You Are Where You Need To Be

I tried Yoga for the first time yesterday.

It was the sort of thing like Vegan-ism that I admit to disliking, the sort of thing that people use as a crutch to seem somehow spiritually superior to others. Back in sketch classes, when people would make jokes about “ashrams” or whatever I would always just think they were assholes, because really, what an elitist, shitty white-person thing to be making in-jokes about, Yoga.

But it was pretty good, though I’m really sore today.

I still don’t think I’ll be making any ashram jokes (just as I don’t think I’ll be talking about how much better my life is now that I don’t eat animal products) but it did make my back feel better and seemed to slightly improve my posture. It just seemed like a less body-destroying version of the Judo I used to do, which when I left it made me feel like my whole body was vibrating and that I craved meat.

But as I was leaving, the person who’d brought me there pointed out that this was a good way to meet women, since there was a low-percentage of males in Yoga classes and an even lower percentage of straight males. But I told her I thought it would be creepy to hit on a girl in a yoga class, a place where people are supposed to get away from stress and feel at peace and also somewhere in me it felt somewhat desperate.

This same person recommended that I highlight my TV appearances on my online dating profile, when they heard that my appearing on national television had somehow not lead to me being some sort of mighty-mack. But this too seemed desperate me, seemed targeted to attract the wrong sort of attention. I left the class feeling down and not knowing why, though maybe like I wanted to do more Yoga.

Thinking about it today and yesterday has brought me to a rather obvious realization and one that I’ve arrived at multiple times on these pages: for all my serenity and comfort for where I am in parts of my life, I still wonder what’s wrong with me.

In my personal and professional life I feel undervalued. Why couldn’t I explain why I hadn’t found anything meaningful romantically in the time since I’d been on television? Professionally there are problems too with feeling underused and undervalued that I can’t talk about here.

The other day after a good night at The Chris Gethard Show, I got in a fight with my sister that made me feel like I was 11 again and went out to a bar I know I shouldn’t have gone to, to talk to a girl I shouldn’t have talked to, about that something that just made me feel immediately like shit. I was undervaluing myself. I was feeling that way.

As always I can point to my friends and see similar problems, no great serenity or happiness there, necessarily. But maybe it feels frustrating to see their apparent grace in dealing with it.

Just like the Yoga people and the Vegans, my friends frequent seem to achieve some happy balance, or at least find a way not to show their loneliness. It’s healthy for them but it also makes me feel like who am I, but at least they don’t make jokes or gloat about it.

As I’ve written about before here, the best note I ever got in improv was from Ashley Ward, who told me at a bar after a class I took with her, after feeling bad about how I was as a performer that “You are where you need to be”.

It’s a good way to look at life and the situations you find yourself in, a way of seeing things that you make can’t make sense of as part of a larger situation, a moment in your life that is now, but will not happen again, part of a path you may or may not continue on.

One foot in front of the other, going out, doing things. I have friends who don’t go out, friends who wallow in their loneliness and depression and I don’t do that. I put myself out there and perform silly shows and write stupid blog posts (which probably don’t ultimately help win me any romance points).

I am where I need to be.

And I’ll try to figure out a Yoga class to go to.

Probably to the amusement of all.

***

Andrew Parrish is concerned about how he is portrayed on this blog and for good reason.

For about two-thirds of his portrayal, he has been a villain of epic proportions, so much so that Blake LaRue made a really fun Batman-villain origin-story for him, which I think was just Mad Libs pertaining to Scarecrow’s back-story (but still it was funny).

However, sadly, he continues to be a good friend to me.

When Robeardo Malone will have either a “large bowel movement” or a migraine or an attack of lethargy or Beamer will decide he’d rather hide from humanity that evening or Sebastian decides he has “too much homework, bro”, Andrew consistently comes out and does stuff with me and has fun.

This week, we headed to ASSSSCAT, saw a late-night set and then went on an epic quest around the city, wandering into a hotel to attempt to retrieve a pillow that was taken from him by his roommate for a French short-film shoot in a fancy hotel on the Gramercy Park, which we unsuccessfully crashed (something about the pillow being dirty) and then headed off for a night of ping-pong with comedy luminaries, into the wee-hours Sunday night.

Of course during ASSSSCAT at the UCB, a girl who attends the CGS recognized Andrew and started energetically talking to him, which he shrugged off, even when he later saw her on the street during our quest, he didn’t even stop to talk to her.

“What are you doing? Late night, pretty girl, chance encounter…” I demanded

“Eh.” He said.

Bastard.

It was a fun night though as I am epically terrible at Ping Pong and managed to hit the ball into the light fixtures several times before finally being relieved by the much better and funnier players.

Parrish is like me, single, but he’s goddam better at ping pong, non-chalance and now he’s even stolen quests from me.

I don’t know.

I’m watching you, Parrish.

Thin ice.

***

During that UCB show evening, Andrew and I ended up at a Japanese burger place named Kobeyaki over on 7th Avenue which I wanted to try.

They didn’t have any whole grain buns for their “Teriyaki Chicken Burger” (a good version of which certainly exists at Tebaya in lower Chelsea, nb) so I ended up trying their “Teriyaki Chicken Bowl” which came over salad even though I ordered it with brown rice.

It was good, a little overly sweet/sauce-drenched for my taste, but rife with good vegetables and a surprisingly varied-greens salad.

The next day at UCB I saw someone with the same thing as everyone crowded around to see someone’s opinion of the new place in the ‘hood.

“Yeah, it’s pretty good.” The eating dude said. “It’s Bourbon Chicken.”

I literally gasped (or maybe said “Whoa”).

That is quite a put-down as Bourbon Chicken is the sort of crap one gets from Food Court Panda Expresses AND/OR Food Court Rajun Cajuns!

“No diss, man.” The guy said. “I love Bourbon Chicken. But this is definitely it.”

And I guess thinking back on my experience of it.

He’s kinda right.

***

KOBEYAKI

“Teriyaki Chicken Bowl”/Bourbon Chicken- $9.00

7th Avenue bet. 26th and 27th Sts.

1 to 28th St. CE to 23th St.

Dick Night

It’s been an interesting week.

Perhaps I should give some explanation to the poster above.

Or maybe it should just come later.

Let’s start here: I’ve been dieting.

For those of you who follow the blog, or at least read the last post, you know that I tried doing a carb reductive diet and, mostly, I’ve stuck to it.

I haven’t eaten a significant portion of bread or potatoes or rice in about a week and a half. I’ve stayed away from anything with added sugar.

My only times breaking were drinks, with no mixers, once to celebrate the launch of “Skinnygirl Sangria”, which I think would have been disrespectful if I wasn’t drinking it at the party, and once to commemorate good-man Chadd Harbold’s first week down on his first feature film.

Both times, I tried to keep it to a limit. I break rules sometimes about fried things, because they are delicious and their restriction seems less based on the science of my diet and more on heart concerns for people who are not 24 (I said “23″ out loud when I typed that).

But mostly I’ve been good, which has changed me, how?

Well, I’ve been cycling through rapid mood swings in the mornings even for me, veering between sadness and anger and a nervous energy, the last of which is at least applicable to some improv. My book calls this “sugar withdrawal” and it’s the first real withdrawal of any kind I’ve gone through, at least in my memory.

Sometimes this means I just need to drink a coffee (sugar-free vanilla, 1-percent milk, not allowed Soy, too much sugar) or a swig of the Diet Coke in my refrigerator. Sometimes it means I need to eat a salad somewhere and wait.

Or sometimes, like Thursday, it means I get anxious and upset and my eyes see red and I tell most of my friends to go fuck themselves to their faces and storm out, catch a cab and retreat to an improv show, wondering why, as soon as I’ve extricated myself, I was just such a douchebag.

It’s the diet, but is it the diet? I counseled a friend who recently went through a bipolar break that they didn’t have to own their behavior, this was something they couldn’t control, the first time it had manifested. But they told me, laughingly, in the psych ward that was the only thing they kept telling them: that it was their behavior, their thoughts, their ability to control.

Maybe I should tell the story:

It was a Thursday night and I’d spent most of the day whittling down a 2-minute monologue about my blog that I had to perform for an audition I’d been asked to. It was the story of getting over a girl and how writing about it had helped and it was raunchy and weird and funny-ish. I rehearsed it over and over in my head, in the mirror, in the hallway of Shetler Studios, waiting to be called. I headed in and gave my monologue, thinking I had confidence in it, that it would kill, I had been asked to audition, after all, I could use this story, go to Moth or RISK story-slams and tell it, my pseudo-celebrity would help, this was one of the nice things, I bombed.

Or I don’t know if I bombed, I was fine, they didn’t laugh. But they called me in to read a bunch of other stuff, lines tweets, other people’s blog posts. I kept doing three or four callbacks into the room until they let the person next to me stay and told me to go.

And I hadn’t auditioned in a while. And I just felt silly in my expectations. And an hour earlier I had dropped my halal chicken platter into the cart-man’s metal bucket of lettuce, to much Arabic cursing.

Basically, I felt like a fuck-up.

I went to the end of my improv class that I’d missed, was told a rare “good work today” on my way out, but literally didn’t hear it with my headphones in and then when I took them out, still didn’t hear it either. It was another situation that was the bane of me, commitments to two different groups of friends I’d made, to see my friend’s show at the Magnet, or to go out karaoke-ing with Rob and Blake and Andrew Parrish (who had gamely come with to the Skinnygirl party earlier). I chose Karaoke but didn’t tell them I was definitely coming, thinking I just needed the catharsis, to yell, to croon, even if I couldn’t get drunk, I felt it, it’d be enough. Shaun Farrugia would understand if I missed his show, as long as I could tell myself and him that I was doing what I needed to to let off steam.

When I got to Planet Rose, the screens were all funked-up and Rob and crew were nowhere to be found. I discovered via texting and calling that too many of the machines were broken and the only ones working were in the back where people were concentrated and that they had all gone to play billiards and I should come.

Billiards? Billiards! I thought. This is what I would ditch my friend Shaun for? This is what I would not do unto others as I would have them do unto me for? I would violate my ethical code to go stand around and watch people play pool while I couldn’t drink because of my diet and just feel like crap and continue to feel like crap.

And of course what made me angriest of all is that I let myself be talked into this, I made decisions I shouldn’t have.

And when I walked into Amsterdam Billiards I was angry already and started yelling at them and being sarcastic as they obvious were just standing around playing pool. Where was my catharsis?

When Dan Pleck came in, who I had invited off his late-night work to tell me that we had to pay-up or leave even if weren’t playing pool, I told my friends to go fuck themselves and got in a cab.

The show at the Magnet was good and I even made it in time. It felt good to support my friends there and to see people I knew. But it just kept nagging at me after.

As I made that lade night walk, as I do so many nights now, to that 23rd St CE train station, I saw a post-dated poster for Mike Birbiglia’s “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend”, a storytelling show my mom had seen and thought was good.

And as you can see, someone had visually told him to go suck a dick.

I wish I had a better reason than that to through that in there, but I don’t. I guess just looking at that at 20 past midnight made me just think or surrender a little bit. Or back down.

When I got home, I texted my friends apologies and they all accepted.

I don’t own a scale, but I tried stepping on a novelty “Weight/Horoscope” machine in Penn Station about a week ago.

It told me I was about as heavy as I thought I was. So I’ll step on it again when I’m done with this.

And try to tell how crazy at least a few things are.

***

So in case you guys were wondering what I ate during all this dieting, it sometimes looked like this, though actually, this was a night that I was treating myself.

I had just helped my boss Jason move into his new apartment, shipped a bunch of things and schlepped around the city with my laptop in my backpack, weighing me down and causing me to sweat clean through the back of my shirt, which I wish I could say does not happen often.

Anyway, he lives near Tamarind Tribeca so that’s where I went afterwards to recuperate.

I ate a bowl of Chicken Tikka Masala, no flour or sugar in it, they assured me, with no rice and no naan, eating less of the sauce than I normally would.

With this diet, it seems like the way to survive is to find ways to treat yourself, to find things that would seem bad but are permitted, to find ways to indulge other pathways, thus super-ceding the need for potatoes and stuff.

Chicken Tikka Masala from Tamarind Tribeca is perhaps the best example of such a thing, creamy, with saffron and fenugreek, brought steaming to you sitting over at the hyper-modern bar.

The attendent outside recognized me and invited me in. I even met up with a girl I knew from college.

But, in both cases, I didn’t get anything special because of who I am.

I guess I’ll have to find a way to treat myself emotionally, someday.

***

TAMARIND TRIBECA

Chicken Tikka Masala- $21.50 (!) *Not my normal expenditure.

SW Corner of Hudson and Franklin Sts.

1 to Franklin St.

 

Openings, et cetera

I karaoked for the first time in a while on Tuesday.

And it was good.

It almost didn’t happen, in its own roundabout way.

Rob-beardo who had initiated the want to go back to our hallowed Planet Rose of summers past, was not even the one to let me know.

It was that dastardly Andrew Parrish who inconsiderately foiled what was doubtless Rob’s plan to surprise me with a night of karaoke and beards.

“Who told you?” Rob asked demandingly. “Goddamit, now it has to happen.”

But like I said, it almost didn’t. Rob and Katie Rotondi saw “Passione” at the Film Forum and were so depressed by the musical quality in that film, they thought to abandon the whole endeavor entirely.

Plus, well, um, they weren’t sure who was going to come.

“I just don’t know if it’s worth it.” Rob said through the sweat-soaked rubber of my phone. “I just feel like it won’t be any breaks if we’re just sitting there doing song after song.”

“Three people is enough.” I replied. “You’ll get some breaks. Drink some beers.”

“I guess so, babe.” Rob said. “Where are you?”

“About, um, 20 blocks away.”

“Why?”

Why was because I had employed several of my strategies for getting through pockets of empty time on a free-day:

1. I had gone on a quest, this time to a library to read Mick Napier’s book “Improvise” which I heard was a good one for those studying the craft. It was interesting though I felt the usual amount of daunted by how many years I’d have to do this if I wanted to be “good” at it.

2. I went t the Apple Store to dick around and continue a previous quest, which was to jailbreak one of the iPad 2s that was on display there using jailbreakme.com. Unfortunately, I was thwarted by AT&T’s delightfully crappy 3G service.

3. I dropped by the Time Warner center to pick up a cookie, be annoyed they were out of a different cookie and bother friends who work there (My friend Sam Song is a baker there but he’s unfindable in some hidden kitchen).

and finally

4. I decided to walk to the place I had an hour-and-a-half to be at. It’s something passed down from my dad, an avid walker, who recently had to be dissuaded utilizing the combined jew-guilting forces of me and my mother from walking to Red Hook from my parent’s place in the Far West Village to pick up a rental car (a distance of 5.2 miles).

It was poor idea on my part, this time, that last one, because it was hot out and sweaty. I soaked through my shirt, my back especially. I got dehydrated. I spent too much time playing Words With Friends on my phone.

The only can say for myself is that at least I felt I was doing something, because all of that sunlight was charging my phone through my cool backpack that whole time.

The allure of cool things.

Eventually we all made it there, Rob convinced over time, Katie getting over her anti-Karaoke bias.

My attempts at rehearsing Rob Thomas’s “Lonely No More” which I thought appropriate given my love of Rick Astley, were not so successful though my rendition of “What I Like About You” was pretty spot on if I do say so myself, though Rob critiqued it for “just generally being one of [his] least favorite songs”.

As I’m wont to do when my friends dither, I chose songs for them, letting Rob do a sadly half-hearted version of “Uptown Girl” and watching Katie pretty much nail 4 Non-Blondes, though she complained because she was an alto, though she pretty much nailed all the tonal shifts and I told her so.

We went on the three of us, transitioning through the hard-core early crowd who had been there to watch Law+Order SVU (the pre-karaoke entertainment) to an empty bar with just us three doing songs, to a bar full of our friends as my relentless texting and twittering paid off and our friends came in with their own friends, like branching into some sort of beautiful karaoke tree.

As I drank Bud Light, after Bud Light, after Bud Light and went from songs I knew, to songs I was just drunk enough to sing.

Blake LaRue even showed up, cast on-foot to belt a few 2000s-era raps from his couched perch, to everyone’s delight.

It was a time.

If I had a complaint about the evening, it was that the bartender (who had a good voice/song selection himself) was new and didn’t buy me back any drinks or beers, like they usually do there after a while.

I guess I felt pretty high on my horse as the person whom everyone knew in that karaoke bar of friends.

Also, in my drunkenness, I took some pride in my pseudo-celebrity. Very dangerous (though I have never even come close to “do you know who I am” territory).

But I got through my songs, including Gaga’s “Bad Romance” because it’s a gravelly song with parts for the whole bar to sing and doing man/woman swaps in Karaoke can be one of the more effective and impressive techniques. I even did a finisher that I stumbled through of “Dancing in the Dark” by the Boss and mumbled along to “You’re So Vain” which I had picked for Katie and came up several hours later and which she was embarrassed into doing when someone complimented her on her song choice.

I stumbled home, Smart Water in hand, catharsis achieved, not even sad for my drunkenness.

I was proud that I didn’t get Taco Bell on that long walk back.

I only got KFC.

***

I was also part of this hip new (old) thing recently called “The Mp3 Experiment”.

My friend Keith Haskel, of the coolness and the professionalism and (even) the hot lady action (come on man, you don’t have to have that too, that just sucks) helps run the event and films it, as part of “Improv Everywhere” the organization he’s a part of that helps do things like no-pants subway rides as social/art experiments. It’s pretty much as cool as you can get in the street-art-performance world nowadays and Haskel’s at the epicenter.

The concept of this event was relatively simple. Show up at a specific location (Pier 25 near TriBeCa) at a specific time (8:30). Bring some items (in this case, a mask, a flashlight, a glowing object, a glowstick) wait until precisely 8:30 and then press play on mp3 on your device. And then, just see what happens.

What happened this time was a massive mingling of people, a sort of combination, dance, meet-greet, walk, sillyness, high-five parade and massive aerial light show.

Within the confines of the structure of “two tribes having first contact” we took pictured of each other looking silly, slow danced, tried making weird clapping noises and generally smiled a lot.

It’s difficult to describe except to say before it I was worried about writing a sketch and afterwards I just did.

I went to bed happy having accomplished what I needed having not imbibed any mind-altering substances.

I saw Haskel a few times, from the crowd, filming with his Canon T2i only for a moment as he ran to catch up with the migrating crowds.

At the finale we all were instructed to take a picture ourselves and mine you see before you.

I ran into Keith on the way out talking to a pretty lady.

“This is my friend Nick,” He introduced me, gesturing. “Star of stage and screen.”

“And this is my friend Keith.” I replied looking at her. “He runs this thing and makes funny stuff and cuts funny stuff and has chiseled abs.”

“Alright, thanks Nick.” Keith said desperately waving me off.

“Chiseled abs.” I repeated.

And left the park, over toward the West Side Highway.

***

After my previous post, in which I tried to incite some sort of response to the food-truck craziness in NYC, it felt good to have a conversation about it with a real live person.

That talk came when I finally got my druthers up to visit the Mexicue Store over on 7th Avenue, in a district I found out bizarrely from my OKCupid app that is called “The Tenderloin” (bizarrely both from the name and the fact that I was using OKCupid’s disturbing new Grindr-like function).

The owner I had a long talk precipitated by my blatant declarations within the store about the nature of food trucks that caused him to approach me, where we discussed many things that were mostly espoused in the last post.

The point was, he recommended the Mac and Cheese.

Which I can tell you is both delicious and not offered in the traditional Mexicue truck.

It’s called “Green Chili” mac and cheese and I’m not sure if that’s accurate, but it’s yummy.

Full of subtle, subdued spiciness and my favorite man-add-on, green onions, it balances a nice tight-rope walk between creaminess and subdued flavor, enough to compliment the BB(or Mexi-)Q it’s supposed to be serving.

It comes in a little cup, sealed tight and hot and nice.

Some of the other items are still being tweaked, they’ve only been open for a week.

But this one.

This one should stay.

***

MEXICUE: THE STORE

Green Chili Mac and Cheese- $5

7th Ave bet. 29 and 30th Sts.

1 to 28th St NR to 28th St ACE to 34th St- Penn Station. BDFMQ to 34th- St- Herald Square

***

BONUS: This is an episode of a recent public access show directed by successful friend J.D. Amato, featuring the dancing stylings of Robert Martin Malone. Apparently it’s quite the viral hit. Enjoy.

 

Two Days

I knew on my birthday that I wouldn’t be alone.

This may be strange to say, but remember, my last birthday was spent staring into the arms of someone who loved me, swaddled in some sort of lovey-dovey haze.

Even though I’ve managed (as of very recently) to de-romanticize some of that romance, the part of my birthday which ends in kisses and eventually sex was one I knew would be conspicuously absent from this particular day.

Instead, we would be bowling.

24 didn’t feel like a very significant number to me and still doesn’t.

When I turned 23, I thought about what in my life I should be accomplishing now that I was out of college, my joblessness, my depression. It was probably when I really started leaning on my relationship to get me through the day.

When I turned 24, I guess, I had a job I liked, I wasn’t in love, but I was trying and I had friends and some sense of peace in not knowing.

I felt settled in my mind. Unhurried. Who the fuck knew what they were doing anyway? And if they did, namaste, fine. There was something nice in that acceptance.

On my birthday, I was surrounded by friends.

Frank Orio, who I’d only seen rarely over the past few months, my best friend from middle school, stayed with me most of the day, with lunch with my parents, Super Smash Brothers with Matt Chao on my dusty Wii, the movie “Terri” at the Angelika and bowling at Brooklyn Bowl.

The last part, though, almost didn’t happen. We almost left, but I smooth-talked our way in, trying to be nice to the manager, who afforded us our lane for two hours.

My dad bowled the first round and beat us all, leaving his credit card, incredibly, in my hands to pay for it all as he headed home to search for parking spots.

Matt Chao hobbled on one crutch or hopped to throw the ball exuding great delight that we received as I yelled manically over more and more beer: “Cripple Bowling!”

I for my part, was and still am terrible at bowling, bowling even less than Matt Chao the last round we played, much to my friend’s taunts and jeers.

Pitcher upon pitcher was laden in as more people showed up: my comedian friend Jon Bander, sometimes-”goob” Blake LaRue and Andrew Parrish and his unduly hot girlfriend Kelly, among others.

We drank and ate and ate fried chicken and macaroni cheese, for which Brooklyn Bowl (a division of the Bromberg Brothers “Blue Ribbon” empire) was famous for.

It looked like this:

Cheesy and gooey, covered in breadcrumbs, with salty skin-on fried chicken, reminiscent of the “Combo Meals” I used to get at Fresh Farm grocery as an elementary school student. We feasted and feated.

We danced a bit, Brooklyn Bowl is a hip venue and finally we went to the Soft-Spot, a bar down the street where you drink free if it’s your birthday.

And that day it was.

I drank more than I should have of course and nearly bit my friend Ashna’s ear when she showed up to the party, in a drunken, amorous, stupor.

I remember towards the end of night, sitting by myself surrounded by people, introspective with a Whiskey-Ginger Ale in hand.

I realized what I had at the beginning of this post, that no one was coming home with me. That there would be no loving arms, no sense of “I love you”, no neck to nuzzle when you awaken.

I got sad, is what I’m saying.

But in the end, ol’ crutchy Matt Chao ended up missing his train and staying at my place.

And don’t worry, I didn’t moves on him.

But we did get brunch afterwards.

And I did appreciate, for that night, not being alone.

***

I woke up the next morning, realizing there was the bleach from my bathroom where my water bottle should be and, soon after, staring into a coffee that looked like this.

I can’t really explain either one of those phenomena.

For all the drunken sadness at the end of it (predictable) it had been an excellent birthday.

My birthdays (July 3rds) are usually marked by the absence of friends, of a big party, because usually everyone’s gone for 4th of July and even if they’re back, they’re back on July 4th Eve to see the fireworks and it’s not longer my birthday when they’re there, just the nation’s and my belated.

In this way had been a good birthday, surrounded by friends and food and movies and family, the things I love.

But I still had a hangover, that I tried to combat with food and Excedrin and coffee.

Matt Chao hung around crutching a while, through my barely-coherent phase in the morning, trying to forestall my hangover into oblivion, with a mix of time, video games and episodes of “Community”.

“Chris and I used to quote this episode.” Matt mentioned, naming his female best friend. “It features LeVar Burton in various strange positions.”

Matt left eventually though and the sort of ennui that comes post hangover on a day with nothing to do combined well in me, sending me towards reading a book.

Well that and this article I spied on the Times’ most emailed, a review of the book by the interesting “sex-ologist” Annie Sprinkle.

The book was called “Paying For It” by the cartoonist Chester Brown and I went down to Barnes and Noble and read it in the Starbucks next door all in one sitting.

The book is nominally about a man who becomes a “john”, a  patron of prostitutes in Canada, after being dumped by his live-in girlfriend.

This could be a straight story of “breaking bad”, or someone going on a bender of self-destruction after their break-up (his is kind of a doozy) but he is instead as R. Crumb names him “an advanced human”, an introverted intellectual who sees the failure of his relationships as a sign that romantic love isn’t for him and thus tries to engage an alternative.

The book is interesting (especially given it’s graphic novel or “comic-strip” format) but it’s not as much about a “john” and “whores” as it is about one man’s search for love and meaning in the world.

In particular, he rejects monogamous love as something for “people with fragile egos who need to be told the words ‘I love you’ in order to feel ok.”

This, I admit, hurt.

I wondered about this as I wandered the street and ended up, upon my plan to give the book to fellow graphic-novel enthusiast Blake LaRue.

But I ended up, with my lack of 4th of July plans, partial hangover and severe doubt about my capacity/reasons for love, I found myself snuck into a pier full of food trucks, surrounded by my food-truck vending friends, a beautiful view of the fireworks and one pretty amused-by-it-all Blake LaRue

I worked when I could there, somehow snuck in to a paid event, trading items between food trucks and skimming a taco or a souvlaki off the top before bringing the rest back to Blake’s immobile food truck co-workers.

I was stopped by people for pictures (it was a food event), I found some pretty good port-a-potties and I had lots of different cuisines in one and shared them with friends.

Doug Quint of The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck grabbed me at one point and kissed me on the cheek in front of his customers when I kept talking him up.

“Well, in case you wondering about the name…” I told the on-lookers.

We had front-row seats to the fireworks on the pier in front of our parked truck.

We had a left-over pizza, some Greek Fries covered in Feta, some Smart Waters provided by Coke, we were there, sitting together, through the sunset, the terrible stylings of Nick Lachey and the impressive-looking fireworks.

At some point in the day, my friend Mark Zhurovsky told me in response to my worries about love that it’s “fine to not be whole when you seek it” as long as it isn’t “the answer to your problem”, which at least made sense to me.

“Or you could just pay for sex.” Blake suggested as we sat towards the edge of the pier.

“No thanks.” I told him. “Guy’s an interesting case, but I think everyone needs some sort of romantic love in their life. Keeps us interesting at least.”

I hopped a ride in the truck towards home or at least off the pier, wending out way through bumps.

For the time, I felt a part of something.

And now that I’m home, even with that sad stuff in the middle, I look back on it all with some pride and happiness.

So I haven’t found love. So I didn’t have anyone to stare at in the morning other than my 3DS and a comatose and entirely-clothed Matt Chao.

I know what I want. I feel like I’m struggling towards truth, asking questions and finding, well, some answers.

I have friends out there, people who care about me. I’m inherently valuable to them, worthy of something.

I can feel ensconced by that, I can feel good.

“There’s a difference between feeling happy where you are in trying to find romance and feeling happy in your romantic life.” I once told my ex-quasi-roomie John Beamer.

I can count on that, I guess, some goobs and some fireworks, some cripple bowling, some chicken.

Some time together.

Was nice.

***

BROOKLYN BOWL

12 Piece Fried Chicken- $23.00 (Mac and Cheese Extra)

Wythe Avenue between N. 12 and N. 11th Sts. Williamsburg, BK

L to Bedford Ave.

Bag.

 

It should come as no surprise to my friends that I have a new backpack, but still, I thought I should just share it with the world.

The saga of my bags goes something like this:

Since last summer, when I worked as an over-paid but sadly honest worker for the U.S. Census, I had been using their cool messenger bags as a way to finally not wear a hoodie with pockets full of useless shit.

Literally, I was a man who didn’t know how to wear a bag. Napkins, cell-phones, gaming devices, umbrellas, you name it; I would try to fit it into my pockets.

Things that were too big, like my New Yorker, I’d carry sweat-soaked under my arm or butt-sweat-soaked in my back jeans-pocket.

But that came to an end with the era of the census bags, two because I snagged an extra one at a meeting at the World Financial Center where they asked if anyone wanted another.

They both ended up ripping in the same places, diagonally through the dyed nylon that said “U.S. Census Bureau” and then horizontally right next to the zipper.

Oddly though, I still kept using them for a really long time.

A New Yorker could be placed along the side of my bag to internally cover the widening gash and the bag didn’t ever really need to close as long as I didn’t tip it or anything.

All in all those census bags were useful, they had a pouch for water bottles and they were relatively capacious and good and not bending pieces of paper, which is why they attracted so many errant sketches, script pages, other writing bric-a-brac from errant projects and classes that I never cleaned out, filled them to bursting, until, well, they did.

I carried the bag around all through winter, getting snow on my stuff when the “snowpocalypse” happened, finally capitualting and returning to the man who carried his stuff around crammed inside his jacket.

But then spring came, but then summer and it was too hot again and I couldn’t wear a jacket, it’d exacerbate my already profuse sweating condition.

So I carried my stuff around in errant plastic bags left in my apartment by me and my then quasi-roommate (now moved-out for good) John Beamer. The problems with that were:

1. John would throw stuff out in my carry-things plastic bag, because we also used plastic bags for trash and he’d get confused

and

2. My parents kept thinking I looked like a hobo, which I guess I somewhat did with my non-changing pants, broken-buttoned shirts and plastic bag full of slightly trashed-on crap.

So finally, my dad just said “order some bag on Amazon and I’ll pay for it” and there it was.

The Voltaic Off The Grid Solar Backpack.

It slices, it dices, it charges my phone or my PSP or my 3DS or friends’ phones or appliances as I walk around the city.

It’s capacious and can fit my big-bootied laptop, my various rechargeable batteries and hard drives, my New Yorkers, a brownie sometimes if I want one.

It’s powered by the sun and can charge anything fully even if there aren’t any power sources around.

I don’t have to go to strange Starbucks-es any more quibbling for that table nearest to the outlet, or begging someone I don’t know to let me plug in to their computer, like some weird sexual-innuendo’d joke.

Nope, I’m a self-sufficient man, with my water-bottle on one pouch and my small umbrella in the other, my devices, my panel.

Maybe the best part is, now, when people stop me on the street, it’s not always about a TV show, but sometimes about how fucking cool my backpack is.

Maybe this is just some vain transition out of pseudo-fame, maybe it’s compensating.

Either way, that long-haired nerd in me, once skulking around high-school. He’s nodding inside. He’s proud.

Not to say that the regular me isn’t also there, carrying my bag.

Coming home, plugging in batteries.

And looking at my broken census bags and missing the memories and the times that came with them.

Not that I’d want to use them again.

It’s bag nostalgia, if you will, not nostalgia for a bag.

***

Matt Chao got a splint last week, but he actually broke his foot the week before.

“Yeah there’s like a part that’s black.” Matt said over G-Chat as I asked him about it.

“What the fuck,Matt, go to the hospital.” I told him, with certainly worse punctuation.

“Yeah I was going to but my parents just said to rest it.” Matt replied.

“The fuck?” I asked.

“Asian Parents.” Matt said in about that punctuation.

“What?”

“If you had them, you’d understand.”

I didn’t. I had Jewish parents and Jews believe in (and largely are) doctors. If you got the sniffles you go to one, if you got cramps or rashes or allergies or anything, you don’t sleep it off, you make an appointment with your internist.

But Matt Chao, who had had a 15-20 pound stage fall on his foot on the set of a commercial was such a fucking–I don’t want to say “good” but–good PA that he didn’t opt to go to the hospital, nor did he the next few days.

“Just go Matt.” I told him still. “I’ll go with you. Just call me. We’ll hit up Beth Israel. I’m good with the Jews. It’ll be cool.”

Matt had never been to a hospital before as a patient, he told me proudly after he “proudly” opted to take the subway, hopping up stairs to the hospital. He had been born in front of the intake-doors to the emergency room and delivered there, according to his lore, which he followed with a signature staccato Matt Chao laugh.

When the Physician’s Assistant, a nice seeming Orthodox Jewish dude saw Matt he seemed pissed that Matt had walked on his foot for 5 days before seeking a doctor, stating that he had broken foot not in one but 3 places in fractures and prescribing him Codeine for if he needed it.

“Nope.” Matt Chao said blithely, proudly, though the PA insisted he take the prescription.

“That stuff can be useful to have around.” I told Matt, but he seemed unconcerned.

I spent the next while trying to convince him to stay at my parents’ house while he got a splint for his legs that the doctor told him would last 4-6 weeks, not terrible.

He was back to doing intern (read: slave) labor for PBS in a lull between gigs and the commute into the city from Jersey on the trains left him without money for cabs.

I kept arguing with him, even getting my mom on the phone to convince him, trying to tell him he’d be better off in the city living my ‘rents. But not even my mom, who’s always right, could convince him to get in there.

I think, honestly, he enjoyed the challenge, the game of swinging around on crutches through people, around people, to take them up on the offer.

“I’m going to jacked.” He told me on the way out of the hospital, swinging. “But fuck, I might not be ready in time for Christine’s paintball birthday.”

“23rd, 24th, 25th… Should be at the end of the fourth week.” Matt counted to himself.

“I don’t think you should be playing paintball for a while after you get out of that thing.” I told him.

“Nick, it’s paintball.” He said, as if that was all the explanation needed.

We hopped in a cab up to PBS, for this time at least.

He was supposed to stay with my ‘rents tonight, one night, for an early orthopedists appointment but missed that by accident.

“Oh well.” He said after I g-chatted him reminding him, too late, he’d gone home. “Your parents are really nice.”

“Obv.” I replied thinking how much fun Matt Chao and only Matt Chao would have tomorrow at 6am, navigating Penn Station rush hour on crutches.

***

I feel like it’s weird to do this, but I really liked this iced tea.

I was meeting up for a rehearsal (for a show this weekend) in mid-Brooklyn at Blue Marble Ice Cream, where a friend’s ex used to work and where I still feel jittery.

I had to sit there though, it was the meeting place for a rehearsal in a weird mid 90s-style church basement where we’d go after meeting up.

And I had to get something, well, because.

I had discovered in the last few months my somewhat lactose-intolerance and I knew that if I ate ice-cream I would feel like crud when trying to be the weird magician character I was to play.

So I asked if they had any iced tea and they said yes.

And I asked as I often do if the mid-20s hippy lady behind the counter had a suggestion for which kind I should guess and she said yes.

“I defer to your experience then.” I said and let her pour me some.

It was an herbal Hibiscus iced tea, slightly sweetened with Stevia, which I discovered after asking.

It was just really, really good and refreshing and didn’t need anything.

I find myself getting Arnold Palmers (half tea/half lemonade) when I’d be in the mood for tea, just because it’s a less artificial way to add that necessary bit of sweetness to iced tea, that is usually just over-killed with shots of syrup at Starbucks.

Here, on the other hand, the Stevia wasn’t sugar or a syrup, just a slightly sweet tasting thing.

I remembered it once from going to a weird coffee shop across from the McKibben Lofts and pouring in my coffee and thinking it distinctly tasted like soap.

But this time it was just right and it didn’t feel heavy and it just felt light and a little bit sweet.

I drank it and was happy and commented so to my theater director.

Who thought it was weird that I was talking about how much I liked my iced tea in character.

And noted me on it after the rehearsal was done.

***

BLUE MARBLE ICE CREAM

Hibiscus Iced Tea w/a touch of Stevia- $2.35

Underhill Avenue between St. John and Sterling, Brooklyn

23 to Grand Army Plaza, BQ to 7th Avenue-Brooklyn

***

P.S.- Happy Birthday to “goob” Blake LaRue and honorary “goob” Simon Robinson, who will soon be embarking for Japan to go wife-hunting/teach English or something.

Blake just sells coffee-infused frozen yogurt out of a truck and refs lo-rent B-ball games between comedians.

Actually that’s not bad.

Happy berfsdays.

Luff,

Nic

Summer is Near/Summer is Here

Summer is upon New York City, even though it’s only somewhere in May still, if only for a few fleeting hours.

With this realization, this acceptance comes the fact that when the heat comes up, it doesn’t go much down, that the paradigm has shifted, that when it’s 87 and humid in New York (pronounced “YOO-mid”), that this is the new reality, not a heat wave, but a fact of city life.

I, for one, never want to accept the onset of summer in New York City. It’s the city’s worst season in many ways, the one where the garbage and piss smells rise up from the sidewalk, burning and sizzling into all of our noses, leaving us standing in stifling subway stations, waiting for our cars to arrive, less for expedience than air conditioning.

Every time I meet a new group of people, I end up acting like a tour guide to them.

“This is what will happen,” I explain to them, summing up the last few lines. “It’s going be pretty awful, especially during the day. But the nights…”

Nights in New York City during the summer can be hot and awful, sticky too.

But mostly it cools off and the light lasts and lasts so 9pm could feel like 6pm and the warm weather, feeling tropical, could lead you out all night.

It was a night like on Sunday, after seeing improv, after seeing the Hangover II, after sitting in my house, seeing different kinds of friends.

I was strung out, come down on two nights previous of drinking and the two iced coffees and king-sized “small” soda I’d drank at the theater.

But damn, if that night wasn’t pretty.

As the crew of people I was with disbanded and went home after the UCB, I stuck around with Tara, an engaged Canadian high-school drama teacher, and Jeff, a Texan-by-way-of-Delaware engineer, who both had come to New York for this improv intensive and both were just trying to see the city one more night.

We walked around looking to see is Shake Shack was open (it wasn’t), talking about our lives “back home”, our present adventures and leaving out purposefully the somewhat-sad contrast of what we were doing now, versus what our lives would return to.

In a way, this improv class we were taking was summer camp again, a block of your life divided, where your adult responsibilities could hold for a while, suspended in the face of the people you were with.

That is, of course, unless you were someone with a night job like our “big brother” Sean, the singing waiter, who got on shift after taking notes for all of us to be sent out at the end of every day. Or Ray, who worked an afternoon-to-late reception gig. Or Natalie, who acted for scale and took tips at night, from a corner of the West Village.

Or if you were me and didn’t have much of “adult responsibilities” to begin with, with a job so occasional that you hoped you were still employed, so you could tell everyone how cool it is.

All of us still were “holding” for that time, for those shows, for those classes with different teachers. Like campers we bonded quickly, free to hug, free to touch.

We clapped for each other, called each other pet-names, laughed when we picked on each other.

“Juvenile”, my inner critic calls out and some friends would agree, but college is some form of that too, as is grad school.

A place where nerds hover and function, in suspension of real life.

But that time was now coming to an end. I’d told my boss my class was over on Friday. I’d told my new-found “intense people” about shows that were happening after they’d already left.

Camp was always interesting growing up because in some ways it represented an alternative reality. When you appeared magically in Vermont, you were context-less, separated from your environment. Even if you portrayed high status or low status through your bearing or gait, you were judged relatively, you were a person anew.

And then, after 3 or 6 or even 8 weeks, it was over. You might not see these people again. Life resumed.

Now I live a life without summer breaks from school or work or what have you. There is no “return to reality”, only the different phases, jobs, locations you live in, in your life, moving from crowd to crowd.

As I walked with Jeff and Tara, from out of town, it was Memorial Day, in New York City, the official start of summer.

And as I told them about how New York would be in the days to come, I only realized later they wouldn’t see them.

And I wouldn’t see them either.

But I kept on giving them the tour.

Because that’s what you do at camp; you pretend, for the moment, it won’t end.

***

 

“Excuse me, uh sir. I was, uh, just wondering, uh, if I could, um, get a… signature. Autograph, you know? Big fan.”

This is what I mimed to Rob Malone when we went to go see “The Hangover II” and he showed up in Galifinakis-style shaved-head-and-beard, claiming it had nothing to do with it.

“It has nothing to do with seeing the movie.” Rob claimed from his seat. “It’s just hot out. Also, sit the fuck down.”

I was standing in front of Rob in the awkward aisles of the 19th St East theater, where a group of us had been drafted to see the film on a slow Memorial day weekend.

I was just getting over an improv-prom I had attended, stag (actually with a non-date of the nice, but clearly engaged school teacher) which left me crying in bed over my loneliness at approximately 11:07pm, passing out in my clothes and waking up due to heartburn unable to go back to sleep at 4.

In these ways, the improv prom greatly resembled my real prom.

Plus I had someone tell me I was “adequately creepy” in a dead-pan and my enchiladas arrived cold on the table.

Just saying.

Rob and Chadd, who had met me for coffees earlier, helped me nurse through my stomach upset, my lack of togetherness and my generally weird improv-absorption by providing me some paths back to real life.

“I’m thinking of growing out my beard for the summer.” Rob claimed, during a conversation gap, causing all to jump on refute.

These were the moments friendships were made of.

Chadd for his own part was getting ready to shoot new projects in his exciting life as an “actual filmmaker” out of NYU-Film school and his enthusiasm and pluck in his progress, caused me to mention when we discussed some of our former classmates:

“Not ends up making movies and not everyone wants to.”

Chadd took a moment to take that in, with an Ohioan “I guess…” as if anyone who didn’t want to were crazy, in the face of his own refreshing certainty and commitment.

Andrew Parrish brought along his hot girlfriend, Kelly Hires, like a kidnapped Lois Lane, we imagined bound, gagged and saying something like “You’ll never get away with this, Luthor.”

But really they seemed pretty happy, away from their office jobs, on a warm afternoon.

Buddies Blake LaRue and Sean Dunn showed up just to look like each other, or like Blake was a 17 year-old impersonating Sean, and they mostly kept quiet except berating for peeing so often, a product of all of the caffeinated beverages.

The movie was terrible, we barely laughed. As another friend pointed out to me, “at some point it just became a weird drama and I just felt really bad for them.”

But on the street corner with Rob and his camera and his beard. With Chadd’s toothy smile, the Parrishes kidnap-y aesthetic and the LaRue/Dunn change-up, I felt surrounded in something worth while.

“Cheese.” Rob said as he took my picture.

And “Cheese” I replied when I took his.

***

If I’ve said it once on this blog, I’ve said it often: I hate breakfast.

But there are those times when you wake up too early on a weekend, bound by earlier awakenings and it’s 10:30 and you know you don’t want to wait until 11:25 or whenever the fuck these places start serving real food and you cave and you just go for something.

And sometimes, really, really rarely: It turns out good.

This is one of those times.

I ended up on a hypoglycemic Saturday morning at Bareburger, a spot near me in the South Central Village.

They just happened to have a 3-dollar egg sandwich, an early opening and an advertisement of a brioche and jack-cheese.

What I got was all the advertised above, along with the best tasting turkey bacon (something I usually avoid) I’ve ever had, “french fry hash” cooked with peppers and onions, and some pretty raw-dog organic ketchup.

When I was done it was sunny out. My stomach was full. I didn’t feel bloated or like I wouldn’t eat lunch.

I just felt like there was food in me that I didn’t mind eating.

At a table on a weekend afternoon.

Breakfast; that’s the highest praise I’ll give you.

***

BAREBURGER

Egg Sandwich w/Colby Jack, Turkey Bacon, French Fry Hash and Organic Ketchup- $8.95

LaGuardia Place between Bleecker and West 3rd Sts.

BDFM to Broadway-Lafayette Sts. ACE to West 4th St.

 

 

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.

Celebrity Night

This was the mob crowd this past Friday outside my movie theater, while I watched from the box office.

These men and women were swarming the writer/director/star of a new movie that had just opened.

Who is that man there in back? Is he Adam Goldberg and are we looking at Two Days in Paris? Kentucker Audley and we’re talking mumblecore? I do have a picture of DIY filmmaker Larry Levine flipping me off from the box as I took his picture.

But anyway, no. This man was the director of one of the most reviled films of the year so far. It didn’t have any huge stars. It came out January 2010 at Sundance, dead in the water. It elicited the greatest panning of any self-serious film that I can recall seeing from Stephen Holden of the New York Times.

But the film was Happythankyoumoreplease, and the man being swarmed behind all those people, was Josh Radnor, its director and one of the stars of the hit CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother.

I had no idea really who this guy was and why he was here. The only thing I knew about How I Met Your Mother was that it was supposedly a passable sitcom that some people liked and it gave Jason Siegel some money to keep writing on his off-days (and to make bad movies like Gulliver’s Travels).

When I saw the reviews of Happythankyoumoreplease (the title of which was fairly frustrating for a movie theater employee to deal with), I felt relieved. It would be a quiet night at the movie theater. Maybe I’d gent sent home early. My best friend Frank from high school, who I rarely got to see due to his Manhattan-leery laziness and gym-obsession, had invited me out if I got off early enough and that seemed worth whatever loud, crappy bar I might have to endure.

But the theater, despite the reviews, drew two sold out shows at 7:20 and 8 o’clock, while I sat in the box and marveled.

Both shows had lines, going out the door, people waiting in the somewhat cold, people coming up to me at the box office, asking about standby, calling me, seeing if there was any other way.

The security guard took pity on a few and let them in for the Q+A with a later ticket.

As a former film student and film critic, I thought what could be the reason? Were there really that many How I Met Your Mother fans lying around New York, who were die-hard enough that they’d come out to fill these seats despite the reviews, despite the lack of stars? It’s conceivable, given the show’s network and time-slot. Was it the star himself, Josh Radnor, who I hadn’t heard of, but who maybe had a cult appeal on the show, a following enough for himself that he’d draw out people?

Or was it just the same allure of the question and answer session advertised in the papers? The idea of that proximity to someone you see on television, the curtain lifted, the player in front of you for real? Was it just fan boys and girls out there in that long line, down the staircase, in that crowd waiting to talk to Josh Radnor after what must have been a terrible movie?

Or is that, like animals to light, we are drawn by proximity to fame, by the chance of discovery, by the feeling that somehow, in meeting the special person, we will become special?

It’s strange to think about, really.

That happened on Friday and on Monday, I was on TV again, as I had had some forewarning about, and though I didn’t get to see it, the next day my followers on Twitter swelled from double-digits to quadruple-digits in the matter of three-to-five hours. I had tweets and blog comments praising me and telling me I was special or great or funny or cute. Some people even sent me their number or email. Some people told me they wanted to see me.

I had only been on TV for three-or-four minutes, on a cable show, just playing me. No real artifice or craft. No “bit” really. But there I was, the real me, for people to see and decide on.

What did Josh Radnor feel, right in front of me, enveloped by that crowd? An actor playing, a writer with his movie.

When those people look at you like that, do you cling to who you are, do you try to be who you were for them?

Do you own what you’ve done? How do you engage?

And how do you get away?

I don’t have answers to these questions.

I have work tomorrow.

***

I usually don’t watch basketball games, on TV or otherwise.

In an incredibly nerdy, but true fact about me: any time I watch people playing a ball-related game, I always think, somehow, I’m going to get hit in the face with that ball. And then my glasses are going to break.

The fear makes me feel like a stereotypical nerd out of an 80s movie, but then again, there you are.

I owed Blake LaRue, the young stud pictured above sweatin’ through his shirt, because Blake had acted in my sketch show the night before.

While I had been thinking about what was probably going to be my “triumphant return to television” for a while, it had actually been back-shelved for my Sketch Level 2 class at the Magnet Theater.

Ro-Beardo Malone and Blake were going to act in one of the two sketches I wrote that were in the show, with Blake playing a 7 year-old, and Rob playing the somewhat benevolent bear that gets him over his inability to sleep at night due to fear (a real life problem I had at around that age).

It was down to the wire with the show, as it is for a lot of low-budg arty-type things and Blake and Rob had to learn some lines at the last moment.

But Blake brought it on with his lisp and Rob with his weirdo Bear, confirming my faith in them and wringing twisted laughs from the audience.

Above and beyond them, the great Jon Bander and certainly Louis Kornfeld did amazing jobs bringing my sketches to life with Bander helping me stage and figure out some of the last minute dialogue for the Bear sketch and Louis bringing down the house in the most acclaimed comic performance of the evening as a deranged first-time stand-up at an open-mic. The two men are both geniuses and the cheesecake I bought them as recompense the next day (along with some emotional voicemails) was hardly due justice for the pride and profound sense of gratitude a writer has for seeing his work done well.

(Also, I should thank my teacher the famous and duely-loved Armando Diaz, who directed the sketches, but I’m holding off to see whether I get rejected from the next class of his I applied to, which I find out tomorrow morning.)

Anyway, Blake got me coming to his basketball game as his thanks and Rob, well, maybe I’ll stop stroking his beard for a while when I see him. He’d like that.

I went out for a semi-satisfying time after, that Monday night, for too-pricey drinks and some hopped-up bar food while ladies and gentlemen conversed and I sat around date-less.

As I discussed with my therapist the next morning, whatever fame or feeling of success or funny-ness I could get from these things, it wouldn’t bring my girlfriend back. And as I watched as a girl I had half-a-crush-on who came out to my show flirted and talked with most of my non-me friends, I got down and walked home back to the X-Files on Netflix on Demand and some video game multi-tasking. Nothing like taking yourself out of the world for a while, in an immersion that is electronic and complete.

The basketball game was pretty cool, actually and Blake made some good shots, even though his team got crushed. It was quick too, not the 3 hours I’d heard about games taking, but just around 50 minutes.

As I sat in the one small row of bleachers they had set up in the middle-school gymnasium for the game, I felt good accepting the compliments of my peers about my sketch show, which they’d heard about, even though most of them didn’t come. It felt nice knowing I could make something that other people thought was cool and both Andrew Parrish and Sean Dunn subsequently requested to be in my next sketch, which made me wonder, now sketch class-less, when my next sketch would even be.

I suppose that’s how people get into the business of doing things like that.

I waited for Blake at the end of game and hugged him before grabbing a cab.

Last night when I’d hugged him before the show he shirked and shimmied saying “Geez, Nick, you’re make me so uncomfortable.”

But this time he just gave me a sweaty hug, as I hopped into a cab outside Avenue B, off to see my next friend’s show.

***

Of course, we elide an important facet of my sudden appreciation for basketball, which is, my persistent appreciation of a warm place where I can eat take-out.

While running between the Magnet Theater for my old improv coach’s show and Blake’s basketball game, I needed to pick something up and after a conversation/subway walk I gave to Lorina, a woman from my improv group I ran into at the show, I was left scrambling to pick something up to keep me from going into hypo-glycemic rampage mode while watching the game.

My walk from the theater to the R train had magically left me in proximity to K-town with its wealth of food options, but I had my heart set on Bon Chon, because of some pseudo Groupon coupon deal, only to find out it was eat-in only and I definitely didn’t have time.

Luckily, this led me back over down 32nd St and past the crazy food court housing Bian Dang, a stand which used to be the NYCravings truck, which would hang around my area all the time.

That truck looked like it had some mighty fine things, but unfortunately, everything was either full of pork or “smothered” in “pork sauce”. Given my eating habits, that wouldn’t work.

So I was lucky when I remembered the news flash from Midtown Lunch that Bian Dang was offering their spin on a General Tso’s Chicken.

I knew I was in for something when a. it took more than 3 minutes to prepare and b. they asked me how much hot sauce I wanted (“Yes” I replied, to their eventual understanding).

What I unveiled in front of the N.Y. Urban Professional Basketball League was a classy spin on a classic dish, sweet with orange zest tingles and hot with the chili sauce I poured on.

I also grabbed two spring rolls, for S+G, but the platter would have been enough.

It’s nice to see food that doesn’t condescend to the way you ate when you weren’t a foodie; it accepts your tastes for being valid for what they were and meets you half-way.

That’s the best kind of comfort food, in my mind.

“That smells delicious.” Said the jerseyed basketball player, turning the score-pad.

“Yep.” I replied. “Yep, it is.”

***

BIAN DANG TAIWANESE LUNCH BOX

General Tso’s Chicken w/Two Spring Rolls- $10.00

Part of Food Gallery 32 on 32nd St bet. 5th and 6th Avenues.

NQRBDFM to 34th St- Herald Square. 123ACE to 34th St- Penn Station.

***

For those of you interested, here is the clip from the show I was on last week. I hear I’ll be on next week too, though we’ll see how people feel about me then. Somehow I feel with all of this positive stuff throwing at me, it’s just setting me up for a bigger fall.

But then again, I guess we’ll see.

Offers

“Naughty massage?”

“What?”

“Do you want a naughty massage?”

“Uh-”

“Blow job.”

This was the exchange I was both part and party too coming home near round 2:25 by Broome St off the Canal stop of the A.

As I walked down Thompson, on the convenient straight shoot from the A train exit, a woman pulled up to me driving a black Ford minivan saying those words and talking to me out a rolled-down window.

As I stood there for the second participating in this unexpected situation, half of me was glad that even in a semi-drunken state on an only-okay weekend, my reaction to this was still a pretty obvious “no thanks, thanks though.”

The other half of me felt depressed that I seemed a such a target for such efforts.

“Oh well.” The woman said and handed me a card, which I took a picture of, just to be sure that the situation was still happening, of course, once she’d driven away.

I got some sleep that night, but it wasn’t too much.

I’ve had a few conversations this week all touching upon how sex, if it ever was the motivator in my life, no longer is.

Though I thought it weird and perhaps, in a twisted way, a little flattering to be targeted as a john, I was never even a part of the conversation of my outcast Magic-card playing buddies who would talk about “going down to AC and running the hooks”. I wasn’t even down for going to the strip club, perhaps out of the same stubbornness that leads me not to cut my hair, or to slouch everywhere, or to sometimes be kind of smelly: I want people to around me because of who I am, bad or good, and not for anything I’m putting on.

Practical applications of this include a nice almost (possibly?) date with a girl who I sat with drinking brown-bag beers on a park and talking about how creepy guys who put their hands on your knees get a bad reputation, and the online date I met who after 15 minutes of me giving her a tour of Chinatown, retreated to the A train, having looked me in the face a total of maybe 3 times.

Both of these were probably not successful (the latter far more clearly than the former), though it’s possible that after a night of fun, semi-drunken discussion of what the proper way is to show that you’re interested in somebody in a not-just “let’s fuck right now” kind of way, I should have been better at expressing those very thoughts.

But the point I am trying to make is that if you’re going to insist so stringently on being yourself with people, you’re going to have to wait a while to find someone who digs you back.

Or as Dan Pleck would say: “Dude, you just have to find someone who’s weirder than you.”

Maybe, but after that last date, I’ve started seriously considering just ending this online “experiment” and condemning myself to some loneliness for a while.

Which maybe some people would call “moving on”.

***

Or not.

I spent Monday, the premiere day of the television show “Bethenny Ever After”, sending emails trying to figure out if my five or six segments had been cut out of it, including one where (yep) I talk about my break-up on national television.

Who knows if they used that or if they used anything of me, but when my emails to assistants and line producers went un-noticed, I started to despair.

My relationship with that sort of reality notoriety (I still get noticed for the 2-3 minutes I was on the first season) is complicated, but the only thing I can offer is when you work at a dead-end job scooping popcorn and your date ditches you without looking you in the face, you pray for something, anything, to take you out of it.

For what seems like months now, I had been wondering what would happen when the show aired, when I’d be back on television for… what? Dan Pleck thought it was just my “zany character”, but I still didn’t know. Whatever it was, it’d make me something, not a person on television because of some talent or skill like an actor or a stand-up, but someone maybe awash in the glow of something, like a kid crowding an old school TV.

And like that kid, it was tempting to think my problems could be mutated away by a sketch show.

In the mean time though, I had been practicing comedy.

Not enough, not often enough, not good enough.

But I felt good when I did it.

I felt at least, like I was back in a community, of people, or friends.

The improv practice group I had joined and had become the strange interim leader of continued to go well, attracting more people and getting better each week. This week I even had someone message me when I got home saying “wasn’t that awesome!” which would seem normal but for the inherent exuberance of the word. It feels good to build something people care about.

And even though they were tired and occasionally flakey when I tried to hang out with them (read: they have their own lives), Blake and Rob Malone came out for a rehearsal for  sketch show we’re doing together on Monday.

As we hung out and acted and tried to make funny out of things in the hushed-tone lobby of the Magnet Theater, it struck me how nice and generous people were. How everyone I was with just honestly seemed to be trying to have fun with their lives and willing to help people out.

This was not just exemplified by Rob and Blake, but by Jon Bander from my Sketch class who had agreed to act in my sketch and even provide a costume and show up for a rehearsal, a guy a few years my senior who performed regularly at the theater. As Rob and Blake and Bander and I hung around that lobby, tried to find jokes, ate food from the surrounding area and borrowed pens, I knew that if I wasn’t finding a girl, at least I had a place to be.

Bander said good-bye and I thanked him for his generosity, declaring past his face and to Rob and Blake, that “I am attempting to adopt him as a friend”, to which he replied “Well, I’m hear ain’t I?” and they all were.

On the subway platform on the way home, I showed Blake and Rob the email I had gotten delineating the episodes I’d be on, with a guarantee of some online deleted scenes and they reassured my obsessive/self-loathing relationship with being on reality TV.

“I think this is really important and exciting.” Rob said, with a big beardy smile, in the sort of way I could never tell what percentage of his statement he was kidding for. “It’s a new age and you’re a part of it.”

“Hold on.” Blake said, taking out a marker to a blank subway ad-spot. He drew a little caricature of my face with poofy hair and one word: FEIT.

“There.” He said, after some work. “Just like the Obama Hope ads. Now I just need to do that across the city and it’ll start catching on.”

We got off at different places, but we all took the same train home.

***

As I’ve mentioned several times, having a 15-minute first-date where the person you’re with doesn’t look you in the face is not a fun thing to happen.

But at least in the time I had to kill between work and the date, I found a pretty good cheap waffle.

I had had a green-tea waffle before, about 2-3 years back, so I knew they existed somewhere in Chinatown and that they were about a dollar.

Of course, there was always the Hong Kong Egg Cake cart over by Canal and Mulberry which offered dollar waffle-life treats.

But I remembered the waffle and took time to seek it out.

This time, unlike last I had an iPhone, but it almost led me the wrong way; after all the waffle I was seeking turned out not to be 99-cents (as I googled) but a square dollar.

It resided at Paris Sandwich, a popular Bahn Mi joint with multiple locations, this one right off of Canal.

It also came with some cool toppings for some extra cash, but I wasn’t interested beyond the dollar.

The waffle was fairly huge and floppy, sweet, with only the nice hint of Green Tea, like the eponymous ice cream at Chinatown Ice Cream Factory (which I’m sure would make a good combo).

It was obviously not 100% fresh (as the small Hong Kong Egg Cakes) are. But it was a good treat and felt warm, sitting in my belly.

It would have been nice to have had after, for some comfort.

***

PARIS SANDWICH

Green-Tea Waffle- $1.00

Mott St bet. Hester and Canal Sts.

NQRJZ6 to Canal St. BD to Grand St. F to East Broadway.

***

So plugs:

SPOILER ALERT (highlight to read): I’ll be on Bethenny Ever After this Monday. March 7th on Bravo at 10/9 central. Haven’t seen the episode so don’t know what I do on it, but presume it’s something funny.

And of course, I’m still doing that sketch show I was rehearsing with Blake, Rob and Bander for over at the Magnet on Monday, March 7th at 7pm. You can find the link for that here.

Thanks dudes, for reading. And everything.