Yes, And

Without a doubt, improv comedy has taken over my life.

I am now in a place where I am actively “doing improv” seven days a week, each day, for at least two hours a day.

Most of this is due to an intensive improv class I’m taking over at the Magnet, a place I’ve written about before, with a bunch of really great people who are very talented and enthusiastic and whose openness and offers of friendship feel all the more suspicious due to the sudden-ness of our bonds.

“We must always be open and suspicious”. Our second week teacher, the slightly-mulleted Russ Armstrong told us, pacing near the stage before a scene in which we were supposed to be natural. “Open, so that we are listening to what our partner says and suspicious, so we are able to find meaning.”

He was referring to the scene, but as I’ve said here before, I apply improv philosophy to my life and it’s hard not to, again, when you’re doing it seven days a week.

Is the girl who emails me, but who is constantly unavailable, trying to draw me in or repel me? Am I supposed to follow her, pursue her, or take a hint?

Is my boss firing me when he says my availability doesn’t work for him for the next couple weeks, or is he just trying to be honest?

As improvisers in a scene, we make a choice and we don’t second guess ourselves. We trust in our partners and know whatever we are inferring from them is what they are implying to us and that they agree to the truth of that when it’s stated.

But in life, on a film set, next to your parents, staring at the girl across the room from you in class; you fear that these people do not see the same truth you do, you fear being shunned or shut down.

There’s no teacher yelling scene in real-life, no “back-line” to edit.

You’re just stuck with the choice and the consequences, which accounts for some of, at least my, emotional paralysis.

But on the other hand, there’s that phrase that’s central to improv, that “Yes and…”, a central concept which denotes agreement in a scene, the idea that we support the other person in their reality.

“You are all funny people.” funny-teacher Will Hines told our Saturday class in his non-emotive constant-deadpan. “But in the beginning, we’re not looking for funny. We’re looking simply to agree with each other. We’re looking at each other and building a story together, agreeing on the details and the world.”

This may also seem improv-exclusive, but I’ve noticed in my life.

The dynamic is action-validation.

It’s seen for granted in a parents’ love or approval. In someone knowing what gift to get you for your birthday, in your parents letting you take a class or study something silly.

In a young lady letting you rub your head on her belly and laughing and wanting to kiss you afterwards.

Knowing that someone takes what you give them, what’s personal about you and values it, that you agree on a reality.

Such things exists not just in scenes but in all relationships and, by contrast, when I find myself most upset is when I feel that I don’t understand reality, that I’m crazy, that I’ve made a move so poorly informed or unreal that it reveals my total ignorance of what the accepted reality might be.

This shock could come when I didn’t get in to Stuyvesant after feeling like tough-shit, or when a girl’s soft objections fade as I stop before kissing her on a subway ride back from Brooklyn.

“All pain comes from denial of acceptance.” said another improv teacher, David Razowsky, who I try frequently to beat now in iPhone Scrabble.

When I look at my life, my pain or my character, my relationship with that “yes, and” that acceptance or denial of reality, those moments of breakthrough and happiness, it makes sense that I’ve found myself thrown into improv so frequently: It’s a medium where people are bound-obligated to accept me. Where at least, for a scene, they won’t turn me away.

But as you learn to be a stronger improviser, as I throw myself more under the wheels of it all, though this current pace won’t last, you learn to make stronger choices in life. To show some confidence. To try for the result you want and deal with the fallout later.

As Jonny-Jon-Jon told me, after a surprise appearance coming to see one of my shows: “You don’t take enough high-chance risks, man. Sure, it could be awful. But how will you know unless you try?”

I don’t know if I’ll find that confidence. It’s one things to have in a scene where to goal is to agree on a reality and another to find it in a life that’s experienced rejection.

But yesterday, after yet another date fell through, a woman on the street stopped me and said: “Hey, you’re Nick the Foodie.”

And I said “Yeah, what’s your name?”

“What are you doing here?” She asked me.

“Karaoke, just practicing.” I told her.

And then:

“Why, wanna come?”

“Now?” She asked perplexed.

“Yeah, now.” I replied.

“Sure.” She said and we walked.

And we spent the next few hours together, talking, discovering our reality.

And it was as easy as that.

***

Robert Martin Malone, pictured above, is often a character in this blog.

He was also a character in the first season of a web-series I wrote based on this blog called, fittingly, “Feitelogram Film Blog”.

In that series, he was, hearkening back to my days of watching the Power Rangers TV Show, a “Zordon“-like figure called “Virtual Rob” who would appear to me via G-Chat to hear me out for advice on my misadventures and to offer me virtual advice.

The joke was, back then, that even though Rob (or Rob-beardo, Ro-beardo, Beardo, what have you) was one of my better friends, I’d rarely see him due to his strange habits of dancing somewhere in Brooklyn or staying in to watch marathon episodes of Cheers or “edit”, a state which I always imagined to be more hanging around making beard-jokes with his roommates Blake (who was labeled a “Goob” by one of the commenters of my previous post) and occasional/part-time effeminate cartoon-villain Andrew Parrish.

But Rob has his own life and I’m happy to hang with him when he’s around to experience his beard-y foibles.

The other night, Rob staged a screening for a bunch of his friends (me included), of his latest feature film, made with fellow miscreant Zach Weintraub, which is called “Fresh Starts For Stale People”. The film, a gonzo road-movie/post-college coming-of-age tale strikes upon themes of discovering America, dealing with new-found fiscal responsibility, the perils/pleasures of moving to Los Angeles and the influences of late 80s action films on the human psyche.

While I can’t show the film (Rob is currently prepping it to try to apply to Fantastic Fest, which if I have ANY clout due to this weird pseudo-celebrity, I would like to extend in asking them to unequivocally accept this film), I can show the voyeuristically-taped talkback Rob had with us after the film.

Now, I must warn you, I haven’t SEEN this; I’ve just lived it.

But my quasi-roommate John Beamer told me it was, quote, “pretty fucked up” and I’ve also heard it’s “like 36 minutes”.

That said, if you are, for some strange reason, a “Feitel Fan” and want to check out my one-to-two comments, they’re there as well as the semi-coherent ramblings of some post-film students.

Why do I post this?

I don’t know.

I guess I just feel or felt after the last post, that for all the characterization of my friends that are on this blog, their exaggeration, their twisted or invented comments, their general pissed-off-ed-ness toward me, it might be nice to introduce some reality, some sense of what “The Real Schlub Life of New York City” looks like.

God that was an awful joke, even for me.

Anyway, here it is, with Rob and all of us, in our glory.

“Enjoy”?

***

I had my first non-class improv show the other night and it was actually pretty funny.

But it was almost upstaged by some home-made french-fries.

I had never been to “The Creek and The Cave” in Long Island City, though I had heard tale that it was a near legendary haven for both fledgling practitioners of New York City comedy and a pretty decent burrito joint.

My crew from my intensive class who I was performing with had tried (inadvertantly?) to ditch me on the 7 train, but I had found them only for I to ditch them to grab a bite at this place I heard was somewhat legendary, as good comedy and good food rarely go together.

True, there were a couple of places on MacDougal St in Greenwich Village. The Comedy Cellar, New York’s premier “street cred” venue, was founded by an Israeli who was looking for something to do with the basement of his Israeli restaurant, the Olive Vine Cafe.

C.B.’s, where my friend and much more successful/hard-working comedian Zac Amico works, is in the basement of a not-half-bad Italian joint and they even give artisinal pizza to the starving stand-ups at their open mikes, if you stay till the end.

But anyway, The Creek and the Cave was known not just for hosting indie teams’ improv shows, but also for having excellent and inexpensive food and I deinied myself my usual 8-8:30 dinner for a pop at that 9-o’clock mexican/improv fix.

I ended up forswearing the burrito because the sandwiches were cheaper and came with home-cut fries, which always appeal to me. As I tweeted recently, it’s also nice to have a side or a counter-point to a meal: chips with a spicy egg-sandwich, a side-salad with a Better Being Highline, some mac and cheese or roasted Brussel Sprouts with some BBQ Chicken.

Or just some nice big-ass fries.

The ‘Wich I found was under the 10-buck credit card limit and my only complaint was that, for a pulled chicken sandwich, it should have come covered in BBQ sauce rather than the useful but not entirely welcome mayo it was squirted with. I saw how it was necessary to flavor-up the tender, but on the bland-side pulled chicken, but it did violate one of cardinal tenets of “being careful, mixing mayo and cheese”.

What it lacked though in that one area, it made up for greatly in value and portion size. The home-made fries were huge, golden, fresh, cooked-to-order. They layered the plate, leaving no empty space underneath.

The sandwich came with fresh tomato and lettuce and some welcome REAL cheddar, which were protected from the mayo by the lettuce, smartly.

It was quick and scarfable, with or without beer, though I felt I might have done it more justice if I had given it more time.

But, alas, I had an improv show to do, where I had to masturbate using a fishing rod and play a part-time improvising scuba-instructor.

Even in eating, we must find balance.

***

THE CREEK AND THE CAVE

Pulled Chicken Sandwich w/Lettuce, Tomato, Mayo and Home-Cut Fries- $7.95 (w/o tax)

Vernon Avenue bet 50th and 51st Aves, L.I.C., NY.

7 to Vernon-Jackson Aves.

Boys and Friends

“You know, you’re something of a celebrity.” My friend Clark told me, as he got into clown makeup. “You could really get people coming.”

“It doesn’t work that way, Clark.” I told him, putting on the partially-ironed blue button-up shirt I’d stored in the prop-closet.

“Maybe if it was something food-related, people would show up. Otherwise, 5,300 people on Twitter don’t care.”

It was the second week, the second time we were performing our Improv-to-Sketch class show at the Magnet on a torturous 4-week run of doing the same show to about 6 people.

This week was a little better; my parents and my roommate John Beamer showed up with my grandma and they did the work of a family, giving dutiful laughs at the places that seemed appropriate.

Still, it was a different kind of learning to do your semi-improvised same-show 4 weeks in a row to a dead house and watch sketches you thought you loved fall apart.

“Well, maybe you can tie it in somehow.” Clark offered, foam nose now on. “Offer them a food tour upon successful completion?”

“Goddamit, Clark.” I replied. And went to go find my cop hat, buried somewhere in the prop bin.

These past few weeks have been a strange admixture, or taste of celebrity as it would be, for a longer period than I’d expected.

As I told my friends, I’d been getting recognized (i.e: approached) consistently at “about 1-3 times a day” but it still wasn’t certain what the effect would be on my life or what I was supposed to do with it.

In the two street fairs I went to this weekend, I was approached multiple times and mostly brushed people off with a “hi” or a nod, an acknowledgment, given not knowing how to reply to people just saying “it’s you” on the middle of a food fair.

In the meantime, I felt pressure as I went to the food-fairs in Hell’s Kitchen and Park Slope respectively, to take pictures, to micro-blog to show my experience.

There was a sense that I had to feed this new “Nick the Foodie” persona, this identity that 5,300 people followed, with images and content and wit or else people would go away.

As I told blogger this afternoon, even before the show, I would watch my “blog stats” and aim for 100 people to come on a good day, to get up to that. Now that those numbers are so inflated, I still check them and take the loss of followers even the more personally, even as I know with even more certainty, that these people virtually do not exist.

It’s a fallacy of numbers and insecurity, I suppose, the same habit that led me to math in high school when I couldn’t stand the subjectivity of my English Class Essay “B-pluses”, now leads me to think of the solid-ness of numbers for my self-worth, the way that every time I lose this follower who I do not know, I am losing something else, popularity or fame, things I don’t even crave.

It’s just easy when you don’t know who you are or what to think of yourself, in high-school or post-college, to cling to a digestible set of numbers.

I still don’t get messages on OKCupid (even as I admit the dating site I’m on) and I still don’t have the confidence to approach a cute girl in an improv class, or the strange chick-with-glasses in front of me on a three-hour line.

I guess I just don’t know the meaning of this, or what I’m supposed to take.

The gentlemen pictured above were skateboarders who stopped me with Matt Chao on Saturday as we walked down Broadway. They first said their moms watched the show, but later admitted they loved it do and the picture they took of me was really for them. I asked them as Matt and I walked in the same direction as them if they’d reciprocate with a picture and they agreed.

I’ll never see these kids again, though it’s cool they watch the show.

It just seems like yet another split though, a disassociation of me watching them, watching “me”.

As we got through the show on Monday, Clark said hi to my parents after, briefly and congratulated them on my “success”.

I later got a message from my manager, telling me that I had an audition tomorrow and that she hoped “you come back on season 3!”

***

I still want to hang out with Blake LaRue.

Another thing about having a lot of Twitter followers is that it doesn’t make Blake LaRue like you any more than he already does.

“Blake apparently broke up a fight that the UCB Basketball Team had.” Rob-beardo Malone reported to me, from his coiffed/slick suit, on the set of Sean Dunn’s Confabulators.

“Was Chris Gethard involved?” I asked. “Because he didn’t let me in his class and I tried to attack him with twitter followers for it. Also he plays basketball.”

“Yes and I’m pretty sure that was one of the stupidest things you’ve ever done.” Rob replied.

“Yeah,” I replied. “You know you’re right. But I was drunk with Twitter power. I wanted to see if I could use it to change things. The answer was no. No, you cannot.”

Rob nodded and we sat in the silent acceptance of that fact for a moment.

Then Blake appeared and proceded to ditch me off the film set, walking hard and fast with Matt Chao, whose only reason for being there was to come visit me.

Blake, why do you make me so jealous like that?

But the man who was involved in an improv-team basketball-fight had work to do and made it to his truck.

He had just gotten a job at Joyride a “Buzzed FroYo” and Coffee Truck that serviced the UWS among other places.

I caught up to Blake and Matt somewhere around Lincoln Center as Blake settled in.

“Blake, why don’t you love me anymore?” I asked him, from the distance separating us outside the truck. “All I want is to be close to you and your friend.”

“You’re just too famous for me now, Nick.” He said, prepping greek-yogurt mixture. “I’m afraid you’re going to embarrass me on the internets.”

“Well, Blake.” I replied and took the picture above while he was looking.

“See!” He said.

“Yeah, I do.” I replied. “Point taken.”

Matt and I both tried some Froyo as he much more easily conversed with Blake about his life and the truck, which Blake admitted to driving “about four times”.

“I’m getting real good.” He said.

I wasn’t much a froyo guy, preferring the decisive unhealthiness of ice cream or, better yet, gelato when I was going for my frozen treats, but I did try a “soy-Mark Hamill” which turned out to be something like an iced Mocha which I downed in about three gulps.

We said our tearful goodbyes to Blake, as he assured me he wouldn’t be seeing much due to b-ball ref-ing duties and his need to go back to NYU to draw caricatures of people.

“It’s not that I don’t love you.” He told me. “It’s just that I don’t have time for you.”

Later, Matt and I ran into two women who asked me for my info so they could talk to me about reality food shows and their ideas. They gave me their info and told me to use it.

We were late to “Bridesmaids” at the Loews, couldn’t get tickets and Chadd Harbold, whom I had guaranteed an early ticket, was pretty (understandably) pissed.

I had a caffeine head-ache as I went with my remaining friends down to Battery Park and the inevitably excellent Apatow-film.

But when I busted out those Motrin in the movie theater for my Caffeine-crash headache, I thought about Blake on that truck.

Too cool for me.

***

JOYRIDE TRUCK

The (Soy) Mark Hamill (Espresso, plain soymilk, 2-Scoops Chocolate)- $5

Broadway bet. 66th and 67th Sts on Saturdays (Locations vary per day)

1 to 66th St- Lincoln Center.

Be The Lion

I got a haircut recently but, I’d like to point out, not because people were badgering me, but because it was time.

Though there is still is that perception that now people are seeing me, I might as well try to look a little good.

But then there’s that expression on my face, one I have some version of often in photos.

There’s discomfort there for sure, but I think a more specific labeling would be to call it ambivalence.

Yes, I’ll see this online, maybe. The person taking the picture might be my friend or someone I don’t know. This will go out in to the world beyond my control. I won’t know how I look, no way to be sure. So I might as well look perplexed and uncertain. At least then, I can look back on those photos, others will too, and know at that moment, some amount of honesty.

But with honesty of course, as I’ve discovered in smaller and larger ways through this blog, comes feedback, a genuine reaction and comments that are more difficult to deflect or react to, because when you write your emotions, your bad breakups, your feelings of underwhelming and preening and finding, they’re real and so people are talking about something real about you, when they reply.

It used to be that this was a more minor concern. My quasi-roommate John, for instance, might see me pull a poor sentence construction (which happens often here) and somehow misconstrue what he said and I’ll have to either live with it or fix it. Back when I was in, as Jonny-Jon-Jon would call it, more of my “fuck it” stage, I would write angrily with names about the people who slighted me, call them out on the internet and whatever my group of friends were would read it like the bunch of Gossip Girls or whatever we all were (disclosure: I don’t watch that show).

But now, my Twitter followers have roughly doubled twice over the past two weeks, so much so that when I gained a thousand followers in the span of three hours last night, I thought Twitter was going through maintenance and it was a bug.

Apparently, it wasn’t, as the tweeting indicated. But the tweeters, my new “followers” had other things to say. A lot of compliments and nice things, but also now they were reading through my blogs like my life and trying to problem solve. Specifically, since I’ve posted a few blog posts on BravoTV.com about dating (not to mention it’s constant reference here), I’ve had people try to fix my love life.

Some people said nice, comforting things: that I was cute, or adorable, for me to take heart, or what have you.

A couple ladies reached out and tried to express interest, though they lived out of town and even I wasn’t ready for that kind of “internet dating”.

One woman this morning left a comment on my blog, several paragraphs long as a reply to my Bravo post, talking about how I felt like a puppy when a girl shows me kindness.

Paraphrasing:

“Girls don’t like dogs. They don’t like being followed around.” She said. “They want a LION who comes in commands the room. BE THE LION.”

The idea being that I should be confident and forceful in my pursuit of ladies, less hesitant.

But these are things I don’t know how to apply and I feel like most of the ladies who I become attracted to, mostly see me before I get all “FTN” (or “Flirty-Time Nicholas” as I once described my talking-to-girls alter-ego to my teenage students when I assistant-taught a filmmaking class). I’m myself to them and it seems like they accept that and if I think they’re cool and they seem like they accept me, I become that FTN/puppy, wanting to be sweet to them, wanting to be there. Showing that I’m interested and that there’s another side to me.

My stubborn high-school philosophy teaches me that to do otherwise would be self-denial and the backbone of how I’ve lived my life since high school is to never compromise who I am for anything, never try to be anything else, as it could only be deleterious to your self and what you have to offer. This sense that “you have everything you need” is something reinforced by improv and one of the reasons I feel so deeply into it. But in those moments of uncertainty that surround my own loneliness, I wonder what it would be like to change, to be the lion or, in other words: kind of a dick.

That is, moreso than I already am.

But the other bottom line is that now I’m really out there. The traffic on my blog, the twitter followers, some invites to some events, people wanting to interview me or even maybe fly me places.

People paying me to write (that’s pretty great).

But with all this writing, with all this attempts at honesty, comes exposure, which means meeting new people and new people finding you, but also people seeing you and making judgments, living your life, to some degree, online.

How do I react to a thousand more people listening to micro-blogs, a thousand more people saying nice things or a few saying they have crushes, or the ones who want to talk?

Still this whole thing is bigger than me, is too difficult to grasp, is hard to comprehend other than moment-to-moment.

As my father told me: “You’re entering another dimension”.

I can’t explain other than that I keep expecting the other shoe to drop, all these good comments to turn to bad. This too shall pass.

I try not to get used to it.

Except when I’m depressed.

And that’s when I text my playboy friend Dan Berk, after a young lady sends me a pretty picture of herself, while commenting on our 3000-mile distance.

And I say:

“Alright, fuck it, Dan. I’m famous, help me get laid.”

***

It was a whirlwind couple days for me.

I had two shows I performed in the last two days, a class show for my 401 Improv class and a “Sketch Revue” I helped write and acted in, which was also improv-related.

Andrew Parrish showed up to one of them, like a reformed “Batman: The Animated Series” villain, attempting to pay his debt to society.

At the 401 show, I did my best, playing one of a pair of pirates who eventually go to Ikea and pick up some “hoes” in the food court, but inevitably I felt crappy.

Even when my teacher Will Hines gave me two compliments, I couldn’t even hear him, only hearing the compliments he gave to others, thinking how much funnier they were and how I wished those compliments had been given to me.

That Will actually seemed to like what I did didn’t even settle in, until a few hours later, at which point I just decided to leave it and give up any notion of feeling good.

As I told my former teacher, Ashley Ward, when she wrote that nice comment to me from the last blog post, “What you said to me was right, but it doesn’t mean I’ll stop ragging. It just means they’ll be that other voice there, telling me to stop.”

But I did stop, eventually.

I took a great class with an improv teacher named Joe Bill, who seemed for all his guru-ness, to be a really sweet guy who, like any good improviser, noticed my nervousness and went out of his way to try to make me feel comfortable, which I’d be lying if I said I didn’t appreciate.

But the biggest treat was on Monday, after I performed the sketch show that I’ll be performing for the rest of the month, crazily, at the Magnet Theater for about 5 people (“You guys shouldn’t worry.” My funny classmate Clark told us all before the show. “It’s just Rich Dery out in the audience and he’s all full of sympathy chuckles.”), when our teacher Armando Diaz congratulated us on the show and offered to go out drinking with us afterwards.

I don’t want to get too much into it, because Armando, who I serially call “Teach” as I do the teachers I respect, strikes me as kind of a shy guy. But he’s been very kind to me, in my studies with him.

A revered coach and teacher, Armando founded the Magnet where I’ve taken so many classes. He taught Ed Helms, Rob Riggle, Paul Scheer and so many more. He invented many of the improv techniques and adapted others that all the New York improvisers use. He’s respected by everyone in the community here, he’s wrote for the UCB TV show and more.

But he’d also reply to my emails about being unsure about whether I could write sketches. He’d console me when I’d show up to class and my job was treating me–and making me feel like–crap. He let me into a level 2 class after I didn’t write anything funny in level 1, because he told me he “believed” in me. He even read and got back to me about my crappy sketches before I had a meeting with my agents, whose desk they might well be still sitting on.

At every step of the way, he’s been kind to me when he didn’t have to. He has all this experience and respect, but is happy and accessible and makes others feel so too. When he told us all that our show went great after the few laughs we got from few people, it went great to all of us, there was no arguing.

If Armando said it, it was true.

When we went out drinking, we took turns buying Armando beers and quizzing him on questions and he told us stories from back in the day and smiled and relaxed. It turned out he was a film school grad like me, once, who didn’t know what to do with his degree or his career.

When Noel, the way-too-cute Personal Trainer/PhD candidate in my class/show, told him that she loved the community he’d built at the Magnet, the way people all seemed to like and support each other. I told Armando:

“It’s like a film set. The crew and the actors look to the director. And if he’s happy and calm, so are they.”

And Armando, ex-film-schooler, agreed.

Later that night, I went to see the Mantzoukas Brothers show, pictured above, back at the same stage I’d performed on earlier.

As I sat in the front row, I found myself surrounded by the friends I’d made since I’d started classes there, the people who respected me and who I dug in turn. And there we were for that ridiculous show, with those funny improvisers on stage, all sitting together in a row, laughing till midnight.

“That’s what this stuff is supposed to be about.” Armando said, sipping a Stella at the Triple Crown. “Being friendly and supportive and laughing. I just hope that’s what happening.”

That night, at least, it was.

***

Now that I am a semi-professional food-blogger, I feel like my bench is pretty shallow for eats.

Yes, I know that I have a horde of people telling me to “be myself” and not change, but the truth is, ladies and germs: most of us eat the same thing or varieties on it, every day.

It’s a matter of convenience, taste and location.

Add to that that now I have some insane number of twitter followers I feel obligated to cater to and there’s not much left for me to write here that hasn’t been done.

But fuck it, I’ll talk about it anyway.

Even though my Improv 401 class at the UCB is a big source of stress for me, it did give me a good opportunity to go over to the Madison Square Eats event, where normally I’d have no excuse.

A big part of “food-questing”, as I call it, is finding an excuse to go somewhere, making the best of your errands and turning them into opportunities to visit places you wouldn’t normally. In this way, I saved (for myself) several family vacations.

The Madison Square Eats event takes place next to Shake Shack over by Madison Square Park and features my local Calexico Cart as well as stands by several of the neighborhood and outlying restaurants including Home on 8th, Illili and a rare Manhattan outing of Roberta’s Pizza.

As I perused the place in that Saturday 11-o’clock hour before class, I saw a tent from Eataly, Batali/Bastianich’s nearby clusterfuck which is usually impossible to even walk into, let alone eat at. Though most of the things on the menu were pork-related (as my ex-roommate John Weeke would tell me “In Italy, chicken is something someone would cook for you at their house.”), they offered some deep-fried chickpeas, tossed with tomato powder and garlic.

They arrived crispy and hollow, like potato chips, crunchy to the bite and plentiful in a cone, with that nice little bit of spice.

They provided good sustenance for the inevitable hard-decision-making that followed, looking for which real-meal to get among all the craziness.

When I finally decided, the chickpeas were gone, with minimal stomach damage to impede the coming sandwich.

I skipped out of the festival as the noon hour hit, stopping only to pick up a “dozen half-cookies” from Momofuku Milk Bar to bribe my 401 classmates.

And the same classmate who told me “this is best cookie I’ve ever had” told me “you were really funny” after our the show the next day.

Genius, man.

Cookies.

***

MADISON SQUARE EATS

From Eataly- Deep-Fried Chickpeas- $3

From Momofuku Milk Bar- “dozen half-cookies” or 6-Cookie Assortment- $11

Broadway bet. 24th and 25th Sts.

NR to 23rd St. F to 23rd St. 6 to 23rd St-Park Ave.

Role Players

I should reveal, I don’t watch myself on television.

“Why not?” Chadd asked me as we walked down the side of Union Square.

It was a beautiful day out, the type I enjoy and others see as dreariness, not so sunny and probably around 57, with just that edge of chill that keeps you going, makes you remember you can feel the world around you.

More importantly, it was the day the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck re-opened and we were off on a mile-walk pilgrimage.

“I don’t know.” I replied. “Maybe I’m too self-conscious. I just don’t he said.”

“Well, I think you were awesome.” He told me with his definite Ohio certainty.

“Yeah, you gotta admit, it was a great scene.” chimed in my quasi-roommate John Beamer, along for the trip.

Saying I was self-conscious was easy and mostly true, but the truth is that seeing myself on screen is knowing how I’m portrayed to America. It’s one thing to be on these shows, to be in the moment, to try to be yourself or at least show your best side and another to see what you’ve created, pass judgment upon it, another level of reflection.

Who is the Nicholas I am? A question I thought I was past back in film school where I made movies about failed dates-that-weren’t and awkward family moments, and cast the non-daters and my family respectively. Who was the Nicholas on screen there, that version of me, that other me, that character? Was it just a side, an exaggeration or some aspects of myself? A “Persona” like in the video games I so enjoyed or, more frighteningly, was it the real me that other people saw when they saw me, was this the finished product?

These all seem like strange, reflexive questions, but take for example how we experience our own voices, something I feel I’ve brought up before.

When I speak I hear myself with a deeper voice, an octave lower, coming deeper with the vibrations of my vocal chords creating a base that permeates in my body. At the same time, my brain paints over the parts of my voice that are undesirable, a lisp, a stumble, a slurring of words. I don’t even hear them unless they’re very pronounced; they’re the part of the “white noise” my brain tunes out.

Such is an example of the gap between self-perception and reality. The person listening to me hears the lisp, hears the octave higher, there’s that difference and it’s difficult to change, barely known or recognized.

Such measured ignorance is what I persist on in my life now, as I’ll choose to read my tweets, but not google myself, choose to hear about the show, but not watch it.

People tell me not to change, to be myself. I worry if I see the person these people like on TV, that need in me to feel like I have to correct myself, to hide my weaknesses, to present a stronger front, it’ll coalesce, I’ll become closer to that Nicholas and farther from me.

And so when the two pretty girls on the Big Gay Ice Cream line in front  of us recognize me, I talk as myself. I give them food advice. I go into the zoned-out, gesticulating trance I go into when thinking about restaurants.

And I make it through, ice cream in hand and that much better.

“Dude.” Chadd told me. “I will tell you why this fame thing is good. The hardest part of meeting someone is just saying hello and now you have beautiful women coming up to you, doing your work for you.”

“Whatever, I’m not going home with them.” I said, neutralizing it. Who knew which me attracted them?

“Well, anyway, the brunette was pretty hot, I checked her out.” Chadd said.

And went back to eating his Bea Arthur.

***

Rob Malone stole my iPhone at a warehouse party.

I guess it was too tempting to him, or at least, at that party, he was too cool.

It was a Saturday and a welcome one at that.

After the usual struggle of my Improv 401 class (more on that later), I came home to a mostly naked John Beamer, lying face-down in his loft-lite John-cave, mostly passed out.

“Wake up,” I told him. “Najia and my dad are coming over.”

“Which one first?” He groggily replied.

My friend Najia had just been dealing with a med-school break-up and wanted to come over and chill with some filthy bros for a while, knowing at least hanging with us would be different than the collection of hard-studying, hard-binging med students she saw every day.

My dad just came over to fix a couple light bulbs.

John eventually got dressed and showered, while Najia and my dad and I took part in a guessing game over speakerphone with my mom looking for wine she could use and my dad answering with a head shake while we translated, all while he stood on a step-ladder trying to fix a fixture.

Eventually, Dad left and Rob and (the villain) Andrew Parrish came over and we sat around watching Buckwheat Groats videos on my TV for a while and trying to figure out what we would do.

Najia and I bonded a little over love lost and found and the small steps we’d take in getting over (kind of) our exes. It was refreshing how un-weepy it was.

But eventually we headed to the party, where I couldn’t drink due to a sinus infection and to which John war a blazer I told him “you could probably pull off if you had a mustache.”

“Definitely.” Najia added.

The party was hopping, a warehouse/studio space, nestled deep in Hasidic Williamsburg off the J train.

As we walked down Lorimer, I was struck by those same uneasy contradictions present in me due to my Jewish heritage.

We crossed the street and averted our eyes, to avoid the pack of 8-14 year old girls, dressed in black who ran up into their vesitbules turnings their heads from us at their mother’s behest, or out of instinct.

“This must be my fault.” Najia said, indicating her brown skin, though they couldn’t have known she was Kashmiri Muslim.

“Actually, it’s all of ours, a little.” I told her. “They’re turning they’re heads because we’re unmarried men and women walking together. The Haredim do not allow young and men women to intermingle as such and don’t allow their children to see such behavior as common. They’re not allowed to watch movies or television that show such things either. When I sat on a plane with a Haredi couple back from Israeli, even the married wife covered half the screen during ‘The Sound of Music’, covering the male characters when they appeared.”

“That’s a little intense.” John said. “You’d think New York would be a bad place to hide from the world.”

“On one hand, they want to maintain the culture they’ve created, to honor God, to preserve a set of values they see as degrading in our society.” I answered. “On the other, is the explanation I tend to: Jews, throughout history, were always isolated in the ghetto. When others stopped doing it, we did it ourselves.”

But I still felt that tinge of sadness as I passed people who could be my cousins and saw the shame and fear they felt towards me, as I headed towards illicit activities, while they celebrated the sabbath.

The party was good. Sam Baumel who threw it in honor of the expansion of his production company, did a good job enticing artists and performers to show up, giving the whole shtick the feeling of an old-school Chelsea-style opening.

He also had the good graces to use Ro-beardo Malone to promote the event, which later got Rob and his beard some hot-girly attention for his dance-worthy celebrity.

I had fun, wandering the sea of people, climbing the many flights to the beautiful Williamsburg roof, seeing Najia and John unwind a bit, each talking around, falling into their own and swallowing the social bit, which weirdos like us sometimes neglect.

It can be good to remember there are other people in the world to talk to.

Rob borrowed my camera for a while, took some shots, before I tracked him down and grabbed my phone. He seemed pre-occupied anyway and even Andrew couldn’t find him when we went to leave.

We left without Rob, saw the Groats perform in the East Village and headed to respective homes.

Najia had a good time. John wasn’t hungover. Andrew in slightly less villainous (or deceptive) fashion even invited me to Fast Five the next day with his hot GF Kelly Hi-Res.

And I–

“The girls surrounding me had one question.” Rob told me the next day. “How do you know ‘Nick from Bethenny’ and how did Sam get him to come here?”

***

It’s not every day I eat pasta for lunch.

But this day, I could use something.

I was burnt out from replying to tweets like they were text messages (they are kind-of), trying to figure out my friends prompts of “how cool I was” and dealing with a slew of shifting demands from an ending workplace situation.

Add to this my sinus medication keeps me from tasting things as normal and having an appetite (“a blessing” John thinks, a curse in my mind), I figured I could use a treat.

Pepe Rosso, the original one, still reminds me of my sophomore summer in Italy.

The middle-aged man behind the counter cursing loudly in Italian.

The Roman Catholic church next door.

The Salumeria and Latticini on either side of the street.

And a place you can get a bowl of pasta and a salad for 8.95.

I did the honorable thing and brought the couple nearest the window their paninis; there are no waiters at Pepe Rosso and I was in the way.

I sat down with my WTF podcast in m ears and poured spicy olive oil and vinegar and parmesan on a small, provided plate and stewed it together with a warm piece of bread.

I soaked up the oil from my simple salad, I sloshed the fresh mozzarella in my pasta around the sauce.

I didn’t lick the bowl out of some sense of class.

I bussed my table and thanked the man, still cursing in Italian on the phone.

“Ciao, saluti.” I told him.

“Thank you very much!” he replied liltingly.

And with a smile, I was gone.

***

PEPE ROSSO TO GO

Penne Tomato Basil with Mozzarella and Mixed Greens Salad- $8.95 (12-4 only)

Sullivan St bet Houston and Prince Sts.

CE to Spring St. R to Prince St.

***

One last thing, as promised earlier, about the improv from last week.

Recently, there’s been a surge in my blog traffic due to my recent… semi-celebrity and my posts on some larger sites.

I figured with that traffic I owed some more explanation in my state of mind.

Improv classes can be stressful, particularly when there’s that air of competitiveness. As John puts it, if the UCB aims towards sort of ideal society, its “the most cutthroat sort, a society founded on always being ‘on’.”

But there’s also the ways that improv has improved my life, meeting new people, giving me a community, learning to play me and accept my choices and instincts on a base level, with grace.

When I finished a class I took with a great teacher, Ms. Ashley Ward, she did what none of my improv teachers had done before and took us all aside, one-by-one at a bar, and gave us notes individually.

“You’re real hard on yourself, Nick.” She told me, sitting across from her at the Triple Crown. “You think being hard on yourself will make you better. But it won’t, it’ll just hurt you. Don’t think you need to be better than you are right now given you’re experience. You’re just where you need to be. You’re doing great. Believe that.”

In the competition of it all, in the craziness of not knowing your life, it can be easy to assign blame to the things that are stressful. To be hard on yourself and others.

Ultimately, who am I to pass judgment on what brings others happiness and me as well?

When I went up to my current teacher, the pretty objectively funny Will Hines, and told him that I thought I was struggling and did he have any advice, he told me: “Why do you think that?”

Ultimately, in improv or in life, there’s that sense of narrative that need to say that you’re improving, that you’re better, that you’ll go somewhere, you’ll succeed.

It’s part of the uncertainty of being my age as much as the uncertainty of most other ages I’m guessing too.

It’s harder to just accept where you are for as messy and strange as it is.

Where I am is taking comedy classes, sketch and improv, most of which I enjoy.

I spend a lot of time laughing and thinking and interacting with people who I respect.

That seems like a good template for a life.