Addendum and A Weight-y Thing

Two things, one quick, one not so quick.

First off, as an addendum to my last post: For all of my certainty and commitment when “trying to help” people by giving them notes, I am frequently, frequently wrong.

As I have told my comedy friends, virtually any time I open my mouth in classes or groups with Armando Diaz, the maestro of the Magnet, to say something like “I think…”, the next phrase is uttered by an Armando a simple: “Well, I don’t.” About half of this is playful and I still do OK around the guy. But it’s important to remember that I am still pretty goddam young and pretty goddam stupid and even if something insane does cause me to go up and be all self-serious to you, I apologize in advance and please only take it for whatever your want or, even better, say “fuck that guy”.

I will have deserved it.

***

I posted this picture on Facebook of me this afternoon in a new shirt that I bought at an American Apparel warehouse sale as an example of what I look like for people who haven’t seen me wear a Medium before (I am very proud of this).

Other than the typical (and nice) “Wow nick you look great”-s, I received two strong reactions:

1. You look really, really gay in that shirt.

and

2. How did you do that?

This is not a simple answer, it is easier for dudes (I hear) and it happened to work well for me where it will not work well for others.

Some people do sports to lose weight. Some people count calories. Some people (like my friend Frank who had a FAR more drastic transformation than me) become gym rats.

This is my story:

Back in June 2011, I had a bad date which was one in a series of bad romantic encounters that broke the camel’s whatever. I had told myself many times if I wanted to be more attractive, I could lose 20 lbs and this bad date spurred me to think: “Well, if this is the quality of women I am attracting I should probably change something.”

So then, critically, I had an example:

My friend Jon Bander had lost around 120lbs (over a long period of time) and was getting compliments from all the ladies I knew for getting even skinnier. Bander was a good enough friend that when I decided to do this, I had someone I could talk to about how he lost the weight and how I could lose mine.

By the time I sat down with Bander to start talking and finally realize that he’d never remember to bring his old copy of “The South Beach Diet” to our sketch meetings, it was late June and I just bought the book by Dr. Arthur Agatston. If you plan to do what I did, buy that book.

Before I start, caveats:

Know why you are doing this: I did this because of a combination of proving to myself that I could fulfill a boast I had made and because I was unsatisfied with my love life. One of those things came true and was strong enough to sustain me. If you don’t have a good reason, whether it be for your health or whatever, you’ll fail.

Have a coach/mentor/message boards: There were a million times where I freaked out and was worried that the slightest misstep would totally fuck me. This sort of behavior leads to self-sabotage. Have someone you’re doing it with, a friend who’s done it successfully, a community of people you can refer to. It will help give you confidence and remind you that others are doing this too.

Remember that there is strength in not caring about your appearance and weakness in doing so: Now that my weight has stabilized and I’ve bought some new clothes I am beginning to feel ok. But until very recently, I was much happier when I was 225 than when I was less than that. Caring about your appearance is a shitty thing and as your body goes through crazy changes, you will feel incredibly insecure (if you are like me). Know that this is normal and that other than a feeling of some accomplishment, weight loss doesn’t solve psychological issues. If anything, it causes more.

Don’t not eat: This was a great one giving to me my Bander. Nothing will kill this more than not eating or starving your body. This is not a calorie counting diet (though use your best judgement), so adhere to the rules instead of not eating. I am proof that this can work if you follow things through (at least till I gain 40 lbs…) so believe in the methodology, not anorexia.

NOW:

These are roughly the three phases of the modified South Beach diet that I did:

Phase 1: Strict Phase/Kickstarter

Once you will read the book, you will understand that the way the diet works is basically by eliminating sugar and things that become sugar easily. Your first phase will be detoxing your body from quick sugar rushes.

This phase last two weeks.

NO: Bread, Potatoes, Corn, Rice, Fruit, Anything with flour, ANYTHING WITH ADDED SUGAR, BEER, WINE, LIQUOR. (You may want to think about other ways to have fun.)

Sugar is: Glucose (white sugar), fructose (corn syrup or fruit).

THINGS YOU EAT: Lots of salads (dressing, moderately is fine), meat/tofu. I ate a lot of chicken fingers (lightly breaded). Eggs. Cheese. Coffee. Veggies! Splenda-y things for dessert which you should eat! (I got Jello Mousse Temptations–1 a night–which saved my fucking life.)

Think of ways in this phase to replace the forbidden things in this phase with not forbidden things. If you’re going to get Indian or Chinese, don’t get rice. If you’re getting Halal food, get your chicken or gyro over lettuce instead. Try to still enjoy the same things you enjoyed in your normal life as much as you can and eat delicious things within the boundaries. Carry around nuts (important) in your pocket in case you get hungry, since your body will get hungry more easily as it craves sugar.

Know that in this phase, you are detoxing, so your body will be acting like it. You will have cravings, your mood may be erratic, you will be dying to just fucking eat a sandwich. DON’T. STAY STRONG. Seek support if possible.

You will lose 8-20 lbs depending on your body and strictness by the end of two weeks at which point Phase 1 is over.

Phase 2: Transitional Phase/Set-Up

This phase will last an unspecified amount of time, ranging anywhere from 1-6 months to more until you reach your target weight.

STILL DON’T HAVE: White Bread, A lot of potatoes, White Rice, Almost anything with Added Sugar, Corn, White Pasta, BEER.

DO HAVE: Meat, Veggies, Dairy, Whole Grain Bread, Brown Rice, Cereal with 5g or more Fiber and not a lot of sugar, Fruit! (hooray!), Dark Chocolate (THANK GOD), Red Wine, Liquor Drinks w/Seltzer or Diet Coke(sparingly).

In this phase, you start transitioning back from the hell of detox to real life. Take it easy doing what you do. Start adjusting. Having a sandwich, even on whole wheat, may seem like a weird thing at this point. Your stomach has also shrunken at this point. You will start wanting less food (as weird as that seems). Start slowly adding “good carbs” to your diet. Maybe you have a whole grain sandwich for lunch and a salad for dinner. Weigh yourself sometimes but not too much and use your best judgement.

At this point you may lose anywhere between 0-4 lbs a week. Fun.

This phase is much more liberal than the other phases so start finding small ways to ease yourself back to reality. If you have to break very occasionally at this point, it’s fine as long as you pay attention and don’t let that become your life. Find ways in this phase to live a life that works for you, which I found pretty easy. Just order brown rice or get your sandwich on whole grain. Have some potatoes but not a lot. Carry around some dark chocolate in your pocket like you used to (and may still) carry around nuts, so that you can eat some anytime you want something really terrible for you. Dark Chocolate is delicious and not that sugary as desserts go.

When you go out drinking with your friends, get whiskey neat or red wine. Both are expensive, so you might drink less, which is good and you drink less of them anyway than you would beer, which is like drinking a loaf of bread that kills you.

This should somewhere naturally, when you are ready, transition into:

Phase 3: Life.

There are technically no rules in this phase, but by this point you should be starting to feel out what you want your new body to look like. Maybe start exercising, like I did, doing Yoga to get some tone on your body. Your body will be very weird now. You’ve kind of cheated God, so you won’t be fit even though you are skinny. You will feel like a miniature fat person, but that will be good enough to start from.

You don’t go back. You go all the way back. This diet is both over and the rest of your life.

It sounds weird to say and I thought it was weird when I was reading it but you will know what to do at this point. If you have read the book and understand the general principles, you will know how you lost weight and how to live. Just keep doing what you were doing in phase 2, but then find your own balance of letting yourself have fun. You will know, or you can ask someone.

Know that you probably won’t drink a lot of beer anymore. You probably won’t have another Coke for a while. These are things you will not have in your life.

It may not be easy, but you do get to wear cool shirts.

THREE TIPS BY ME, NICK FEITEL, ABOUT THIS STUFF:

Find ways to break the diet without really breaking the diet: I refer to my SB diet as modified because I ate things you should not have eaten on it: Whole Milk, Fried Foods, etc. I did these things because they were ways of letting off steam for me as someone who is a frequent self-saboteur. Even if eating lightly breaded Fried Chicken Strips is not really phase one material, it is a lot less bread than a piece of bread or a dessert like Oreos. I might feel guilty when eating them, but I haven’t actually ruined my diet (unless I eat them constantly) while also satisfying the part within myself that wants to ruin my diet. For me, this was a large part of my diet’s success. Also, know that if you hate everything that you eat, you will not do this diet. It will feel like punishment instead of a lifestyle change and so when it’s over you’ll “reward” yourself by going back to your old habits. No good. Make sure you eat as deliciously as you can! Have fun! This will make you happier and thus more likely to succeed.

If you want an extra challenge, pay attention to your body: This seemed like the stupidest thing when people used to say it to me, but if you want to lose weight, eat less. Don’t starve yourself, but eat relatively slowly. If you think based on experience or belly-fullness that something might be enough, stop eating! Take it home and have delicious leftovers for later that night or lunch-y breakfast! It’s a great gift that is both made easier by the diet and will really help you toward the end of Phase 2 when you are feeling most stable.

When you do break the diet or get to phase 3, break it in ways that inspire you: Rather than returning to your old habits of eating, why not just follow what seems fun? If someone is having a bake sale and you see something you want, get it! Don’t go to a deli and get a Twix just because. Find things that inspire you to make it a treat for yourself which could be something big like a Brownie Sundae from Per Se, or a rare Candy Center Crunch from a Manhattan deli, which is your favorite Good Humor bar. Open yourself to discovery and have what makes you feel good and enough that you don’t feel awful after while still getting your fix.

And there you go. This turned into a real thing, but that’s that.

As always, don’t do this if you don’t think you need to or out of insecurity. Have a reason, be confident and decide if this is something you want to embark on like any voyage or ship. And know like a voyage it might be queasy as shit. And just know that. Think calmly. Breathe.

And you’ll probably fuck up less that way.

I know that works for me.

Notes

Why am I so obsessed with giving other people notes?

It comes out in obvious and less obvious ways.

In my improv classes or in film school or even high school, when I knew the answer to the question I would say it, I would raise my hand high up in high school, yearning, aching to answer the question, my one chance to talk and be right in a world where for all other intents and purposes I was wrong or othered. In improv classes and rehearsals I struggle not to note or give advice to my teammates, my classmates, others barreling past my own gentle reminders that not only is it a huge blow to one’s ego to receive an “I’m better than you”-style note from a peer, but that I also supremely do not know what I am doing.

In film school I had no such qualms, acting like an expert and even going to classes to give speeches on the silliest things: what to get out of film school, the importance of script supervisors, the screenwriting process and of course, snarkily talking about who was good or not.

Obviously, engaging in these stupid conversations in film school, I found myself barely involved with the film industry on my way out, because when I found myself rejected from 50 film festivals with my thesis, out of a job and working at a movie theater after a 300,000 dollar education, I realized that the confidence I had formed was some sort of monstrous inverted pyramid, based only on the spark of “voice” I had mistaken for virtuosity, destined unto its own collapse.

You’d think I had learned my lesson out of film school, going into the improv community that had taken me in, like it takes in so many other broken, insecure people. But of course, as humans, we are universally slow to see our own folly and slower still to change. Such is the stuff of Kurosawa and Shakespeare.

But giving notes with conviction and some amount of eloquence (the fruit of my writing) is a powerful position to put yourself in and one that people respect especially if those notes are not delivered with the condescension or silliness of a taunt or even any heavy emotion and are placed instead into an article of faith. In fact, people sometimes desire that because they struggle and are insecure and desperately want help. After all, what they are doing is impossible and demanding and silly. It’s hard to be a clown.

When I have given notes to people either in improv or film school, it is with that scary conviction of that I know what’s right (even though I most certain do not) but also always as an article of faith. In the logic part of my mind, there is never any reason to give a note to someone about their performance or film or writing if they do not show obvious promise or talent. It is only when I think I see that splinter in their foot, that thorn in their side that they cannot see that I attempt to alert them, even if I don’t have the skill to remove it, even if I don’t even know I don’t know whether it actually is a thorn or splinter.

So why do I do this?

When I was a film student I was not an expert on making films. Now that I am an improviser, I am, as my friend Austin Kuras said, “in the high school part of improv, where your friends now might not be your friends later until things settle down”.

Two explanations are forthcoming, both rooted in my psychology.

The first would be the desire to change myself that I so desperately want, a vestigial notion left over from my youth. When I wanted to yell out the answer in high school, it is because I wanted to be acknowledged. I wanted in this one area to be cool, to be big, to make myself as such. When I gave notes to my classmates then or later or later, it could because I didn’t like who I was, where I was and so instead of changing or having the strength to address myself, it was easier to see your own faults projected in others, to see that hurdle you thought someone else could cross, et cetera and gain some comfort and strength that at least you could change them.

Similarly, this frequently leads to frustration when people don’t change or refuse to take notes, mine or others, because I see in their intransigence my own inability to conquer the flaws in myself.

Note: this is the same low-self-esteem/victimhood philosophy that lead me to date girls with low self-esteem, because I thought I would show them how great they were and they would in return love the un-loveable: me.

The other, more altruistic reason (if not similarly misguided) is the attempt to correct the past in myself.

The same reason I was once a summer camp councilor for adolescents (a mixed experience in its own right) was because I wanted to tell 14, 15, 16-year olds that life wasn’t so goddam terrible even if it seemed like it now. I remember so vividly in the terrible parts of high school or film school or now comedy the huge mistakes I made, the horrific lows that I could not (and maybe even should not) have avoided but which I wish someone with some sort of authority could have been there effectively to tell me: “I’ve been there, quite recently. And it’s alright.” This is a very juvenile philosophy, a sort of “Catcher in the Rye”-style notion, but that sort of thought process isn’t past me entirely yet.

Having lacked a superhero or a cool magic-user to pop out of my Young Adult Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels of my youth, I wanted to be the one that popped into these peoples’ lives.

Maybe that is part of the impulse still. Just wanting to be there to let them know that someone sees what they are going through and sympathises. To congratulate them earnestly, without the sugariness of sentimentality, at their successes in their failures. To remind them knowingly of the failures in success. When I do give notes well or am proud of myself, it is in these moments, where it looks like someone could use support, just like in an improv group scene, knowing when to make the move in life.

What do I make of all this?

As I said I know nothing, or know little. I am still vulnerable to those looooooo-ong conversations about comedy or film where I sound like an expert or argue like one. Often I enjoy them. But I am not a fool and in the moment I am trying to attune myself to when I have enough experience to talk about things and when I don’t, looking in to my nice coach Sean Taylor’s eyes and listening to his tone, trying to figure out when I’ve said too much, though I’m still not there yet (Sorry, Sean).

In a way, doing yoga has humbled me more than most things because I am so incredibly, intransigently untalented at it.

Knowing you can’t even do a halfway decent downward-dog is a good reminder of shutting up and just working hard.

Maybe I’ll thank myself for the shutting-up and enjoying myself, working and learning.

That’s good practice, too.

***

There’s something cathartic in being about the nerds.

It is important to define some levels here in what I am talking about before I continue.

Many things I do are defined as nerdy. Improv (as exemplified by this excellent video) is a pretty nerdy thing. Film nerdiness, like seeing a lot of indies and foreign films can be too (which I was reminded of when I met two Arizonans in France whose last movie they saw was The Notebook on DVD). Magic: The Gathering cards are still really nerdy in a way that is socially isolating and the subject of many jokes, but since I still sometimes find myself around them (like any addiction, you never really quit) I won’t cast judgement entirely right now.

But sometimes you head into a movie theater and see a combination of goth/punk overweight late-teenagers of all ethnic varieties at 3pm on a Wednesday and you know you’re going to see some Anime.

Anime was a phase I passed through (and am mostly out of) in the early parts of middle and high school exemplified by that weird gap in time where the internet existed but wasn’t fast enough that anyone could download things instantly. So, my best friend Frank and I would trudge down to Chinatown every weekend or every other weekend into the back of a knickknack store and buy VHS of anime episodes ripped off of non-region DVDs (which were expensive!) or subtitled amateur-ly by fans of the series we were trying to watch.

This was also a little after the time Pokemon (sort-of) and Dragon Ball Z (particularly) had gotten us into these Japanese animated shows with their promise of cool action, people always talking about the “awesome power of friendship” and often weird sexual undertones present in Japanese culture. Adult Swim on Cartoon Network had not yet turned totally into a bastian of college-age haute-comedy and still showed some cool anime shows as a stepping stone forward for us like Cowboy Bebop, which allowed us to continue growing on it as we began to realize how many episodes of our favorite shows were literally just people talking about the big fight that was going to happen stretched over a 9-26 episode arc.

When the internet sped up and Ricky somehow mysteriously disappeared, Frank and I would download the episodes off the internet of our favorite shows and go over to each others houses (mostly me to Frank’s) to watch them on our crappy monitors, hoping this wouldn’t be another episode where everyone was just intimidating each other and hopefully at least a couple people would throw a punch. But we were mostly disappointed, but somehow still hooked enough. We watched shows like Scryed, Yu Yu Hakusho, Bleach, Naruto, One Piece together while Frank delved even nerdier with the DSL connection at his house as we scoured the IRC (Internet Relay Chatrooms) for episodes in those early BitTorrent days, watching GTO (a show about a perv who becomes a teacher to sleep with 17 year-olds), Hajime No Ippo (an infinitely-long boxing anime) and Hikaru No Go (which is literally about people playing fucking checkers. No joke. Look it up.)

But a show we both watched was Fullmetal Alchemist, a silly steam-punk-style show about “alchemists” who have what is essentially a more science-y kind of magic powers. The show is about a big brother who always complains about being short and a little brother who is an animated suit of armor. Silliness ensues as well as some musing on life and death and humanity’s ability to affect those things.

Time has passed since those days.

First Frank became the skinny kid from his fat-bowl-cut-Korean-kid days, working out in college and then improbably becoming a personal trainer talking about being too shy to hit on his clients at the gym. I became chubby, got into movies and faded away from anime (though I still read some manga) since there were so many films to watch that didn’t involve waiting around 26 excruciating weeks to see what happens.

But now I do improv and work as an assistant and Frank trains people at the gym. I’m out late nights doing shows at weird places, Frank is training 6:30am clients. It’s hard to see each other.

So when I saw that the Cinema Village had, for some goddam reason, one of the several released-only-in-Japan Fullmetal Alchemist movies playing there, I knew to invite Frank.

We got some lunch. I joked about how I weigh less than him now (not at all salient, he is ONE-MILLION TIMES more fit than me), we walked around as I tried to decide on a dessert for an hour as I had to answer upset texts from a girl on my improv team. We talked about life and ended up splitting a cupcake.

We sat down in the aforementioned theater for the movie, which was silly with a Face-Off style-twist, though decently-animated. The last line of the film was: “Oh look, we’re leaving the valley.” which was really stupid and self-aware.

But we both for that time were back staring at a big suit of armor and a blond-short-guy fighting a wolf-man on top of a train.

And in the end, isn’t that what life’s all about?

Oh look, we’re leaving the blog post.

***

I had a freakout over squash. That is who I am now.

I haven’t been able to go to Birdbath Bakery around the corner from me for a while now, because the sandwich that I used to get from them, the Chicken Cilantro, was on a white bread that I had sworn off.

But one day, passing by, I decided to just investigate what they had I could eat and found that they had a smoked chicken sandwich on some sort of whole grain sourdough that seemed appetizing.

They had also seemed to have upped their lunch game, importing the famous Macaroni and Cheese from their parent store City Bakery in a hottray, along with another item I didn’t recognize.

“Spaghetti Squash cooked with homemade tomato sauce, parmesan cheese, a bit of cilantro, topped with toasted pumpkin seeds.”

“A taste.” I requested.

Yum.

I got the smoked chicken sandwich (which was yummy enough) with the squash that was like crack.

Now, I didn’t know if this was kosher for me to have (not in a kosher sense) in terms of keeping my weight, but when I got upstairs I just ate half of everything, felt great and took a walk with my new couch-crasher New Jersey-an/Southerner Teddy Shivers to show him places to eat in the neighborhood.

Unfortunately, when I got back upstairs from the hour-point-five -long tour, that delicious-ass food was still there and I took a bite of the squash.

And then another.

And then the barrier broke and I ate the whole thing.

Guilt flooded my squash-ridden body.

I ate something light later, but when I got home that night, my weight (on the scale my bos bought me for the new year) had gone up 5 pounds instead of the usual three (how much my weight fluctuates day-to-night).

I hyper-ventillated in my therapist’s office, I wondered if this grand ruse was coming to an end, if chubby Nick was returning, so soon.

She looked at me calmly and we continued our session.

“I figure if this has been working for you.” She said. “Trust it and it will.”

I did and I ate some salads the next day and was fine.

My freak-out, silly.

It was just squash.

And I haven’t had it since.

Because I’ll eat french fries, cupcakes, crepe nutellas, pain au chocolats, shots of Jameson and risotto balls.

But I’m scared as fuck of that yummy squash.

***

BIRDBATH BAKERY

Side of Spaghetti Squash w/Parmesan, Homemade Tomato Sauce and Toasted Pumpkin Seeds- $5.00

Prince St. bet. Thompson St. and W. Broadway.

CE to Spring St. NR to Prince St. BDFM to Broadway-Lafayette.

Giving

I admit as a New Yorker to never having seen the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, at least in my knowing lifetime.

It is possible that my parents took me before I was aware of things, like probably many struggling infants, fixated on a floating Snoopy in the sky.

But if so, these are memories only accessible through regression hypnosis, or at least a recounting to by my parents.

Yeah.

But I saw, for the first time, the floats coming up 10th avenue the night before Thanksgiving, a cordon mini-parade of sorts, rolling through midnight, police escorting, like some arcane gathering or the book of Where The Wild Things Are (not the shitty hipster-ass movie).

It was something that it was meaningful or wonderful to me (in the “full of wonder” sense of the word) seeing those floats pass by as I headed home from a particularly raucous sandwich-filled episode of The Chris Gethard Show. I felt like I was getting to see something hidden or cool. I felt that dormant, probably non-existent Snoopy-adoring child in me.

Or something like that.

Because as I “grow up”, what impresses me about myself is my non-chalance where before there was only chaos. When I get a 500-word explanation/pitch of why “we should be friends” on OKCupid, I just kind of sigh it off as silly. When I have a not-so great set on stage, I still feel good and goofy (though whiskey helped with that that night). Even my UCB 401 class, something that the last time I did it I was so stressed out on the pages of this blog feels nice and natural to me.

When I walked into my therapist office this morning, I thought about how much I had changed. Even though I’ve constantly thought of myself as relatively sane and well-adjusted, I started out two years ago as an angry, sharply-opinionated kid dealing with personal and professional traumas as well as the unsolved question as to whether anyone could love me.

Now, I’m a mellow still-weirdo, who’s done a decent amount of screwing (especially by former nerd standards) and consistently gets into less fights, less “battles”, less of the “proving himself” crusades I used to throw myself into as a crucible to prove my worth or reveal who I really was.

Two years ago, I went before a board at my school and told them if they didn’t heed my advice they’d have “blood on their hands”. Now, someone made a snide remark to my friend at a show and instead of instantly getting into a fight, I take a moment stare at the guy, ask my friend if he wants me to do something and wait for the asshole to dig his own grave (giving a “pedophilia” suggestion at ASSSSCAT and getting fucking reamed by families of victims at the intermission). For all my opinions and strangeness, I’m a much chiller person. Or maybe just more comfortable with who I am.

Which is not to say opinions or feeling strongly is a bad thing. They’re great under the right circumstance and I’ll still stupidly get into a cause to champion, or get hung up on the wrong girl or say my ex’s name as some freudian slip. These are the things that make us human. It is both full and childish, in a good way, to feel and react deeply. It’s what tells us we’re alive, that we’re capable of action, to do something, potentially stupid, and to see its results. We live by the fruits of our mistakes and the knowledge/nourishment we get from them.

So I guess that’s why I dug seeing those floats after the already silly and fun Chris Gethard Show. I guess that’s why I enjoyed some of The Muppets and all of Hugo. I suppose that’s why I still consistently eat Chicken Parmigiano and am shy about asking girls out on dates and feel this need to spill my guts to everyone here in (slightly) masturbatory fashion.

Because there always needs to be that kid inside us, capable of making mistakes, of taking foolish risks, of trying something.

Something capable of experiencing and creating the wonderful.

***

Looking at this picture shows how tenuous I feel about my sexuality when trying to explain to my friends that I do yoga.

Because they post things like this around and have saunas and an assortment of teas.

But it’s a nice other layer of structure and it kicks my ass.

And what can I say, I guess I like that.

I went out with my friend Frank and his assortment of online gaming friends (a “Korean korean” from Flushing, a waiting-for-deployment Army kid and his marketing-dept girlfriend) to Ichiumi, the fabled “sushi buffet” of my youth, a place where you can go to get an unlimited suply of sushi and Japanese/Korean food, both iffy in its health ramifications and delicious for the hard working-out 5-plate-eating Frank.

“Ha, Yoga’s for pussies, bro. Do some burpies.” He told me, before going on to discuss an online role-playing game they all played called “League of Legends”.

It is a bit, but what can I say?

I am not a flexible person and never have been. I always despised working out and most physical activity given the physical emphasis of my middle and high school, which I hated. I have always been tight and usually slumped over, my back and neck a tilting “C”.

But Yoga just seems so far away from the “machoness” and implicit judgement I felt at the gym. It’s just a bunch of people doing peaceful, but sweaty things. And while I don’t buy into the spirituality aspect, it does clear my mind. It feels like a nice release and more than that, it feels easy for me to continue doing it. I went three times last week and once so far this and intend to go tomorrow. I was disappointed to find out my studio didn’t have an iPhone app, so I could see the times more readily.

With the stress still at my work, I did Yoga yesterday and was much more happy with my free time than I usually am, since free time usually terrifies me.

I just got water at Ichiumi as Frank tossed back plate after plate, rushing against the 3 o’clock deadline when they’d toss us all out to prepare for dinner. We ended up badgering Frank into getting the new Zelda game, which I had been enjoying and while we explored the Saturday-time Manhattan Mall, still swarming from leftover Black Friday sales, Frank turned to me:

“So, uh, how much do you think a class at your place would be?”

“What place?” I asked facetiously.

“You know. Yoga. I just am tight and could use more flexibility.”

“Yeah, ok.” I said. “Pussy.” Under my breath.

And it took a little longer to find out.

Because they didn’t have an iPhone app.

***

Though I have mostly been cured of my hypo-glycemia by way of my diet, I was pushing it on Sunday when I waited till 2 to eat after waking up fairly early. In my defense, I was going to meet my sister to see Hugo at New York City’s greatest movie theatre, The Ziegfeld and I thought to go to the nearby hallowed-food cart, the great 53rd and 6th Halal Guys.

But I had been spoiled on them lately. Not that they weren’t still great (They were/are). Only that based on my routine I now get to have them at least once a week. They’re less of a treat and I’d actually already had a platter on Friday.

I had also been soured because I had tried to defuse the difficult-to-explain subterfuge of a cart that pretends to be the famous cart by isn’t by going over to that cart’s line and explain to the stupid tourists that they were in the wrong place, only to hear from some d-bag that he actually thought Tasty and Delicious was BETTER than Halal Guys!

“Dude, I’m a famous food blogger.” I whipped out. “I’m on TV for this shit.”

“Well, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” He said refusing to make eye contact.

Now, this is a point of pride for me because I felt as if I was doing a public service. Tasty and Delicious sells fucking HOT DOGS for gods sakes as no self-respecting halal cart should!

Fuck!

Anyway, the whole thing had left a sour taste in my mouth and as I did a nice Sunday three-mile walk to the Ziegfeld, I found a place that caught my eye in Bryant Park called Vegetarian’s Oasis amidst the gift-sellers and bag-handlers.

“Yeah, we mostly do music festivals.” The woven-shirt-ed lady told me. “Nearest one is the Electric. She said.

I got the Falafel Wrap, which of course came on whole-wheat, with tahini, “crushed pepper” sauce, fresh crispy cabbage, romaine and tomatoes. It was delicious and big, burrito sized and relatively inexpensive, especially for the neighborhood.

My sister, the semi-vegan, was somewhat jealous. I told her to try to get the falafel from the Halal cart, but she decided on a Jamba Juice instead.

“What, Juice is a meal.” She expressed when I showed my indignation.

She then proceeded to steal most of my small popcorn that I got at the movie theater.

But maybe I just should have brought her an extra wrap.

We’ll call it, a draw.

***

ICHIUMI

Lunch Buffet (Sushi and Japanese/Korean Hot Food, Dessert)- $22.00

32nd St bet 5th Ave and Madison

NQRBDFM to 34th St Herald Sq. 6 to 33rd St.

VEGETARIAN OASIS

Falafel Wrap w/Cabbage, Crushed Pepper Sauce, Tahini- $7

Inside the Market at Bryant Park near 42nd St and 6th Ave

BDFM7 to 42nd St-Bryant Park

At The Argo Tea Cafe

Going home always instills feelings of being home.

If you know what I mean.

In this case, going home meant comments from my parents and my sister about my appearance and grooming habits, obligatory letting my grandmother hold the crook of my elbow and, of course, dressing up in clothes I would never wear for others’ amusement.

This was a favorite game of my sister’s and my mother’s for as a far back as I can remember. Everyone would get very excited about “Let’s see Nick in that!” and I, who have always hated “clothing” in the aesthetic sense, would protest and squirm, maybe have a tantrum or run out in a huff, differing from which point of my childhood or adolescence this was happening in.

It was always at some sort of all-family gathering though, where the social pressure is highest and this time was no different.

It was my grandmother’s birthday, the night before Halloween, and in her attempt to constantly pawn clothing off on me, she had brought a top hat and “two different capes!” (her emphasis, not mine) for me to try on, presumably for some sort of halloween experience. My friends, Rob Malone, Matt Chao, Chadd Harbold and Frank Orio had all gathered as well (at my mother’s request) and they joined in on the pressuring which had a particular pervasive take this time.

First it was my grandmother just mentioning that she had brought the aforementioned hat and capes to the room in her up-tone excited voice as if she was saying “I have a great i-dea!” which then stayed in the room like germs from a lingering cough infecting the air as my parents heard, my friends heard and eventually my sister who, of course, was entirely enamored of the idea.

As I helped my mother set up the very nice dinner she had cooked for everyone, I heard my friends talk with my sister from across the room, feeling the onset in the back of my mind. As my sister continued to inflate the idea like a hot-air balloon, I grew more and more tense as I pointed out the almonds that could be toasted for topping the couscous, building to that moment in the back of my mind.

Slowly, my friends were infected by my sister’s charm and enthusiasm for the idea. Matt Chao, with his penchant for nerdy ideas and general geekery, was, as expected, the first to fall.

“You know what we should do?” I heard from across the living room. “We should see Nick try on that top hat and capes!”

“Yeah!” My sister instantly seconded.

“Oh, that would be won-derful!” My grandmother exclaimed.

“Damnit Cec.” I replied. “You rigged this.”

“I didn’t rig anything.” She said, putting on a faux-shocked face.

“Come now, dearest Nick.” My grandmother told me grabbing the crux of my arm.

“Goddamnit.” I told myself as the traitor Chao and my sister continued cackling from the back of the room, because now if I didn’t do it, I would be disappointing my grandmother at her birthday celebration.

My friends gathered round and Matt Chao took the picture with an iPad 2 that was definitely going to destroy his life (he already found an MMORPG to play on it) as we filed into the other room.

There I was getting dressed up again. I think I even called it out.

It didn’t look too bad.

And I hadn’t bought a costume.

I took it with me in a bag home at the end of a nice dinner with my friends and wore it the next day at the Magnet Theater’s Halloween party.

I hadn’t done any other work on it or changed my clothes, so I just told people I was a magician.

I had a pint of whiskey that I kept taking out (diet, folks) and people asked me if my costume was drunken magician and I said, yes, that seemed appropriate.

I made sure to take good care of it, like my mother texted me and said.

Magician Nick, the end.

***

I asked my therapist today a rhetorical question. Or maybe not a rhetorical question, maybe just a want or a desire.

I asked: “When is therapy going to help me improve my love life?”

I’m coming up on a year since I’ve been in anything really meaningful.

I weighed in yesterday at 182.4.

The Accutane seems to be working even though it’s making my skin dry as hell (the doctor told me this was to be expected and was not permanent).

I even perform some funny comedy and people are starting to agree that the stuff I do doesn’t suck. Scott Adsit sat it on the show I did last week and people seemed to like my sketch I brought in on my Magnet team.

I look at myself in the mirror and see someone who could be with somebody, see someone worthwhile, someone worth at least a date or two.

I feel like people keep speaking past me, like they’re unable to connect, like they’re interested in observing me or looking from a distance or having my acquaintance.

Several times in the past week, I’ve had young ladies tell me “I’m a big fan of your blog” seeming to mean both “I really enjoy your writing” and “Nothing will ever happen between us”.

One of them even said this probably knowing that I had talked about her rejecting me through process of ignoring me on it (Ladies, feel free to comment if this is something that does make you feel good or a fan of something).

There’s something funny about that to me (even if it’s glaringly obvious), the idea that my ability to articulate who I am and what I feel is the very thing that is both what intrigues people and also causes them to make sure they keep a proper distance. I feel like perhaps people wish they could be open or wish they could be honest or unashamed or public with their thoughts. But as have that sanctity of themselves that they choose, that privacy, they don’t want to be dragged into the zeitgeist and who could blame them?

Or they could just not be in to me, that’s fine too.

I still haven’t returned (yet) to OKCupid, though I have returned to going to a party or two and drinking hoping for something dumb to happen, always with disappointing results.

When I told my therapist my rhetorical question, she told me:

“You came to me a few years ago with a strong idea: that you wanted someone who would accept you for who you are, take you or leave you. And that’s good. But you’ve realized that you can change your appearance somewhat, you can put your best “you” forward, without changing essentially who you are.”

But there’s also something to be said for the repercussions of being a public person, it’s a strong choice to live like that, but people may react strongly.

As I was writing this, I got a message from someone on OKCupid, a reply from a message I sent 6 months ago.

 

Well, ladies. I guess I’m still on the market.

***

I apologize for the blurriness of this photo, only vouching in my defense that it is difficult to take a good picture of something when you have an intense desire to eat it immediately.

When I first passed “Za’atar” on Greenwich Avenue it immediately struck me as small and strange and oddly cavernous, a wild, ethnic joint offering 3-buck falafels amidst a string of mid-level restaurants and haute-crap bars.

It’s on my path both of walking to the “Improv Ghetto” (26th-30th sts bet 6th and 8th Aves) from my home and also just a preferred path for general walking for me. I love streets that are diagonals in New York City and Greenwich Avenue is one of the greatest and steepest offenders.

I passed it several late nights where I saw it oddly open with a hijab-clad woman working the back but it wasn’t till I was looking for a meal, running late for a rehearsal I had committed inanely to walking to that I ended up there.

The time I went a skinny, short older man manned the area, while what appeared to be a railroad-style hobo (of the type one used to see in Greenwich Village) sat in the front eating from a plate of kidney beans.

He said he was from “Damascus, Syria” when I asked him and asked me if I wanted “everything” to which I said yes.

What I got ended up as 5, as opposed to the advertised 3 dollars, but hell if it wasn’t worth it.

Light and crisp, but packed falafels, stuffed into a well-toasted whole wheat pita, with non-pickle cucumbers, lettuce, tomato, lightly-pickled onions, tahina, hummus and a potent, but sweet hot sauce.

It was the sort of falafel you wolf down and then spend several minutes after just contemplating the accomplishment.

I’ll have to go back to Taim and do a side-by taste-test.

But this is certainly one of the best falafels in New York City and quite a find.

***

ZA’ATAR

Falafel w/Hummus + “Everything”- $5.00

Greenwich Ave. bet 6th and 7th Aves.

123L to 14th St-7th Ave. ACEBDFM to West 4th St.

What I Talk About When I Talk About ASSSSCAT

This picture was taken as I walked home last night, in the 54-degree weather, in my hoodie, zipped up for the cold, somewhat satisfied that fall had finally descended even if I liked the sensation of wearing my hoodie open, though the seasons had apparently decided to skip that this year, jumping from 80 to 58 in a single day, as, really, New York weather is prone to do.

The late-night walk home feels cathartic when I can do it. A way of getting in touch with the city, of feeling people and places around me, of feeling that nice, reciprocal energy that I’ve spoken of in the past, the feeling that New York City surrounds you pleasantly, a sort of mastery, the feelings someone gets knowing their conscious mind doesn’t have to walk them home.

I didn’t have anything to do that Sunday evening before I went to ASSSSCAT (people have pointed out to me that there are four “S”es). I had said good night to my friend Frank (more on that later) and he had asked me “What are you doing tonight, bro?” and I had no real response.

“ASSSSCAT, I guess.”

It’s worth mentioning before I get into this, a few things.

The first is my reluctance to do things non-social on a weekend evening. As I’ve mention before in these pages, weekends for me growing up were a time of terror, the period of social judgment. If I had a friend to see, to hang out with, I could escape my house. But if I didn’t I was trapped inside my parents’ apartment, with the cat I was allergic to, the room that belonged to me that I spent no time in after the age of 13, the books I stopped reading around that time–I was paralyzed in my own emotions, sitting in somewhere that seemed to have no place for me, just feeling on display as unwanted on a weekend night.

I’ve carried this feeling, irrational rejection, around with me since then and it has affected my life in all sorts of ways making me a more social person, for better or worse, following such times. It also means that I try to find something to do on weekend evenings very diligently.

It’s also worth noting the specifics of ASSSSCAT, also mentioned in these pages before.

A Sunday show at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, it features two showtimes of a rotating cast of improvisers and a special guest monologist. The first show is 10 dollar at 7:30 and is mostly filled with toursits and people on dates and such, while the second show is free at 9:30, but requires waiting in line for some period of time between 1-4 hours, a sprawling block party of an experience, filled with the young and reckless, people un-considerate of their jobs (or lack of jobs) on the Monday morning to follow. It is always a wilder crowd and, touted, a better show.

Finally, the UCB itself is usually somewhere I associate mixed feelings with, a place of rejection and acceptance for me. As I continue to throw myself at-and-into improv comedy (as my friends probably patiently wait for me to emerge), it’s strange to think that something that has you saying yes and accepting each other by nature could also be a place of profound no’s and judgment. I’ve been rejected from almost as many classes as I’ve signed up for at the UCB, or at least it feels that way. And within the strange world of my blogging and strange social presence, I am never sure in that strange place who thinks what about me, who I am to these people: a reality-show novelty? another depressed/creepy improv nerd? just some guy? What does it mean that the office staff chanted “UCB” on the street to get me to notice them? I think too much about these things.

Enough, enough with this self-reference.

The point is that I go to ASSSSCAT at 9:30, more often than not on these Sunday evenings of my partial employment and uncertainty.

There, I see improvisers I know who may be friends of mine, or acquaintances. There, I see girls I’ve tried to flirt with, girls who’ve flirted with me, girls who’ve tried nicely to reject me, and girls who aren’t sure what they want. There, I wait in line and talk to people, in the cold or other weather.

There, I see an improv show and then go home. And if I have enough energy, I have a walk, in the 11:30 hour.

I don’t know how to judge the importance of all this to me.

I wish I could say it’s a place I think of sentimentally like The Magnet, where I go when I am feeling sad, for comfort and fun, but it really isn’t. Neither is it some sort of partially-stifled addiction like my forays to Magic: The Gathering venues, where I feel dirty and stupid afterwards.

It’s a pace of some tension and strife, some comedy that breaks that tension. A place of tenuous community, almost like a mixer or a party for those waiting in line.

It’s aspirational for me. How many times I’ve wanted to be up on that stage as a special guest monologist, or wanting to be good enough to play with people I respect.

It’s strange, is what it is.

In it, is wrapped up all those things, my anxiety from my youth, my complicated relationship (mostly in my head) with UCB, the possibility of meeting someone friend or otherwise.

And, of course, the tension of the suspension of adulthood. The feeling that everyone going to that 9:30 show is somehow making a conscious choice to say “fuck it”.

An improviser called the audience “cretins” last night and they cheered raucously, even when pointed out that they were called so.

In going to ASSSSCAT, I acknowledge my life’s incompleteness in it’s various ways: social, emotional, structural, professional.

And then, if I’m lucky:

I take that nice, long walk home.

***

In my preparations for my trip to Paris, I started a French class at “FIAF” or the Alliance Francaise.

I took notes on my phone the first class, feeling cool as I held down “e” on my iPhone for accents egues et graves.

My teacher, a nice woman who looked like she could be sitting at Les Deux Magots reading “L’Etranger”, was amazed at my note-taking but demanded paper for next week.

I couldn’t blame her. Usually, I use my phone in classes as an excuse to not be present, to check my email or otherwise.

However, in this class I felt energized as if rummaging through my French class past in all earnestness. I gave myself a fist pump when I remembered the past participle of an irregular verb (“j’ai… voulu?” I asked tenuously) but was horrified when I couldn’t even remember how to say “2012″, my numbers having left me, fallen out of my brain somewhere between the not-giving-a-fuck of high school and the film-shoot-wrap-parties of college.

The class itself was interesting, a mix of people ranging from 40-year old civil servants with a passion to escape their lives (a la improv), to nascent art appraisers, to a businessman who kept taking calls during class and who I felt was going to get a long string of French expletives toward the end of our class.

Lots of pretty girls, as could be expected. A couple photographers, looking to brush up their skills in case French Vogue called.

A sense that everyone was there for fun.

Being in a classroom like that felt good. Reliving that sense of achievement of being called on by the teacher, of being recognized. Of having a structure in which one could be deemed “good” in their lives. In improv and sketch writing, all that is relative, and funny one day could be passe the next.  It felt nice to get back to sentence structure and some certainty.

I ate Babybel cheeses wrapped up in wax and French Vanilla coffee from the deli across the street during my break.

I asked a question about “donc” v. “alors”.

I strolled down Fifth Avenue as I walked down after class.

Is this the beginning of my life Parisien?

Or je ne sais… quois.

Nous allons decouvrir, mais oui?

***

…And that birthday dinner with Frank.

Frank’s father, Michael Orio, was a constantly presence in my childhood. I would sleep on the Orio’s couch nearly every or every other weekend, during our LAN parties playing Counterstrike at the local Microchip Cafe followed by our Sunday-day excursions to Chinatown for 69 Bayard Restaurant and DDR at Chinatown Fair (now closed).

As I slept on his couch (as I would at my own home, unbeknownst to him), Mike would descend from his room at 7 or 8am to the living room where I was to read The Economist and when he saw me stirring (or sometimes at random) he would rail off a string of nicknames for me, seeming disconnected from reality.

“It’s Nick the Greek!” He would announce. (I am Jewish.) “Nick the Greek! The Greekus! Nickus the Greekus! He’ll kick your ass!”

All of this without looking up from his Economist as I rolled around on the couch.

Frank, his son, when he’d come down would be “The Big Man”.

“The Big Man! It’s the Big Man. Watch out, he’ll kick your ass.”

These memories from my childhood and adolescence are vivid even to this day, as much as I would say, “Goddamit, Mike” when he’d wake me up.

He and Sophie, Frank’s mother, were the only adults I was comfortable enough around to call them by their first names for a long time.

We went for his birthday out to Two Boots brooklyn, invited by Frank. Everyone ate pizzas, much to my chagrin as Frank managed to eat both accumulatively an entire pie and a full entree with two sides.

That bastard still loses weight eating all that and complains about how he “can’t get higher than 165″.

What I ate, despite my inital skepticism that a pizzeria would have anything to offer, was the strangely named by delicious “Dixie Chicken” w/ julienned vegetables and sauteed broccoli.

The dish became much better at the end, when, caving to pressure, I put pizza cheese on top of my remaining chicken to absorb some of the experience.

I miss pizza, sometimes. Maybe soon I’ll allow myself to have it.

It was nice to see Mike, with his shock of grey-white hair, the family gathered round.

And Frank and I walked out as I ate a piece of dark chocolate bark from my bag as a sort of cross/charm to ward off the eating of more birthday cake.

And I didn’t stay on his couch because Frank was getting up at 5am to train clients at Crunch.

“I guess I’ll go to ASSSSCAT.” I told him.

And there I was.

***

TWO BOOTS OF BROOKLYN

“Dixie Chicken” w/Julienned Mixed Vegetables + Broccoli w/Garlic- $12.95

2nd st bet 7th and 8th Aves, Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY

R to 4th Ave-9th St, FG to 7th Ave-9th St.

 

Care to Share

Now that most of my portable video games are exhausted, I’ve taken to finally catching up with my backpack-stored New Yorkers.

Sometimes, I just discover why I wasn’t inspired to read them in the first place, with articles on bullet-proof fashion-wear and extremely depressing things.

But at least I’ll usually glean a good cartoon, sitting on a blue subway-car bench. And snap a picture. And feel good about that.

Lately, I’ve had moments of needing that reassurance (surprised?).

As my vacation approaches, I gird myself with classes taken to bring myself to a sort of crescendo of experience before I leave for Paris, where all my classes and shows end a week or days before I leave and I am left with some sort of sense of finality, of completeness, of accomplishment if you will, before heading off to a foreign land.

This also means just putting myself out there. Going to see shows, doing more improv, seeing my friends. Trying to take opportunities, or just not be in my house. The usual, really.

But this sort of chain has been yielding fruit for me, as going out to ASSSSCATs at UCB led to going out to Chris Gethard Shows, led to going on a date, led somehow to being called a douchebag by comedian (and definite person I think is cool) Marc Maron.

To give some background, I was on a date with a nice young lady (whom, for once, I don’t wish to embarrass here), sitting at a bar having one of those long “we’re connecting!” talks over drinks I was drinking more quickly than she was, when a stand-up fresh from an open mic wandered out and heard me invoke the name of Marc Maron.

“Marc Maron?” the stand-up asked. “His podcast is great.”

And thus began the 15-minute long conversation that took place in front of my date, mostly not involving her, that looking back was both mortifying and somewhat unavoidable.

At least I can probably assume that she learned about Marc Maron and the WTF podcast that night, if also not to date comedy-nerd douchebags.

But the conversation ended strangely with the stand-up telling me he was actually moderating a panel that Marc Maron was going to be at tomorrow night and that he had free passes he had forgotten to give away and did I want them.

“Yeah, uh, sure.” I said, completely unbelieving that some dude I just met would give me tickets to see a sold-out Marc Maron panel.

But he asked me to tweet at him and lo-and-behold the next day I received a tweet-back saying that my tickets were reserved under my name with a plus-one.

Thus began the scurry to try to find someone to go with.

I should probably pause at this point and explain a little bit for those of you who don’t know about who Marc Maron is.

Maron is a comedian who came up with the class of Janeane Garofalo, David Cross, Todd Barry, Louis C.K. and more in the 90s mostly and was well-known back then both for his acerbic honesty on stage as his drug and alcohol problems. In that era he both won acclaim for being funny and some respect from his fellow comics and also managed to alienate nearly all of his friends with his self-destructive behavior. By the mid 2000s he had hit something of bottom having failed to land the big movie parts (a bit in “Almost Famous” was his break) or good TV gigs that contemporaries like David Cross or Dave Attell had landed (he did a few shows that were short-lived) and was unsure what to do with his life following a string of firings from liberal-talk radio Air America. It was around this time that, conscious or not, he started up a podcast called “WTF” which was possibly intended to be a show examining life’s “WTF moments” but ended up being both a series of intimate interviews with talented comedians (Cross and Barry were some early guests) and his own personal quest for redemption, talking frankly about his life and where he was in it, his feelings of despair and self-loathing and romantic unfulfillment. He would often start an interview by apologizing to his guest for any wrongs he had committed towards them, kind of a 12-step amend, since he was now sober. As the podcast continued, it became more and more influential as bigger names stepped up and people became more involved in the show. Suddenly Ben Stiller, Judd Apatow, Robin Williams, Louis C.K., many greats appeared and even solicited appearances on Marc’s podcast. It became a place where people went to see the truth, the back-room of comedy. What these opaque performers were like behind their masks interested us and Marc’s own struggle and frankness made us root for and identify with him. His was a no-bullshit zone in which his audience was his confidant and support, a dangerous, but typically stand-up comedian move. Here’s an article from the Times if anyone needs more info.

I got into the podcast through my ex, who was a big stand-up fan before I had even really gotten into stand-up, and through me it went virally to my father and my friends and it expanded through other channels until at least 30 percent of the people I knew listened to the show, those in or out of comedy. As someone who writes about himself and his life in sometimes awkward, sometimes funny, sometimes sad ways, it was obviously a good fit for me and I was and am a big fan of the podcast and Marc’s comedy.

Which is why the panel kinda sucked.

First there was a poor set-up.

I hadn’t listened to the guy offering me tickets so I didn’t realize when he tweeted me back that the show was the next night. I tried in vain to get the girl who I’d gone on a date with to come with me but understandably she was busy. My friend Bander who’d invited me to a different WTF event was also busy as was my improv buddy Sebastian. So I did what I thought was the right thing and invited my ex to come along, considering she’s the biggest Maron fan I knew and she gratefully accepted.

I was worried about some awkwardness there but there wasn’t much. We had sort of settled things the last time we’d seen each other and I had come to the realization that the person I missed was the one who loved me. a person who no longer exists. So it was just like seeing a friend, just a little more awkward.

Then we got there and sat down, I had a drink of wine from the free bar (always nice) and sat down to watch the “Maron”, the Denis Leary-produced pilot that Marc Maron was there to world-premiere to the onlooking audience of (I could only assume) rabid fans.

I saw him before the show standing outside the theater sizing up people as he has before every show I’ve seen him at.

“How’s the pilot?” I asked him.

“We’ll see.” He replied.

The pilot was… lacking in my opinion. Coming from a fan perspective, I wasn’t sure how a TV-version of Marc’s podcast would work considering that the whole show is premised on his “outsider” status looking in, talking to people more outwardly successful than him. The pilot seemed to be similar to “Louie”, Louis C.K.’s superb show on FX, with a similar typeface, a similar title and a similar single-camera shooting style, lit like a short film (It was directed by the 2010 Academy Award Winner for Best Short, an NYU alum). My main problem with it was that it seemed like what it was: a “sitcom-ed” version of Marc’s life, but the very nature of his life and podcast (as well as Louie’s show) is to eschew such bullshit. People don’t speak in epithets, people are messy, but in the sitcom Marc had made, he had written it (as he described on the panel) by hiring a sitcom writer and just taking him around his house and telling him stories from his life which the sitcom writer turned into sitcom dialogue. It’s not rewarding to see something you expect truth from and have it regurgitated in that form.

So when the Q+A came around I asked a question, as I’m always a question-asker at Q+As out of–curiosity? need for attention? need to connect with people? No matter, I asked my question, which was something along the lines of?

“Hi, so it seems like this clearly references Louie in some of it’s choices, the typeface, the title, the single-camera shooting style. I wondered, I know that in Louie, they made those aesthetic choices based on Louis C.K.’s style of rough-hewn comedy, an attempt to tacke uncomfortable truths in a messy aesthetic type of way, reflecting it. So I just wanted to know, what influenced your aesthetic decisions on this show?”

Which of course, Marc Maron, with his epic insecurities must have treated like “You’re ripping off Louie” and that’s what he replied to.

“Well, obviously that comment is meant to be provocative and you must feel very smart.” He started. “But let me just say this isn’t like Louie, you said single-camera and Louis is shot like a short film, we just have a similar title because WTF was a weird title, but other than that there aren’t any similarities.”

A smattering of applause.

“But no, this guy over here, it’s OK, it’s OK, I see myself in him. It’s fine.” He continued to laughter.

Another comedian asked another question, a softball, an obvious attempt to defuse the situation asking “How does it feel to go from wanting to kill yourself in your garage two year ago to being in front of a crowd laughing hysterically at your pilot?” to which Marc replied:

“It would be great but now I just feel bad about what I did to this guy over here [gesture at me] even though he’s obviously the douchebag in the situation.”

They cut the Q+A there, if I recall correctly.

Last night, I met someone who was also there and confirmed both the general responses, the strangeness of Marc’s lashing out of me but said that his tone toward the end was more conciliatory.

My ex was amused, though I apologized to her for putting her on the spot, sitting to next to me.

“No, it was awesome.” She said. “Marc Maron said he saw himself in you.”

Most of the crowd I felt glaring at me as I got up to go to the bathroom at the end of the show, or waited in the line to pee.

The funniest reaction came from an old film professor of mine from NYU who happened to have been sitting next to me who the second the panel ended said “Well Nick, pleasure seeing you” and fucking darted for the door as quickly as possible shoving her way past everyone else.

I saw Maron after the show as I walked out.

“I’m a big fan, actually.” I told him.

“I’m sure you are.” He replied.

“Well anyway.” I said.

“We cool?” He asked.

“Sure, of course.” I said and shook his hand and left.

I felt fine about it all and obviously even for its length the version I give you is abridged. I knew it was more about Marc and his insecurities than about me, which my friends confirmed.

But still I went home and felt a little bad, until I had someone to talk to.

Also, that first date just cancelled on me.

That’s Karma, Marc Maron.

You got it.

***

There are many shameful things I share here on the pages of this blog:

Stuff about my sex life, addiction issues, feelings of inadequacy, terrible things I do to people, my private relationships.

But I have to say there are few things I have more trepidation about sharing than my occasional Magic: The Gathering relapses.

In fact, it was pretty much the only thing for years that I lied to my parents about, going to the store and playing with my friends when I was supposed to be at high-school newspaper (called “The Polygon”) meetings.

I just want to take this moment to say, ironically at my school newspaper, I was the “People” editor. Enough said.

Anyway, I quit Magic a few years ago, but no one ever quits Magic, like other things I’m sure and every now and then I’m lured in again, to play a card game and exorcise all of the adrenaline and competitiveness that I never got out (nor will ever get out) through sports.

It was nice that the “Magicians” at the store I’d never been to in Williamsburg (Twenty-Sided Store) noticed that I had lost weight as they in their infinite lacks-of-finesse would always tell me when I looked fatter.

Aside: Opening up a gaming store in hipster Williamsburg=smartest idea ever. What do you think all those douchebags who make iPhone apps and work for Tumblr used to do in high school and college? Settlers of Catan, motherfucker.

“Gay” was the thing Chadd Harbold told me when I told him where I was before getting brunch with him and I felt that to be, in spirit, a pretty accurate reaction.

What can I say? It’s enjoyable, it hearkens back to what fun parts of my youth there are, it’s a nice way to let off steam when I get so involved in the other nerdy community I’m in of improv comedy.

I don’t do it all the time. But it was pre-release event and it was a Saturday morning and I thought it would just be fun to go.

Dangerous I know and dangerous to admit! I posted on here a while ago a whole article/bonanza about a woman outing and dumping and dissing a date she’d been on because he was someone who was a Magic virtuoso, someone I looked up to when I was a kid.

What can I say except that person sucked who dissed Jon Finkel and the internet all agreed, that I am who I am and don’t try to hide that very often, that sometimes I do things that might be counter-productive or not in my best interest. Sometimes I might go to a smelly, crowded gaming store, sit in a crowd of people who seem like stereotypes (I as well) and sweat it out through 3-4 hours of competitive “spell-casting”.

But some people snort Adderall and I find that much fucking weirder.

So, there I am. I did ok. I played in two events going 3-0 and 1-2, somewhat even. I felt good and reconnected people I hadn’t seen in years.

I played Magic for a day.

And as much as I would seek to self-deprecate through that statement, if you don’t like that, fuck you.

***

I’ll never get over that my best friend Frank is in such goddam good shape when he used to be the chubby kid back in middle school. It’s just one of those things that will make me eternally insecure.

We hung out in Park Slope going to a new meatball shop (not worth mentioning) and just walking while I drank a huge bottle of Raspberry-flavored seltzer down the Park Slope avenues.

I called him on one of his excited mentions now that we were both looking ok (I still am constantly worried about my weight, despite not owning a scale) of going to some place that was dangerously named “Ample Creamery”.

Frank for his part was phobic. As a personal trainer, if he is seen at any point walking near his gym, he can be conscripted to hang out doing what’s called a “floor shift”, having to walk around the gym pitching packages of training sessions to customers.

So we took a round-about route that Frank complained about that was actually just a straight L that led us right there, much to Frank’s Brooklyn-native consternation.

“What, who cares if  I live here?” Frank said. “Doesn’t mean I need to know how to get places.”

“You said this was way out of the way.” I told him.

“Meh!” Frank exclaimed in his usual exclamation of indifferent defiance.

And it was settled.

When we got to the Ample Creamery, we were given an ice-crema tour by samples from a nice attendant through crazy flavors involving everything from gummy bears to jam and Frank got a cone full of breakfast cereals and cereal-milk flavored ice-cream while I opted for a 70% dark chocolate scoop.

The ice cream was rich and gelato-like and enough that I shamefully ate all of it, though such things are not forbidden to me even on my weight worrying.

“Sleepy.” I told Frank.

“Man up,” He replied as we walked out of the store. “Crunch time.”

And I was reminded why Frank looks so much goddam better than I do.

***

AMPLE CREAMERY

Dark Chocolate Single Scoop- $4

Corner of Vanderbilt Aves and St. Marks Pl. Brooklyn, NY

Q to 7th Ave. 23 to Grand Army Plaza.

 

 

 

 

 

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.

Adventures in Trying Not To Be a Pseudo-Celebrity Douchebag

“I hope she’s a foodie” was one of the comments on Facebook.

The others were comment on my “fly” appearance, how I was “styling” or “killing it” or, from Andy Roehm, always refreshing, wondering “what the fuck’s wrong with you drinking a vodka raspberry?”

When Rob put the picture up on Facebook, I was struck by how “cool” I looked, how “dapper” in my mismatched sport-coat and short-sleeved button-up, how my receding hairline had turned laziness into a sort of hair-do, how my staring ahead at the camera as opposed to the lady next to me, made me look important, or more than it all, or intense.

It was not a person I recognized, but then again, it was not reflective of who I was then, a problem I often have with photographs.

The truth of the matter was that I don’t know the young lady who was on my shoulder just then. She was someone who said the line I’ve heard repeatedly–”You’re that guy from Bethenny!”–and then it was off to the races.

I had to take my picture with her, had to meet her friends. These people didn’t know my name and nor would I expect them too, but I had no way to connect with them. In most ways, the interaction was like something digital, a “like” on Facebook or a retweet, with the lingering effect of having someone still look at you after the acknowledgment.

These people, this pretty lady, the whole open bar scene, they didn’t know me, so how was I supposed to process their blank acknowledgement?

The event was the Webutante Ball, a swanky charity-type thing run by Richard Blakely, a web-honcho whom I met in bar and kept in touch. I had comped passes for the event by Blakely’s kind offer but the only person I could think of for a date was Robert Malone, since a “ball” might be a heavy order for anyone I might have been tentatively pursuing and Rob, much more than I, knew how to have a good time.

We got dressed-up, we hit the party, sweaty and dank from the lingering night humidity outside and took part in the sadly vodka-only limited open bar, the reason for the drink Andy “Roehmed” me for.

As I walked around the event, I just felt crowded and more crowded as people filled it, different rooms, shoving past, trying to find others.

Rob had more of a tolerance for it all, especially with his camera, appointing himself Culture Vulture for the night.

“What’s the matter, babe?” He asked me. “Don’t want to hit up those ladies looking for some hot food-love?”

“Not really.” I told him. “I’m just not that interested.”

It’s not that I’m ball-less or even that intro-verted, I just couldn’t deal with the emotions, the crowded bar, the pressure to respond, the idea that somebody “knows” you, like that and expects that person they know from you.

What if I’m the me that wants to talk about movies, the me that talks about comedy shows, the me that just wants to fall in love?

How do you emerge as a person when to more people than you think, you’re just a character on a screen?

Reality TV just exacerbates the existential philosophy of the shit, as do Vodka Cranberries as did crowds.

Rob was disappointed in me when I told him I was leaving that night, though he came with, like a friend.

Bobby Olsen was disappointed in me a week later, when I left the after-party for Sophia Takal’s “Green” for similar reasons.

Sophia’s a friend and co-conspirator in the Find Rob Malone Love Association, and her movie was felt, honest, great (you can check it out at BAM, via the link above if you’d like).

I had been looking forward to the unexpected “free beer after-party”, but what I thought would be a soiree in an empty bar with a bunch of Brooklyn-y film nerds turned out to be a conglomeration of three different parties in a too-small LES hotspot.

Again, I found myself cornered by drunk people “recognizing me”, asking me questions, asking “what is she like? what are you doing with her? are you on the next season?”, things I don’t know how to answer, things I shouldn’t have to.

I’m not famous enough to deal with this always and the fact knowing that this is all uncontrollable and fleeting only makes it more difficult to deal with. Who knows what will happen to me, who people really are, what someone else’s plans are for me? All I’m interested in is writing and doing comedy and trying to find some sort of creative craft I have some control over.

Another crowded bar, another night, another time I couldn’t escape, until I did.

Bobby hadn’t seen the movie, he’d just biked in to see some friends. He’d been working hard and hoping to get some R+R. He wasn’t there to ask questions, just to see the person he actually knew, among others, of course.

But by the time Bobby got there, I had to apologize and leave and walk home, alone, 1 free beer deep, in the Lower-Manhattan late-time.

A question I ask often in this blog is “who am I?” There’s a certain necessary, but unclear schism between the person writing this and the person appearing in these stories. Another schism between the way I see myself and my friends’ conceptions of me. And then this other person entirely that I don’t know how to respond to, this context-less reality.

I looked at the picture above today and didn’t know necessarily who I was.

Except I wasn’t “with” that girl, I’m with no one. I didn’t have a hair-do, or a fashion sense. And I didn’t feel important.

I was just looking into the camera, seeking escape, feeling uncomfortable, sipping a Vodka Cranberry from a small black straw.

But that’s not the Nick that people saw on Facebook.

And why hurry to correct them when they just assume my success?

***

A friend found this picture online, not taken by anyone I knew and Frank Orio called me to tell me about it.

I had been at the Big Apple BBQ where this picture was taken, this past weekend but, of course, I had no idea who took it.

It’s certainly much less flattering than the other picture.

I was waiting online to get some Turkey Barbecue from Ed Mitchell’s pop-up tent, the only place offering a white-meat option. I was pulled out of line, handed a sandwich and told when I asked why, “you’re the foodie”. To which I glumly nodded and headed out.

The sandwich was fairly awesome, with dark-meat turkey shredded-up on a bun, with a cider-vinegar sauce and something called a “heating agent” sprinkled on top at my server’s behest.

It was sloppy and full of juice, like I like my ‘cue and when they asked me if I could talk with Ed Mitchell, the pitmaster, for a moment on camera, I gave them their bit, if not out of gratitude for the sandwich, then out of respect fr the man.

He talked about raising funds to open in New York (his store’s in Raleigh, NC) and I recommended, somewhat shamefully/passe-ly, that he might open a food truck in NY for less money than a full on restaurant, in order to prove the market for his style of BBQ in NYC. I told him I felt like such a thing would be a slam dunk here, but I conceded that “you know infinitely more about running a restaurant than I do”.

I joined Frank, his friends Charles and Val from college and his mom, an eccentric, lovable schoolteacher named Sophie in line for some ribs they were getting.

“You know, you guys shouldn’t be getting ribs here.” I pointed out as they stood in the Blue Smoke line. “You can get these any time; these guys are NYC-based.”

“Nick, not everyone lives in NY.” Frank said, gesturing to a complimentarily-waving Charles and Val as I conceded and waited with them for their food.

It was Charles who found the picture a few days later.

Later that night, I had a UCB show I thought I was pretty funny in though my teacher didn’t like it much. Rob and Dan Dickerson attended and I made fun of Dan’s moustache. Lorina and Ron, my improv friends came and Ron stuck around after to see the “ASSSSCAT’ show with me.

Now that my 401 class is over, I’ve gotten my notes and I’m waiting to be told I’m not good enough to study “advanced classes” there (an email I check for frequently), it was nice that Rob texted me and said I was the funniest part of the show, along with a girl in my class who’s a vet. It was nice that Ron stuck around to talk with me and hang out after. That they all gave me notes and thanks and were there.

It was nice that Frank called me to tell me about the picture Charles had found, which I used in my blog.

It was nice in a time of feeling not-good-enough, to hear that for the people that knew you well, you were accepted.

***

I’ll admit, I kinda wish that Turkey Sandwich had been enough to end the blog with.

But unfortunately, as far as I know, it will never again exist in New York, unless someone takes a trip to Raleigh and stores some in the back of their car.

So here’s another story.

As part of my current job, which I can’t really talk about except to say that I really, honestly enjoy it (which terrifies me), I find myself in the strange position of being down in the Financial District, which I finally decided to use to blackball one Robert Martin Malone into eating a solid meal with me.

I tried to lure him to Alfanoose, where I so frequently pick up mammoth platters that never last less than two meals, but he chose my alternate, Zaitzeff, a burger joint that had been strenuously recommended by my employer who told me that “if you’re going to eat a real burger at Peter Luger’s, you should do yourself the favor and eat one at Zaitzeff”.

When we arrived, Rob was only a couple minutes late and apologized. We took turns complaining about girl problems (mostly lack-of-girl problems) and ordered some food and drinks, I caught a turkey burger while Rob opted for a regular 1/4lb Sirloin.

Both came standard on a “Portuguese Muffin” which seemed to me very close to an English muffin though Rob said he both preferred to my choice of the sesame-seed bun and to a straight-up EM saying “there’s something roll-y about this I really like”.

My turkey burger was fairly yummy if a bit small and I’m not much one for grilled onions (fried or caramelized please!) but the muffin did take care of containing and sopping the burger juices and providing a nice palatable counter-point to the umami flavors at hand.

The real all-star for me were the “Mixed Fries”, a large paper dish containing a mash-up of sweet-potato and idaho fries in a generous, share-encouraging portion. I told Rob the fries were on me and he obliged in turn by getting the beverages.

“You’ve got a thing for expensive lunches, babe.” Rob added, knocking burger juice out of his beard.

“Alfanoose would have been the same as this.” I replied.

“Yeah, but less burger-y.” Rob replied.

And that was a good note to exit on.

So we did.

***

ZAITZEFF BURGERS

Turkey Burger w/White Cheddar on Portuguese Muffin w/Mixed Fries- $16.82

NE Corner of Nassau and John Sts

AC2345JMZ to Fulton St-Broadway-Nassau. E to World Trade Center. R to Cortlandt St.

Periods of Frustration

What are you supposed to do when you no longer know why you’re at a place?

Me, I go try to find food.

I’ve been at this “internship” for quite a few months now, hooked up by my mom, as a bulwark I guess, to doing nothing.

My dad keeps on insisting it’s for the best, that these people are “connected” and that somehow, they’ll find some way to “hook you up”.

My experience has been though, that internships never “hook you up”, they use all they can out of you until they use no more, or failing that, hire you out of desperation for everyone else quitting.

One might call this cynical, but considering that a woman I worked a year for, for free, didn’t cast me as “Sleeping Roommate”, a part which would have gotten me signed to my agency, you’ll forgive me for having a dim view of internships.

At this current one, I don’t even know what I’m doing or why I’m there, failing even the pretense of “advancement in my industry” which appeals to so many people who seek these things out.

At some point, I just wanted to get away.

So I went to Buffalo Wild Wings.

It’s true, I didn’t mean to. I wanted to go to the Empanada cart, staged over by Atlantic Terminal, that gives good-fried-packets for just around 2 dollars, but they were gone, maybe driven away by whatever frost there was that day and so I tried the place I’d heard about, thinking that if they advertised Chicken, they might not be so objectionable.

I was pretty wrong.

The nuggets I brought back (“boneless wings”) to the office, were crispy, sickly-sweet and over-spiced. Frank, my best friend, a Brooklynite, had tried them before and mocked me for thinking they’d be anything else.

“McDonalds is better.” Frank tossed around harshly.

I told him I thought they were better than the McDonald Chicken Nuggets (which now contain no chicken), but not by much.

I was excited for some celery that came with it, which I dipped a little in the bleu cheese dressing.

I did some research that day at the internship.

But I don’t know what for.

***

When I went to Union Hall last night to meet Eva to see a comedy show, she sent me a text message that I got when I was two blocks away and I sent one back in reply.

Just checking in with each other, seeing where we were.

The comedy was good, some funny people. Eugene Mirman, A.D. Miles and Mike DeStefano, whose fame from his recent “WTF with Marc Maron” podcast seems to have given him a worthy boost in a career that seemed doomed to pigeon-holing, playing wise-guys.

I kept looking over at Eva though, checking to see that she found the same things funny as me, seeing that she liked her drink, or the atmosphere.

Wanting to know that she liked being with me.

“Sure, I saw my ex plenty of times after we broke up.” Andy told me, changing in the locker room. He had gotten off to a bad start that day, combating the hangover he seemed ever-locked in struggle with.

“It’s the same sort of thing every time. They dance around the decision they made. ‘Did I do the right thing? Was I right? Is this better?’ Until they realize: ‘Oh wait, I guess I did make the right decision. Cool then.”

“I’m worried.” I told Andy, “I’m worried I’m not ready for this.”

“Well, you already said you do it.” said Andy, straightening his shirt. “Just be aware of it. See if you’re getting in to the same routine. Realize she’s not that for you anymore. She’s just an acquaintance.”

I wanted to say when Andy said this that I couldn’t do that, but he was out, gone to fresh air, to feel better, away from work.

And of course I couldn’t feel like Eva was acquaintance, just another friend. How do you look at someone who you shared so much of your life with, taste and trust, someone who accepted you fully and you helped them– how do you look at that person and see them as anything else?

In the end I couldn’t. I made jokes and enjoyed the comedy and drank too much and bought her a few.

I told A.D. Miles “a toast to red-heads”, when Eva told me he was pretty sure his hair was blond, a testament to my color-blindness.

We talked and took the same train and played the same games as she kept trying to pay me for drinks and I kept trying to hide the money in her bag and down her dress.

Yeah, she wore a nice dress and looked very pretty.

We talked for a bit about the dating websites we were on and looking for other people and she told me her “headless body” had gotten a lot of messages, while I told her I hadn’t been too happy with what I’d found.

I gave her my stand-up set, I laughed at her jokes, I admonished her when she self-deprecated, or said people didn’t think she was pretty.

“Well, they’re going to see your face eventually.” I told her. And she agreed.

We sat together on the train and talked some more and right before her stop, I had already started crying, though I don’t think she noticed.

The whole night had gone through and there I was with her about to leave, still not loving me.

It’s hard to see someone’s face, their same face, their same expressions and know that their happiness is no longer for you.

I cried home, on the subway and in bed. To the public, I blame the whiskey.

In bed, Dan Pleck got on the phone with me, texting fast, telling me that trying to recapture first love is like “chasing the dragon”, a high that never comes again.

Mostly, I just felt like a junkie.

I woke up and watched the second-to-last episode of Deadwood and was fine.

***

When I introduced myself in my Writing for SNL class, I blew myself up a little bit.

“Well, I’ve interned for The Colbert Report, pitched some web videos and acted in one, have done some web comedy, was on Letterman, made a short film, that kind of stuff.”

I then followed that up with: “All of this might sound like I’m a pretty good sketch writer, which unfortunately is not the case.”

In fact, I’m a terrible sketch writer, much worse at it than I am even at improv, which I once also felt terrible at.

In my Writing for SNL class, people have started to come around to me, but in my arguably more important Sketch Level 2 class at The Magnet, where some of our sketches will end up in a show, I’ve written something new every week and brought it in, only for it to die.

In some ways, I’m grateful for this. I understand the necessity of learning a craft and, particularly, learning from failures, as early successes can bolster you towards levels of confidence unearned.

It also afforded me chances to run away from class during breaks, where I found a nice Italian deli for a low-cost Chicken Parm, some consolation.

When I went out this past week, with some co-workers after a long shift, I told a beautiful young lady I work with, still in college, not to be so hard on herself, as she told me of her depression and her art.

“What’s there to feel sorry about?” I asked her. “What you do now might not be what you do later, might not even be what you want. As you change, so do your desires, naturally. And there is no shame in that. So for now, take the gift that’s offered you and experiment and try and work hard, as you can and enjoy yourself. The stakes are low, or only as high as you set them, so live with the passion you have.”

Or at least what I hope I said. I had drunk a couple beers at that point.

Anyway, I was ok with dying in that class every week, though I felt like I let my teacher down, Armando, who said he saw in potential in me: “the funny midi-chlorians”, as he put it.

So I wrote him an email, which I got a reply to last night on my… I don’t want to call it a “not-date”, with Eva.

I had acknowledged that I had much to learn about writing sketches and that it was frustrating, given that I felt more confident about my other forms of writing. I told him I knew I had to learn, but that I was worried about the upcoming show and writing something that was good enough.

“Isn’t there anything I can do,” I asked him. “To learn this faster, to be better at this, in time?”

“Nicholas,” He replied. “There is a time in any learning process where there is a period of frustration. The key is to keep plugging away. Eventually comes the day when you wake up and it comes together. But all you can do is keep at it and have faith. There is no special step, just persistence.”

Not to make a metaphor out of a molehill, but I think you see what I mean.

***

SALUMERIA BIELESE

“Small” Chicken Parm- $6.50

SE Corner of 29th St and 8th Ave. (near The Magnet Theater)

ACE to 34th St- Penn Station. 1 to 28th St.

Adventures in Online Dating

To be honest, I went to my therapist with some expectations this week.

Maybe some of that was just my following of the end of the show, In Treatment, getting into the episodes towards the end of the season, where the patients are supposed to have their breakthroughs and make whatever progress in their lives there is to have, before either returning back to the masses or continuing therapy on the road to something new.

In fact, this season ended in only mixed results for all but one of the show’s patients, with even the therapist rejecting therapy, for its limitations and betrayals.

My session, on the other hand, was less dramatic. I didn’t cry about Eva, or shiver and shake. I just talked, sometimes angrily, but mostly just wondering, trying to put together the pieces and figure out some stuff in the environment I knew how to, while being assured that the drunken therapy-like conversations I had with myself on the long walks home from karaoke bars were in fact “relatively normal”.

In the end, I wound up asking about whether my therapist’s daughter had liked the Professor Layton game I had gotten her (had seen it, was excited, hadn’t tried yet) and trying to squeeze some out-the-door insight from her while our time was nearly up.

“Before I leave,” I asked. “Just tell me, you told me last time to ‘be in my feelings’ and not ‘do anything I usually wouldn’t’. I’ve tried to squeeze as much mileage as I can out of this but tell me, what else can I do.”

“I’m sorry,” She replied. “But you seem stable, Nick. It sounds like you’re not acting out and you’re trying to reasonably understand things. I think you’re doing what you need to do.”

I was a bit hurt by this as I frequently didn’t feel all right and I did need guidance and I wanted some plan to feel less like crap, but I took it, with one more question.

“And the online dating?”

She smiled.

“You’re putting yourself out there.” She said. “But careful, it’s addictive.”

“Or so I hear.” She added as I grabbed my bag and closed the door.

***

In all the history of embarrassing shit, I’ve put up here on this blog, for some reason this might take the cake:

I am using an online dating site right now.

All throughout college, when I was frustrated, thinking about my shape and size and my hair and whatever the fuck else could be wrong with me, it was always the one taboo I resisted, the one thing I felt like would plunge me into utter despair.

After all, I was at college at NYU, the home of a bevy of available film-savvy actresses and here was I, the jew-nerdy toast of the prestigious film department. Surely, I could find someone in this big multi-college town who was tired or desperate enough to jump a shaky newbie, someone who, forgive my phrasing, was into “this”.

Going to online dating would be a rejection of these fortuitous circumstances I thought, an admission of defeat, that I was  so unattractive, so out of it, so socially inept that I had to go online to craigslist or beyond, where my roommate would later trawl with posts entitled something like “looking for a mate in the bush”.

Worse yet, memories stick in my mind of one solitary night sophomore year, when the reality that I hadn’t found anyone as a Freshman began to sink in, amidst the happy nuptuals of my then-coupled roommates, replying to a craigslist ad of some poor girl with a kid, asking her to give me a chance in a way and with descriptions, that made it sound like I was asking her to touch a leper, or at least someone with poor social qualities.

This single incident, mercifully unanswered, was sublimated and tucked away, locked, as a symbol to my conscious mind of how low I could go if I wanted to, in the pursuit of my own self-pity. When I tell people about the worst moments of my life flashing before my eyes and they wonder through what crucible they are made, you can behold that and me telling whole-heartedly an autistic teenager’s parents he had a future in the theater. They are the moments I lose control of my reality and subvert the rules of my world.

Anyway, for all of my many friends who predicted “months, year” for my recovery from my break-up, all I needed was one friend to tell me to “try it” to get me to sign up for one of the websites, make a profile and submit myself to a battery of insane-o questions (“Would you rather you die or 10 random people?”).

I took pictures of myself, I used self-deprecating humor. I tried honesty and, honestly, I felt rather bad about myself so there I was again, shying away, trying for modesty and answers to questions like “What do you want to do with your life” with “I don’t know, I work in a movie theater.”

“Nick, what is wrong with you?!” My friend who had suggested the online dating asked, with a horror that resounded through g-chat. “Have some confidence for godssakes.”

“Say you’ll take them on a comprehensive food tour of New York City. Tell them about your self-deprecating humor and that you’re a character emblematic of your city. Juxtapose two movies that have nothing to do with each other and let some film nerdy girl message you about them to try to figure out what they could possibly have in common.”

“Try!” she added.

I demured.

Looking over my profile, I did see a lot of uncertainty, but what was expected of me? It was my frist time trying this, a thing I once thought so shameful I sublimated it. Coming out of my first mutually-loving relationship, I wasn’t sure I could ever find someone who’d love me like that again, or could feel that way, or could accept me.

Was it self-sabotage? I asked my therapist if I “sabotaged” my relationship?

“I think that involves an element of want.” She told me. “And I don’t think you wanted it to end.”

True. But maybe my ambiguity about the whole process led to the insecurity that seemed to permeate my profile, looking at it.

But really though, the same could be said as my dating strategy as a whole, a sort of sad-sack humor that my friend Chadd explicitly warned me about through his first successful Karaoke session.

“Just don’t tell them the truth.” He told me. “Or pick the truth. Saying you just got out of a relationship is the sort of thing that would make a woman run from you. Sadness and fucking don’t go hand in hand.”

Maybe, but all I felt was that need for acceptance, that want for someone to need me as is, to see me at least for the bad things and still to want me, as it’s the bad things right now I see about myself.

It’s a hard place to be that way, putting yourself out.

***

None of this is to say that I haven’t been going out, drinking with friends, trying to move on in the real world as well.

The aforementioned Karaoke de-virgin-izing of Chadd resulted me belting a song from “Annie!” while a girl (most likely a friend of good-man/karaoke bartender Colin Lime) grinded on the side of me.

“I just want to point out, you didn’t even look at her.” Chadd told me, between beers, to which I shrugged uncomfortably.

I went out with Frank and Simon, two-parts of my former middle-school Counterstike-playing trio, to a bar where a skinny girl with a lot of tatoos told me about her Jew fetish, stroking my uncombed red hair, while I waited on her, hopefully, to not barf on me.

“What’s the matter?” Frank asked me.

“I just feel weird, that’s all.” I said, after I escaped. “It’s just not exactly what I’m looking for.”

Which is what exactly anyway? I told Zach online that I was looking for someone safe, someone stable, someone I could share something with.

“Isn’t that kinda alot?” Zach asked. “Why not just be looking to make out?”

“That too, sometimes.” I said.

The truth is, as much as I might try to similarly sublimate it, that I’m still wounded, still reeling, still trying to replace the missing love in my life whatever way I can, while trying to process how it ended up missing in the first place.

In denial, I desperately want to prove my friends wrong that I’ll be facing some period, some year, something more, where I’ll just feel terrible all the time.

The truth is, I want to find someone who doesn’t make me feel like that. Which is a lot to ask of someone.

Which, then, makes me think about my last relationship ended.

And so on.

***

I ended up after a day working at the movie theater at my mom’s along with pseudo-roommate/ceiling-dweller John Beamer, since I’d missed a home-cooked meal and my dad was out of town.

As we sat, we talked about 1968 and the transition between civil change and backlash and narratives of progress.

The spaghetti was delicious, as were my mother’s lightly fried turkey meatballs, a hallmark of my childhood.

I ate till I was stuffed, picking at salad and garlic bread, a feast that even John, picky eater that he is (he refers to vegetables as “greenies”), enjoyed heartily.

I sat stuffed there on the couch, where I ate and had eaten and where I slept for 6 or so years in my life, when I outgrew my room.

I felt in it, I felt surrounded.

I felt full.

But there was still a night to go and people to see.

So I went out into the river-windy New York night.

Because, even with everything else, it’s what there is to do.

***

FEITEL RESIDENCE

Spaghetti with Turkey Meatballs, House-Made Balsamic Greens Salad, Semolina Garlic Bread- Free (w/visit to Mom)

Location redacted (sorry)