re too hot for the upcoming weather and JT won’t be sporting their impregnable “Frozen Chocolates” for at least a couple more months.

Instead, try to finagle an Iced Choco-Coffee like I did. It’s an iced coffee with their milk-brewed hot-cocoa instead of regular milk.

It gave me a caffeine buzz with a mellow chocolate pillow-y sensation walking down a sunny King St.

At the same price as a nearby Starbucks’ regular iced coffee, it could for you too.

***

JACQUES TORRES WEST VILLAGE

“Iced Choco-Coffee” (off-menu item)- $2.18

King St bet. Varick and Hudson Sts.

1 to Houston St. CE to Spring St.

Big DSing

For all of my moaning and complaining about the tumult and inadequacies of my continuing (perhaps even inaccurately named now) post-collegiate existence, my weeks and days can really be divided up into two categories:

When I have a video game I’m playing and when I don’t.

Those weeks I don’t are sometimes more intellectually productive or cathartic. When there’s no video game in my pocket, there’s no doubt that the week’s New Yorker will be consumed like a freshly toasted hoagie; quickly and with sadness that it’s gone. Perhaps I’ll find a book and latch on to it, or even read a play, which tend to be shorter and easier to get through, with their sparse barbed dialogue, without sacrificing the intellectual imprimatur of the Young Man Reader.

But the weeks I am playing video games, I have something else that is tangible: peace of mind. I know I’ll never go without stimulation, without distraction, forced to feel the world and feelings I’d rather not experience (my ex, my sister, my lack of any real job or sense of what might be my career, etc…). In the improv class I took last weekend with guru Dave Razowsky, he spouted at us Buddhism-isms, applicable to improv, one of which was that “lack of acceptance is the root of all suffering.” If such is true, so be it. But video games make for pretty good Tylenol for such suffering then, floating you by even if you know the crash might come.

There also the sense of the lack of “kick” the world has, that threat of impending “being” one faces with its disappointments. In improv classes (among a LONG list of others), I often turn to my phone, not because there is any sort of interesting thing to experience, but usually because to be present is to face your own discomfort in being you, to accept your writing for its flaws, your acting or comedy for its misses. Instead of being present where you are vulnerable, you’re back in that screen, your mind in another world.

Much has been said, I feel, about the part of our brains we’d lost upon the advent of the first Blackberry: the organizational part, remembering dates and calendars, sacrificed upon the altar of more reliable electronic notifications, a buzz in your pocket, instead that feeling of unease or remembrance in our heads. Now appointments are like childhood memories, faded into the background, unsure, as we turn to our phones or cloud-electronic calendars for confirmation of what our own memory cannot tell us.

Is there something to be said then about our emotions, our beings, the rest of ourselves being there? When I go elsewhere to protect myself, into my phone, where does the rest of me go? Does it atrophy, like those memories?

I’m not sure, I can say, nor do I think such thinking might change my behavior, just as the recognition of it hasn’t seemed to throughout the years. Even if we know our memories of dates and times will fade, the phone storing them is more convenient, more reliable, more of an extension of the self. I don’t intend to give such things up and when I hear people forgetting their phone, I feel in shock, as if someone just said “I forgot my arm.”

I don’t know how much of me I’ve lost or am losing or where I go or what I’ll become, which was my state of life without thinking of electronica.

I do know though, that now that I have a Nintendo 3DS, I carry a little virtual being, a “Mii” around in my pocket, named Nicky, a facsimile of me. As I pass people on the street, my Mii is beamed to whoever else has a 3DS as there’s is beamed to mine and when I next open my machine, I see their small facsimiles, their electronic selves meeting me on a virtual grassy plaza somewhere.

We shake hands. We interact. We share twitter-sized greetings. And then they stand in my plaza, for as long as I’d like, to play games with, to interact. They reappear in other games, like confabulated dreams.

Who is that other self, that Nicky?

And what does he have of me?

***

Keith Haskel drew this picture of me on a table in Williamsburg with crayons provided for children.

Well, children or the overgrown children that make up the hipsters of the area.

As we sat down for a brunch I owed him as part of a remunerative effort for missing out on his birthday party, a young woman stopped me, recognized me and invited me to join her at her table.

“Thanks,” I told her. “I’m flattered. But I’m here with a friend.”

Keith made arms up as if I should “take her”, but I smiled and she walked off.

The event was unexpected, but somewhat frequent even as my expiration date passed as part of the airing of my reality show appearance. It is perhaps testament to Ms. Frankel and her popularity that I am still stopped on the street as an implied member of her totemic circle.

“Duder, you just gotta play it up for all it’s worth.” Keith said doodling. “Use it. Use it for something.”

“What?” I replied incredulously. “Improv shows? I think even people who like me on TV don’t want to come see me do 1900s-era Austrian-play-inspired improv on the second floor of a methadone clinic.”

“Sorry,” Keith replied. “Didn’t hear that. Was too busy drawing this picture of you surrounded by a floating FEITCLUB hashtag.”

Seeing Keith doodling reminded me that while I had no idea what to do with this suddenly still-lingering pseudo-fame, that I still expected to drop at any moment, Keith Haskel was the sort of man who could have spun Bravo-fan Twitter followers into gold.

Keith had the sort of drive and energy I always admired out of film school, working on the funniest shows with up-and-comers like Human Giant and Delocated, taking time off school when necessary and getting hired repeatedly by Viacom and Adult Swim for both his funnies and his professionalism.

What’s more, doing these full-time stay till-9pm gigs, he managed to put out a sketch or viral video every month or two to his awesome website, as well as somehow becoming friends with street artists, leading to his footage being used in Exit Through The Gift Shop.

When I encountered him doodling, he was taking a hiatus just to write, not in the sort of way that people do it, depressed, miserable and mostly unemployable, in a post-collegiate haze, but as some sort of Writing-cation, to see what he could make or learn in the time before “The Man” came knocking back on his door.

As it did, Keith got promoted and rehired to a TV gig that doodling day and when we ate our food, he just kept throwing ideas out for sketches, for editing things he’d made before, for whatever could be of his in this real world.

As we got a little buzzed and went to see Rob-Beardo Malone’s screening of Puppy Whistle, it felt nice to unwind with someone who contained so much energy.

“Duder, you just got to not worry, every once in a while. Just keep doing what you’re doing and mostly ladies and some men will keep stopping you in the street for pictures. Life is great!” Keith exclaimed.

And wandering around the blocks with him to the Anthology, waiting for a Malone-filled movie it kind of was.

Until I saw my ex on screen, in the film we’d starred in together, Rob’s film.

But moments like that, they exist, but they don’t erase everything else.

Even if you think so, at the time.

***

In my recent adventures in food-blogging (“For what? For who?”), I have found somewhat irk-some-ly, that my stomach space is no longer entirely my own.

While this might seem like a slight or trivial thing to you, or even a luxury, in my own massive indecisive adventurousness of lunch-hunting (often the high point of the day), you might understand such a let down.

While I don’t have any excuses or any explanations (those are owned by others), I can tell you that I sneak a meal when I can.

And one of those meals snuck was, luckily enough, from the Bistro Truck.

The Bistro Truck was a place I had been jones-ing to go since I saw them inexplicably parked outside McNally Jackson as some sort of culinary accompaniment to a New Yorker festival book-signing.

That day I was just on break from work, I ordered a special, it was too expensive (but good), but STILL– I felt that I had not experienced the true essence of the truck.

Imagine my surprise then, without seeking it out, in-between writing-motivated meals, I found the truck in its (I later learned) constant location, off Union Square, serving up its tasties.

Despite minimal room, I couldn’t resist the 6-buck Dijon Chicken, cooked in the nominal mustard and craime fraiche, served over cous-cous or rice (“COUSCOUS ARE YOU CRAZY” I told the amused truck-man.) with a nice spring-greens salad on the side.

This was no Chicken and Rice Halal-Food dinner.

Instead what I found were the nuanced French-Moroccan flavors of the truck, with subtle spices standing in for obnoxious hot sauce, mayonaise/yogurt nowhere to be found, and delicate cous-cous absorbing every bit of the jus the Chicken came in and stirring in well, for bit-coated goodness. That the salad had a well-thought-out vinaigrette was not lost on me, either.

When I was done with it, I found myself, over-full and over-content, resting in my back-meshed chair and submitting to yet another Netlflixed X-Files episode.

The pounds would be worried about later.

I’d put them on my virtual Mii.

***

BISTRO TRUCK

Dijon Chicken w/Couscous and Side Salad- $6

5th Avenue bet. 16th and 17th Sts. (Mon-Sat 11:30-6:30 only)

NQR456L to 14th St Union Sq. 1 to 18th St.

April Me’s

I wandered around town on Wednesday looking like a million bucks, or at least that’s what I thought before my dad told me my blazer wasn’t a blazer but a suit coat, which I had borrowed from my friend Frank and failed to return on the occasion of his sister’s wedding some several years previous.

If it means anything, when I got my get-up on, my quasi-roommate john Beamer told me: “You look like you’re ready for spring.”

Which I felt like taking as a compliment.

After all, I don’t think I look like that normally.

In the week since I quit my job, I’ve gone stir-crazy almost once, for about 5 hours (12-5) in which I felt imprisoned in my house with nowhere to go, nowhere to see, bored by semi-completed video games, movies and television options, paralyzed by choices and the lack of accomplishment associated with any of them.

As noted when asked for film or food recommendations, online or in-person on the street (as has been happening more frequently as of late), I do poorly with general inquiries like “your favorite movie/place to eat” and better with questions like “Where’s good for down-midscale Indian in this general neighborhood?” or “What’s out this week that seems half-way-decent?”

When not presented by these questions, to give readers a viewing into my mind, I am not so much flooded by a barrage of choices, but left staring a blank, as if my mind were an enormous sorted file-cabinet system and without a prompt I would have no idea where to start, just gazing at closed cabinets for hours.

As mentioned, the same goes for my life, job-less, where I have been subject to the sort of paralysis documented here on this blog, the sense of knowing ideas and ways to rouse one’s self, but lacking the capacity for it, or the prompt. This could be the difference between “self-starters” and “hack writers”, or just the sum of experience/training of knowing what to do with yourself.

Or just the manifestation of my own neuroses.

Any of these ways, it’s why I fear unemployment for the lack of structure and for the sense that who knows what I’ll do in my life.

What I have done is this: I’ve gone on food writing expeditions (the reason for the suit), I’ve had a meeting with my agents (whose will, like God’s, seems inscrutable), I’ve emailed a Sports Illustrated model who seems interested in at least meeting with me (One of my agents: “Well, she’s really hot, so you could spend a worse 30 minutes of your life.”) and I’ve tried to improve my writing packet, asking people for advice like crazy and meeting up with folks for the usual drinks/dinner.

It’s gotten me out of the house, for a while, but I guess I still live in perpetual fear of the moment that opportunity will dry up, that this obviously fleeting reality-fame will recede leaving me a joke or worse, an after-thought, condemned from any meaningful work in the future, forced to relive a mostly-forgotten image of having a pretty decent number of twitter followers and a couple moments on TV that made people wonder about my mental capacities.

Basically, I used to be able to tell people I was a movie theater employee, which for all of it’s mundaneness, carried with it an identity, a service performed along with recognition. It was a narrative I could fit myself in, someone struggling scooping popcorn, but maybe writing and pursuing their dreams on the side.

Now I am a former movie-theater employee, buoyed by my last paycheck and some help from my parents, answering a manically gleeful “I don’t know” upon people asking me what I’ll do next in my life.

There’s the PBS job that may or may not materialize, a couple writing gigs that occasionally email me and the sense that maybe something might come of being funny one day.

But for now I’m stuck in the present, a place of uncertainty and attempted self-improvement.

Which is not to say I’m not having fun, feeling the flush and freedom of initial joblessness, just as I felt the sense of responsibility and pride (however small) when I started my movie theater job coming out of unemployment.

There’s a sense that with both that freedom and structure, they’re equal parts of your life, both enjoyable. As the great Jon Bander told me, who I still have this friend-mentor (frien-tor?) crush on, most people in their lives have Clark Kent and Superman parts of their days, the part where they work and do the job of an ordinary man, and the part where they live their aspirations and fly. If you’re too much Clark Kent, you feel crushed and if you’re too much Superman, you lose touch with your humanity.

My agents were impressed by this analogy as were the people I’ve told.

For now though, it’s amusing to be a spring-suited Superman.

Let’s hope I don’t go terrorizing innocents, anytime soon.

***

I don’t know why Teddy wears a sweat-shirt with my sister’s name on it (Cec). He couldn’t have possibly known that it’s her name (I’ve never mentioned it) and I don’t know too many things with those initials.

He said something about cooking, but I forgot it quick.

Anyway, I love my practice group.

If you look up in that picture you can see some blog-stars and friends:

The aforementioned Teddy, who I found in my Sketch level 1 class bizarrely repping Central Jersey and coming up with the strange racist names that the Jersey Shore-rs come up for black people.

Jon Bander peering out from the back, coaching our group and giving notes while I played with my phone.

Quasi-roommate John Beamer grabbing his cheek in dismay while wondering how he’d make it through the next improv scene.

And Joe Cozzo, mugging for the camera, a stand-up from my 301 class, whose first time coming was that week.

I never was sure that the writing group I ran meant anything until this past week when I was forced to put together a packet of comedy stuff (which still might be terrible) and realized that all of the b.s. drinky-times I’d had with friends at Sophie’s discussing how Russian roulette would work with Zombies in a post-apocalyptic dystopia (Alex Hilhorst, Mark Zhuravsky). The point is, every time you go in and bring something, or talk, or be a part of that filmmaking/writing world, you’re learning something, getting imperceptibly better.

But you’re also having fun.

Which is the great thing about improv practice groups, when you know, enjoy them.

You get to have fun with the funnest people you’ve met, mashup your friends together and see them play doing cool scenes, the sort of vibe you get at a party just without the awkward attempts at hookups (uh, sorta) or the weird hangover the day after.

We did crazy scenes including secret agents, shadow-economy labor-disputes and me playing a guy with two girlfriends who both want to cast him in things, with only an anatomical explanation to blame (pulled that one out).

Afterward, we walked down 8th avenue like a posse of Park Slope middle schoolers, miming 40s and enjoying the weather.

We talked comedy, talked shop. talked whatever we could.

We had fun, I guess, is what I’m saying.

And for the moment, the inter-dependent mess that I am, found satisfaction in that feeling that I most desire: that all the people I’m chilling with are most def. cooler than me, but they don’t seem to know it, just yet.

***

Yes, it’s the return of the d-bag Andrew Parrish and his hot girlfriend, Kelly Hires (or “Kallie Tires”, according to my Google Voice email transcription).

Kelly (whose last name only got me 14 points as a first move in Scrabble) had been pimping out free invites to me to Playwrights Horizons shows (where she’s a Literary Resident, whatever that means) and Andrew had drafted me to accompany him to one of these shows.

Douchebag, am I right?

Anyway, the play was a mess (the discussion of which after Kelly, amazingly, stood through my ranting of/about) and even the initial dinner choice proved somewhat disastrous as Shake Shack (who goes to midtown Shake Shack????) had a grease-fire and so was able to produce for me neither french fries nor Shroom Burgers, the two items I had planned on.

As consolation, Kelly took me to her Midtown West spot, the newly opened Peter’s on 9th Ave. Her claims of it being better than my nearby favorite Good N’ Plenty to Go were not substantiated, but well… look:

While I was the only one who got the meat off the rotisserie (a BBQ Chicken Sandwich) which is their specialty (the place resembles an upscale/less-sad Boston Market), the sides were huge and enjoyed by all.

Macaroni and Cheese (made with a different pasta daily, according to Kelly), were huge Ziti, dripping with caked-top cheesy-goodness and the authentic chewiness that comes from shunning pre-made sauces or dips in favor of real non-processed milk-products. The creamed spinach was real spinach, not glop from a can, which tasted a bit seared, cutting nicely the sweetness of the cream, though I have to admit, I usually prefer unadulterated vegetables.

As for the Sandwich itself: Huge and moist, thought perhaps it coud have been a bit spicier. The pickle that it came with was well-appreciated though and the price (under 5 dollars!) was nigh unbelievable.

As we sat there together in the shadow of 42nd St, I felt like the family-style meal made us a family for a bit, until Andrew Parrish started talking about tutoring kids and getting a raise.

“Taking children and their parents for all they’re worth. Despicable.” I mumbled through mac and cheese.

“Were those some passive-aggressive cheese-comments I heard Nick, I wasn’t sure?” Andrew asked.

“No, those are just my eating noises.” I replied. “In morse code they spell out: Fuck you.”

***

PETER’S ROTISSERIE

BBQ Chicken Sandwich- $4.92 (Sides additional)

9th Ave bet. 42nd and 43rd Sts.

ACE7S to 42nd St- Port Authority