No Sleep Till…

So.

This is the corner where I get pseudo-mugged.

It’s a stupid story, full of stupid decisions, that somehow turned out ok.

But as it’s vaguely more dramatic than the usual me just complaining about my life, I’ll tell it here.

It was a sad night, to begin with.

I hadn’t just gotten out from my class show, having done two crappy sets with a talented group of people, the sort of show where nobody even really attempts to drink with each other afterwards. Everyone just scatters their separate ways to try to pretend that this didn’t just happen.

Except I had nobody to scatter with.

I didn’t have any close friends in that particular improv class. I hadn’t invited my friends because I knew that this was not going to be a good class show.

And, perhaps more saliently, I had been disconnected with my main group of people, due to my intense dive into the world of comedy, I had not seen the Robert Malone or John Beamers–

Or even the Andrew Parrishes of the world for a while.

The people who I had known for the longest and was closest too were now all distant from me, not in their friendship, but just in our worlds. My diet had taken me mostly off drinking and partying, leaving me not wanting to go out to Brooklyn late at night for adventures and not seeing movies as often, because I was seeing so many improv shows.

So when I walked out of my class show on a Saturday night, with no one to talk to or drink with or commiserate over how crappy that just was, I felt bad.

And Andrew Parrish, to his credit, told me he wasn’t doing anything when I asked “How Parrishes” and he walked over to meet me down on 7th Avenue as we marched slowly downtown.

***

I’m sorry to tease y’all or break up the (still non-existant) action, but this was the point in the evening where we to Dirty Bird to Go, where I found out, happily, that the chopped-fried chicken wrap there was whole wheat and thus I could eat it for my diet.

It was huge and full of pieces torn off the bone, with hearts of palm and tomatoes and romaine lettuce and a mix of buttermilk ranch and hot sauce that was recommended to me the first time I ever went there, taken by my ‘rents.

I could only finish half with my sadly and strangely newly-diminished appetite, but it filled me up, was more delicious than Andrew’s roasted version and, quite importantly, reheated well the next day, with all the hot sauce and buttermilk evaporating into pure flavor.

It was comfort food, on a night I wanted it.

***

Anyway.

Over chicken wraps, Andrew and I began to discuss the crappiness of the shows I’d just been in and how I felt so weird about my love life. I’d been seeing my ex in mostly fun situations, but I had invited to a show she really wanted to see and I wondered that she had chosen to reconnect with me, if that meant anything more than wanting to hang out and watch movies.

It’s dumb, I know. and I’ve been there before.

But sometimes, you just wanna know.

As I walked, Andrew, who recently had experienced a break-up of his own, did not act villain-ly, or goob-ish, or any of the other ways I’ve described in my blog, jokingly.

He just walked with me and listened to my spout of uncertainty and self-loathing and rationalization and talked with me for a long while as we walked down 7th Avenue, just offering his best advice and giving me an ear of someone who knew me.

I appreciated it.

And then we got psuedo-mugged.

We had reached the corner of Spring and West Broadway near my house but Andrew wasn’t going there and if I went home the conversation was over.

So we stood on the corner, leaning on a building as Europeans passed us by sometime before 11, just shooting shit about getting over exes and being ok with one’s self and the Chester Brown book that we had all read at this point.

When some guy asked us if we were dealing drugs and we said no, obviously.

“Well there has been that sort of activity here and there’s an ongoing investigation. I’m an undercover cop and I’m going to need you two to open your bags.”

So we did, dumbly. Neither of us were drunk, it just sounded like a cop-like request.

“What are all those wires?” He asked.

“It’s a solar-powered backpack.” I explained expertly. “That’s a battery and my PSP.”

“Let me see your phones.” He said and I, of course, gave him my phone.

My first realization that something wasn’t right was when the dude didn’t take Andrew’s shitty flip phone.

“Wait a second,” I asked. “Can we see your badge?”

Of course, this would have been smart to ask when he did not have my phone already, but I asked.

“This is getting really uncomfortable.” Andrew said.

Which prompted me to repeat: “Wait a second, where’s your badge?”

“I have a badge.” He said backing off a bit.

“No.” I said. “This is not happening.”

And I got on the other side of the guy slowly and deliberately, using my improv skills (laugh) and just took my phone from his hand.

“Snatching something from the hand of an officer. You guys are in trouble. Stay here while I get backup.”

And the dude just walked away.

“Want to get out of here?” I asked Parrish.

“Yeah.” He replied and we zipped up our bags and left.

Leaving my first thought was, was that guy really a cop?

10 minutes later, my thoughts ranged from “Why didn’t I  get stabbed or punch trying to take my phone from somebody?” to “Why didn’t I ask to see a badge earlier?” to “Was he just doing some sort of weird drunk game?”

It was all very confusing but it shook Andrew and I up and I went home and Andrew to a party.

Full of strange and unresolved emotions.

***

The next day was mostly anti-climax.

The nice thing was that I saw Parrish and Malone and Beamer and Alex Hilhorst. And we all had fun seeing stupid Conan and bitching. And Beamer even said he missed living with me which I told him was sweet.

The show with my ex was fine, I drank too much, but did nothing stupid to my ex, except feel weird (though not awful) seeing some dude hit on her.

I found myself drinking more to keep the buzz going through another show and then some time spent mutually rapping with an improv friend about our lack of romantic prospects, back to regular life.

The only thing was that through the combination of 3-or-so too-many drinks, a stomach bug I was fighting, and spending too much time in depressive-commiseration, I didn’t get to bed till 5 and woke up at 9, held together by leftovers and the 65-cent coffee refills I could get with the cup I smartly saved from nearby Porto Rico.

I ended up talking it out with my ex after seeing Out Of Sight, her choice which I dug actually and appreciated that we both thought J-Lo reminded us of a young Barbara Streisand in that movie.

After the mostly-fine, surprisingly, after-math of that (the worst torture is in lack of clarity, or wondering, or second-guessing) I ended up drawn in to:

a. A beautiful dinner with my Grandma.

and

b. An event called Punderdome.

I had a good reason to be there. A cute girl had invited me. End good reason.

But my friend J-Sam had shown up too and we ended up dragged in from me, a falling-apart on four hours of sleep spectator, to a full-on balls-to-the-wall competitor.

The competition, which turned out to be extremely fun, involved making up puns on the spor based on prompt with 90 seconds to think on it, multiple rounds of competition and a human applause-o-meter.

“A pun competition?” My dad said when I told him about it this morning. “That reminds me of a story. A British dude said that he could make a pun about any subject. A crass American asked him, OK, make a joke about the Queen. To which he curtly replied, the Queen is not a subject.”

To which my Dad laughed over the phone for several minutes.

But J-Sam and I competed yelled and mugged for the crowd for our puns. I was even called up to the stage to sing, improbably, “Copacabana” during another group’s 90-second interlude. I knew about a sixth of the words.

Our first two puns were pretty impressive. The first prompt was “That’s What She Said” and I came up with the non-sensical but slick:

“What did Ulysses S. Grant say to the South after banging their Mom? That’s What Lee Said.” J-Sam was real impressed and we made it to the next round.

But it was Sam in all of his Jew-fro-y-ness that got the next round for us when the prompt was “The 31 Flavors of Baskin Robbins.”

He came up with:

“I watched the Shawshank Redemption last night, because I wanted to Bask In Robbins.”

I thought that was pretty cool.

In the interlude we got some cheers and jeers. Some old dude in front of us called us “Slimon and Garfunkel.”

“Are you Garfunkel?” I asked J. Sam.

“I’m always Garfunkel.” He said.

“Well I think it’s better to be Garfunkel than Slimon.” I told him. “I mean, you can knock Garfunkel, but he’s calling me Slimon.”

“Yeah, glad I’m not Slimon.” He replied.

We got knocked out of the competition in the semi-finals when the prompt was “Great Works of Literature” and all we had was me saying “James Joyce” and collapsing to the floor, while J-Sam told the crowd I was having a “Ulys-seizure”. Weak, I know. The pun we came up with later was not much better in it’s cheapness which was:

“Fans of electro-pop despair! Terrible news! Moby’s Sick!”

Might have gotten a laugh but wasn’t as good.

The finals was “uses of ketchup” and both guys did real well with super-slick punny stories and won lame prizes like a bucket of cheese-balls and waffle-iron.

But when I got home I thought to myself, that if we had made the finals, we would have elected to go second and after one of those punny long stories, I would have just said:

“There’s no topping that.”

And walked off stage, killing.

A man can dream, can’t he?

***

DIRTY BIRD TO GO

Fried Chicken Whole Wheat Wrap w/Hot-Buttermilk Dressing- $7.75

14th St bet 7th and 8th Avenues.

123FML to 14th St-7th Ave, ACEL to 14th St-8th Ave.

***

PORTO RICO COFFEE

Refill of your saved cup (You’re smart!), with Splenda and Milk, if you’re me- $.65

Thompson bet. Prince and Spring Sts.

CE to Spring St. 1 to Houston St.

 

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.

Arguments

“Dude, clean up your fucking apartment.”

It had been a long day.

Actually it hadn’t.

It was the Monday after I’d finished by three-week improv intensive, complete with a full additional weekend of additional classes and shows and actually Monday was the first day I was actually free of any improv engagements, sketch, stand-up or the like.

I slept in, I didn’t go to bed too late the night before, I watched most of “National Treasure: Book of Secrets”, was amazed by the cast and took a shower in the middle. I was amazed from my Pandora Radio, yet again, not only how dark of a song “Jenny/867-5309″ by Tommy Tutone was, but that no one seemed to care in the slightest whenever I brought it up.

I got to see “X-Men: First Class” with Rob Malone, who managed to out phone-usage me during the movie, somehow, but we both enjoyed it with our free Regal loyalty snack rewards, which we upsized into a summer-size popcorn and soda.

I had dinner at Le Bernadin with my now-non-quasi-roommate John Beamer, his ‘rents and mine. Drank too much wine, as the event called for it and headed home with John, who came along to catch the tail end of National Treasure 2.

I wound up in the late hours with Bobby Olsen and John both there to crash, too tired from X-Files episodes and Magic Hat No. 9s to drag their asses home and I was happy for the company anyway. It’s strange to say, but when you’re missing love in your life, it’s nice to have see a friendly face in the morning in your apartment. No kisses there, but at least a smile, or some morning groans.

But as the X-Files episodes rolled on and as I neglected to take part in the 6-pack, refunded my 5-dollars by Bobby Olsen, a conversation was struck up about the state of my apartment.

“At least you could clean the shower.” Beamer added, piggybacking off Bobby’s comment.

“Dude, this place is like a disaster. And it would be this much work to even clean the bathroom.” Bobby gestured. “A chick is going to come in here and like, call it off because of that.”

“You’re self-sabotaging, is what you’re doing.” Beamer added on.

It was a difficult situation. I was tired, burnt out on the now-hours-ago wine and I needed to be up early on Tuesday for therapy. But something about this all struck a chord.

“Look,” I said. “First of all, this is who I am. I’ve got lots of gross habits. And if the one that turns you off is my bathroom being messy, that’s probably the canary in the coal mine.”

“That’s just an excuse, Nick, doesn’t mean it’s not self-sabotaging.” Beamer replied.

“It’s like you’re admitting it!” Bobby added.

“Second of all, you motherfuckers are telling me we ALL don’t do much more grievous things here to self-sabotage in front of women?”

“Not the point.” Bobby replied.

“This is easily fixable.” said Beamer.

“Look I might clean my apartment,” I conceded, double-teamed and irritable. “But if I do it’s going to be because my apartment’s gross, not because of some fantasy relationship that would be fantasy squashed because of this.”

And it continued.

I kept trying to tell John and Bobby that I didn’t disagree with the idea of cleaning my apartment, only the idea that somehow not doing so represented some sort of self-sabotage on a grand scale, because of all the things that would be associated from the fallout of that.

If I was self-sabotaging my romantic life by not cleaning my apartment, what else that I thought was right was wrong? What was my accepted reality then?

Also, there was the issue that I told them about somewhere mid-argument.

“Listen guys, I won’t back down from this. Somewhere forged in my adolescence, I figured out that I was not going to change who I was to be accepted, that there was nothing wrong with who I am. If I want to change that’s fine, but I won’t accept that there’s something I need to do for people to accept me. They’ll take me, or–”

And it gets murky here, because I repeated the end of this statement two different ways.

“–or fuck you.”

“–or they should own that and that’s fine, I’ll move on.”

The argument started then to metamorphose from my bathroom, to my “sad tweets” and my constant sharing of my emotional state (“a result of drunkenness”, “a way of externalizing my emotions” “journal-like”) no the nature and uses of social media, back to who I was and the roots of my behavior.

“Fellas,” I told them sometime round 2:30am. “I have to go to sleep. I have real therapy tomorrow.”

Eventually, I got them down in bed, though not before Bobby quizzed me and John to find some relic of his own childhood, a Power-Rangers like show that had the world “ultra” in it, was set in a computer and “was just one guy” (after 20 minutes of searching it turned out to be this) though before we found it, we kept telling Bobby he was insane.

I remembered the rare dream before waking, or at least the end of it.

I was sitting in an elementary school hallway, in a chair, with some white light at the end of it. I was beckoned into a classroom where a teacher, who looked like one of my improv teachers who I didn’t have but knew, was quizzing elementary school children on flash-card-like facts. The only line I remember from these calls and responses was the last one.

“A metaphor.” The teacher said.

And one of the students called out:

“None other than Ra’s Al Ghul.”

And I woke up 3 minutes before my alarm clock.

When I went into therapy that day, I still didn’t have an answer.

It occurs to me now, I should just blame Andrew Parrish and be done with it.

***

I’ve had a few auditions in the past few weeks, though I can’t or don’t sweat them as much anymore.

They come so infrequently now that I just to accept them and let it go.

I tried to be a “fairy” in a grilling commercial, a Jack Black via John Travolta in Pulp Fiction in a Swedish Milkshake commercial and a Seth Rogen-like sociopath (ala Observe and Report) in a low-budget horror movie.

The last one was my first ever taped audition and I arrived to my manager’s office with the copy in my newly-minted solar-powered backpack and the above lunch in the other hand.

I went looking for the Bistro Truck, which was usually in the area, but was gone that day and found instead what seemed shady but ended up being interesting: a truck called “Marrakech Chefs”.

They too offered a Dijon Chicken dish with couscous and salad and I ordered it warily, but was pleasantly surprised, when I sat down to eat my lunch in my manager’s tiny office.

Where as the Bistro Truck offers a refined and more delicate version of this dish, itself a more refined version of “street meat”, Marrakech Chefs seems to offer something that veers towards more authenticity/simplicity.

Their chicken is interspersed with cooked mushrooms, with a creamy rich dijon/creme fraiche sauce on top and what tasted like an earthier couscous than I was used to on bottom. The salad, far from being the usual (and preferred) arugala with light dressing, was an unexpected mi of crispy cucumber and unexpectedly welcome beets, whose cool and sweet clarity of taste contrasted with the creamy chicken on the other side of the metal plate.

As I sat in my manager’s office, the staff around me cooed and looked down at my food.

Which is to say they glanced at it a bit and one of them asked a question, before someone else asked if I “still hang out with Bethenny”.

I finished my food and did a convincing job I think as an overweight college security-guard/sociopath.

***

MARRAKECH CHEFS

Dijon Chicken Platter w/Coucous and Side Cucumber/Beet Salad- $6.50

Unpredictable location (Try here)

 

 

 

Yes, And

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The dynamic is action-validation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I said “Yeah, what’s your name?”

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

“Karaoke, just practicing.” I told her.

And then:

“Why, wanna come?”

“Now?” She asked perplexed.

“Yeah, now.” I replied.

“Sure.” She said and we walked.

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

And it was as easy as that.

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why do I post this?

I don’t know.

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

God that was an awful joke, even for me.

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

“Enjoy”?

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or just some nice big-ass fries.

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

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

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

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

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

Even in eating, we must find balance.

***

THE CREEK AND THE CAVE

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

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

7 to Vernon-Jackson Aves.

Be The Lion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paraphrasing:

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

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

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

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

That is, moreso than I already am.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I try not to get used to it.

Except when I’m depressed.

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

And I say:

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

***

It was a whirlwind couple days for me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I did stop, eventually.

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

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

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

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

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

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

If Armando said it, it was true.

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

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

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

And Armando, ex-film-schooler, agreed.

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

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

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

That night, at least, it was.

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Genius, man.

Cookies.

***

MADISON SQUARE EATS

From Eataly- Deep-Fried Chickpeas- $3

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

Broadway bet. 24th and 25th Sts.

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

Role Players

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And went back to eating his Bea Arthur.

***

Rob Malone stole my iPhone at a warehouse party.

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

It was a Saturday and a welcome one at that.

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

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

“Which one first?” He groggily replied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Definitely.” Najia added.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I–

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

***

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

But this day, I could use something.

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

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

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

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

The Roman Catholic church next door.

The Salumeria and Latticini on either side of the street.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ciao, saluti.” I told him.

“Thank you very much!” he replied liltingly.

And with a smile, I was gone.

***

PEPE ROSSO TO GO

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

Sullivan St bet Houston and Prince Sts.

CE to Spring St. R to Prince St.

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That seems like a good template for a life.

April Me’s

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

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

Which I felt like taking as a compliment.

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

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

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

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

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

Or just the manifestation of my own neuroses.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

Anyway, I love my practice group.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But you’re also having fun.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

Douchebag, am I right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

PETER’S ROTISSERIE

BBQ Chicken Sandwich- $4.92 (Sides additional)

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

ACE7S to 42nd St- Port Authority

Because I Had Nothing To Do On A Sunday Afternoon And Felt Guilty That It Was Already 2011…

Damnit.

Well, not only have most people’s lists already come out, but Jason Lee even has a lit of his top 10 favorite “things” of 2010.

At least Chadd and Rob, who both spent New Year’s tucked away in some rustic country home (different ones), are both woefully lagging behind in their top 10 lists.

Which makes me feel a little better.

I think Rob’s list also includes either the Russel Crowe “Robin Hood” and/or “Unstoppable” which, for those of you who don’t care to remember, was that train movie with Denzel and the new Captain Kirk.

So I probably already have a leg-up here.

(Cue Rob Malone hateful comments/complaints.)

Oh yeah and Chadd’s list probably has some despicably French movies or something he saw at NYFF with 3 people in the crowd.

And Sam Song probably skipped out on writing a list this year, to go to the Minetta Tavern and order some $26 dollar burgers, along with soem cocktails that involve strange flavors like “hickory” and the Japanese citrus fruit “yuzu”.

So there.

Now that I’ve shat all over the competition, I can get down to it.

***

2010 was, of course, the first year that I worked in a movie theater.

(Actually, it was the second, if you count the summer I worked at one when I was 16.)

But what it means is that it was the first year I was able to go see movies with impunity, for free, taking my time and going during the day.

Also, it was a lot easier to fulfill my requirement of getting someone else to go with me, when I can offer them free tickets.

But that’s neither here nor there. What it means, is that I saw even more movies than I normally would.

Thus this year’s list, which is derived from many good films, may not include those expected and does not include some favorites.

It is like me, spiteful and ornery, but also weird and sometimes unintentionally funny.

If you don’t see a movie you know should be on here, I would be happy to discuss it.

But, not knowing the Oscar field in a year that seems increasingly like a toss-up (which is probably good for many of the small movies that came out this year), means that this list is even more in flux than perhaps usual.

“Is it just going to be a bunch of shit I haven’t heard of?” occasional roommate John Beamer asked me when I announced I was writing the list this morning.

It was a valid concern. In my opinion, a top 10 list should not be a pure exercise in one’s favorite movies of the year, but something balancing both preference and accessibility, the reason why film festival-only films are often not included on published lists. It’s about balance and finding a common ground, some room for discussion, while also sharing some things that not everyone has seen.

In other words, just like the Oscars, its politicking.

For better, or for worse. But there it is.

Now the disclaimer package:

Movies I did not see this year that perhaps I should have (and thus are not included on this list):

Greenberg, Carlos (hoping to see soon/a bad oversight), Secret Sunshine, Let Me In, The Strange Case of Angelica, Lourdes, Summer Wars (no one will go with me…), Ne Change Rien, Rabbit Hole, Another Year, Certified Copy (sorry, NYFF)

And without further ado:

A FEITELIAN TOP 10 OF 2010 or “FUCK YOU ROB AND CHADD FOR NOT WRITING LISTS”

10. THE GHOST WRITER

Seen during the early months of the year, Roman Polanski’s lesser, but still valuable entry to 2010 was a welcome contrast to Scorsese’s supremely disappointing (and Oscar-aborted) Shutter Island. With crack performances from Ewan MacGregor, Pierce Brosnan (as far as I know, the best of his career) and a welcome return (and hopefully Academy recognized) by that hot british chick from Rushmore, The Ghost Writer was nothing more and nothing less than a beautifully-acted and shot political thriller about the ways in which history is written and considered, done with an actual “light” political touch *for once*. This is all courtesy, of course, of the director, a man of some experience (and significant controversy) whom, nevertheless, knows how to make a goddam movie and has not forgotten it. What we end up with is a satisfying head-game based film that works both viscerally as a thriller and metaphorically as a treaty on the place and power of the writer in history. For sure, a metaphor for moviemaking in there as well, and a far subtler one than Inception‘s.

9. EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP

One of two “fake” documentaries that came out this year along with I’m Still Here (three if you count parts of “A Film Unfinished”, I’ve heard), Exit Through The Gift Shop bears comparison to Joaquin Phoenix’s surly, overwrought film only by virtue of genre rather than quality. What Exit is and what it succeeds as, is as yet another Banksy conceptual mind-fuck, the equivalent of his bent telephone booth and, indeed as it is billed, a “Banksy film”. We are posited that our protagonist, one strangely facial-haired Thierry Guetta, is an appreciateur of street art and general LA euro-trash type at large. By luck and relation, Thierry manages to stumble into the motherload of the underground street-art scene, becoming friends with Shep Fairey (of the Obama/Hope poster) and the anonymous, hooded Banksy. I’ll say I believe all of this, as well as the impressive footage taken of the genesis of street-art is real, but I doubt the veracity of what happens next, as Thierry appears to go mad with power becoming an unknowing parody of both the street-art scene he has so loved and the foolish patrons who endorse his work. Whether or not this transformation is real (which I doubt) or whether it is merely a prank Banksy decided would be a lark in which he enlisted Thierry (which I think probable) is besides the point. What is the point is that Banksy has crafted a modern day “F For Fake”, a movie that itself reflects our perceptions of truth and value in both art and cinema. What’s more, he’s made it entertaining, given it a storyline, a quirky protagonist, a third-act twist. It’s refreshing enough that I’m looking forward to the next “Banksy film”, if there is one. Also, should mention that Rob thinks that Banksy is Rhys Ifans, since they sound alike, even when Banksy’s voice is altered.

8. I LOVE YOU PHILIP MORRIS

Not to get all Armond White-y on y’all with a “Better-Than List” but, let’s face it, I Love You Philip Morris is a better gay love story than The Kids Are All Right. Part of that is that The Kids Are All Right is one of those overly PC “Gay is O.K.” films that seems to appear “Will and Grace”-like to explain/reassure White liberals in America that, yes, there are gay people, they live lives, they do things. To be fair, The Kids Are All Right is an interesting movie in its own right, particularly when it explores the limits of a queer family especially in the face of a society of hetero-normative values and definitions of sexuality and parenthood in these fraught modern times. But what it lacks (apart from some great Mark Ruffalo scenes) is a sense of humor, mostly smothered by its own self-righteousness, an area that I Love You Philip Morris shows its superiority in. Written and directed by the team behind Bad Santa, the movie feature that films round-about view of sentimentality, an honest heart hiding behind a dick joke. Part-Catch Me If You Can-style con-man thriller, part dirty comedy and part sincere/queer smooch-fest, Philip Morris is my favorite type of movie, a mash-up of genres that transcends them and hits through absurdity at something close to the truth of life (see: Being John Malkovitch, for different take, same thing). As the opening credits mention, all of the stuff in the movie really happened: a Georgia cop embracing his homosexuality upon meeting his horrid birth mother, finding love in a minimum-security prison, even maintaining ties with a loving ex-wife and children while robbing, looting and generally “gaying it up” all around the Miami area. Jim Carrey, as mentioned by Slant Magazine, is one of the best actors of the last 20 years and if not for the stigma of “comedy” he ought to have won an Oscar several times over now. Ewan MacGregor plays a sweet dandy and even the little-liked Leslie Mann (in a rare non-Apatow role) gives a convincing marm-y performance as a perplexed but accepting southern wife and mother. What I Love You Philip Morris shows and its’ greatest strength is something that The Kids Are All Right could never have: acceptance for all its’ characters. For while The Kids tosses poor Mark Ruffalo out on his ass as just some macho-hipster jerk, Philip Morris believes ultimately that no matter what the crazy, true things that it characters do, they’re always looking for love and their true selves, gay or straight, criminal or no. Who knew a floating dick in the clouds could be such a poignant closing image to a film.

7. DADDY LONGLEGS

Beautiful. A great movie about New York, fatherhood, cinema and “growing up” in one way or more. The Safdie brothers’ tone poem succeeds wonderfully due to the presence and their embrace of Frownland director Ronnie Bronstein’s central performance. Playing a projectionist very loosely based off himself, he sees his children only on the weekends when he gets them from a reasonably hateful ex-wife, who really shouldn’t trust him for five minutes. This is because Bronstein’s character, who seems to spring as one of the adult children from a Roald Dahl book (Willy Wonka, The BFG) has his life in no way together, in a way that makes for both a terror and an adventure. His frantic sexual exploits get him into an impromptu trip to the Catskills, which somehow includes the boyfriend of a girl he just slept with along with his unsuspecting kids, and a job-threatening projection shift causes him to feed his kids an overdose of sleeping pills in a scene that is both hilarious and somewhat mortifying, if we didn’t know those characters were based on the very twins who made the movie. Shot lovingly in 16mm, Daddy Longlegs seems like a potential heir to the films of Jacques Tati or Charlie Chaplin, following the tale of an irredeemable scamp, through the eyes of those who love him: his children and the viewer seen captivated by his performance.

6. THE SOCIAL NETWORK

The most likely Oscar winner (and for good reason) is a film that I do have my problems with. The first scene in the bar with two people exchanging barbs while sitting at a table is pretty unforgivably stagy and is a sign of the limits of Aaron Sorkin’s script, which reflects Mr. Sorkin’s distinguished run as both a playwright and a TV show creator. Just like the opening of Juno, it’s fake and it’s fake in a way that is cloying, even though the movie moves past it. That aside, their is much to like, if not love about The Social Network. Firstly, just the idea that a year ago we were all laughing about how desperate Hollywood had gotten that they were making a “Facebook movie” when there was obviously no story there. Such is no longer the truth as the film is obviously compelling, even thrilling, even though no one ever fires a gun or even has graphic sex. What instead we get is an intellectual thrill-ride about the rise/fall of a young man disconnected from the world and thus creating/defining his own. In the past, this movie might have been called “Lord of the Rings” or “Harry Potter”, but here instead what we get is a literal story of digital creation. Mark Zuckerberg replaces the social arena he has failed in with a new one, where he sets the rules, eliminating human connections along the way. That nothing much “dramatic” happens is to the strength of the script and both Sorkin and Fincher are here in best form, not sacrificing detail for the sake of story. Fincher has been itching for an Oscar for some years and even though I was not a fan of Zodiac he has proven himself frequently a director of interesting character and mainstream appeal, unique in his filmmaking approach. The only weak link here is Andrew Garfield, whose weepy histrionics and mistaken-good-boy approach lead to some of the films weakest scenes, like when he stands in the rain staring in and telling Mark “you’ve lost your only friend”. Some rage, desire or lack of innocence would have served his character well, something anyone from Joseph Gordon-Levitt to even (yes, sigh) Emile Hirsh could have brought to the part. All Garfield knows how to do is heave and sigh and look doe-ish. Here’s rooting for an excellent Justin Timberlake for an Oscar nom, or even the newcomer (and Zephyr Benson friend) Armie Hammer. Eisenberg has never been better either, in the title role, not even in Adventureland and, contrary to popular opinion and unlike Juno, his character is not “Mark Zuckerberg”, he’s a regular neurotic Jew, not a ruthless semi-sociopath.

5. BLUE VALENTINE

Raw, emotionally honest, partially improvised, the creation of 12 years of intensive labor. Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams give the performances of their careers, even though they seem like actors capable of doing that multiple times in a career. A love story told as tragedy, with two people who honestly love each other and honestly mean the best falling out of it due to their characters and their circumstances. Ultimately what is it that makes them fall out of love? Whose fault is it? Whose demands are unreasonable, whose impositions too much? These questions are unanswered, just as they would be at a real break-up, because Mr. Cianfrance has succeeded in crafting a movie that feels like a real relationship, a rare feat. He has done this through crazed directing, hundreds of takes, having actors keep secrets from each other and performing stunts to get real reactions (at one point Mr. Gosling almost falls off a bridge, for real, with no safety net). These are all, of course, totally nuts, but so is the rush of emotion and feeling that accompanies love, that most mysterious and powerful of things and Mr. Cianfrance has succeeded here in capturing even a little bit of that, in no small part by showing it decomposing under a microscope. Shot, intertwined between the couple’s meeting cute and their last-ditch attempt at reconciliation, Mr. Cianfrance also seems to recognize an emotional structure to his film that is compelling to the audience, using flashbacks as Mirch intended them with a twist, showing how one revisits the past as even they try to untangle the intricacies of the present. It’s an honest film and a lovely one, sad and true and heartbreaking.

4. INSIDE JOB

Remember when, after the incredible Bowling for Columbine, which combined South Park humor with Jackass-style jumps, we had to give Michael Moore a pass for all the crappy overwrought movies he did following because he was “tackling important subjects”? Well, at least in this case, we need not sacrifice form for content. Inside Job is a clear-headed, well-explained take on the financial crisis in an efficient 100 minute package. Many people with global political influence are there talking, their points weaved narratively and consistently through like a good essay, cited throughout the film’s indictment of America’s financial system and the speculation it caused. But all of that sounds so boring! What makes Inside Job so good is that it was done by Charles Ferguson, a one-time teacher and PhD at M.I.T. for Political Science. Later, he went on to be an internet entrepreneur, ending up at both Google and Apple at critical stages in their development, but his love of learning and learning well endures. So, like a really great lesson from that “cool” professor, Inside Job is full of humor, dramatic irony and real showmanship. Ferguson, a non-filmmaker, bears an estimable teacher’s gift of condensing something so complicated and making it both more compact, more interesting, and linear; the film’s ending voiceover that the leaders of the financial industry will tell you “what they do is too complicated for you to understand” is repudiated by the movie you just watched. You do understand it now and you’re pissed. But you also just had a really good movie-going experience. With this film, Ferguson’s second after the previously excellent and very similar treatise No End In Sight (which attempted to untangle our “strategy” in Iraq), I get the feeling that Ferguson should move on to narrative. After all, if he can make points so well and so dramatically with only economists and ministers on board, aided by the occasional Peter Gabriel song, imagine what he could do with lights and actors!

3. WINTER’S BONE

When I was sitting in the box office at the Angelika yesterday, worn out by customers and co-workers alike, I didn’t recognize Sam Song, much to his chagrin, and then, when I did (“I’m Sam Song.” he said.) I went on about his imaginary girlfriend, who turned out to be the girl standing right next to him. She seemed nice. I added her as a friend on Facebook. Anyway, when afterwards Sam and I had a text message conversation regarding SMS-flashing, re: his not-imaginary girlfriend, the conversation quickly got off topic to this list, then incomplete. When I mentioned that this film was “somewhere in 2-4″, Sam dismissed this as a “disqualifier” to any such top 10 list of the year. Indeed, some of my friends, while not disqualifying my list, have voiced similar opinions about the quality of the film (which I probably got them in to see for free as it played at the Angelika). All I can say to them is: did we watch the same movie? Winter’s Bone, done by second-time director Debra Granik, makes so many right/interesting decisions it was nice to see it vindicated with a long theatrical run and the A.V. Club’s no. 1 pick. A young woman of no more than 17 (Jennifer Lawrence) cares for her much younger brother and sister in a dilapidated shell of a house in the Missouri Ozarks. Her mother, still living, is dead to the world, shuttered in by abuse and her own psychological problems and her father, most recently, has jumped bail for meth-cooking charges, leaving the house for forfeit. Such starts Winter’s Bone and its protagonist Ree Dolly on her quest to find her father and get him to go to prison for many years for, what we learn, is the only subsistence of this community. In my improv class, my great teacher, Chelsea Clarke, would tell us “be specific to be broad”, meaning that giving details from one’s lives that are specific as possible ring true to an audience, they’re recognizable and thus universal. The same applies here and much as Winter’s Bone is a movie about the insular community that Ree and her family inhabit, it’s also a film about America, the kind of society we’ve become in light of economic “recession”, where Ree tries to enter the Army for escape and the money for her family and asking for help from neighbors is considered shameful. The dialogue was written in conjunction with some of the actors, many of them native to the area and the secondary characters feel specific and real too. But it’s the directorial decisions that impress here, such as Ms. Granik’s decision not to participate in the pornography of violence, eliding the threat and showing its aftermath and wakes, but never letting the audience get a “thrill” from it. Or when Ms. Granik holds a scene at the end of the film to include some banjo riffs by a child, after all dialogue has ended, because it’s a moment worth capturing. The whole film is consistent in tone and color, but it also looks like nothing else American right now. And none of this is even mentioning Jennifer Lawrence’s spectacular performance (hopeful Oscar nom) or John Hawkes (of Deadwood) who gives the best supporting actor performance of the year, no question. As Teardrop, Ree’s uncle, Hawkes embodies both the violence and the lost promise of the Ozarks, a walking contradiction at ease with his own body, he is both protector/antagonist to his charge Ree, in the animalistic ways that his culture permits him. Here’s hoping more people saw what I saw, too.

2. THE ILLUSIONIST

I should start out by saying that Sylvain Chomet’s first film (The Illusionist is his second) The Triplets of Belleville, is one of my favorite films ever. That film was a nearly wordless animated masterpiece evoking old-school Paris, New York, Looney Tunes cartoons, silent film and burlesque, with a crazed plot involving a small grandmother, her dog, illicit bootlegging and the Tour De France. It’s a masterpiece, family-friendly, something both Disney-esque (in an originalist Fantasia-type way) and uniquely its own. The Illusionist is a much less raucous movie, but also a more poignant one. Famously (and to much controversy) based off of an unfinished script by Jacques Tati (Playtime, Mon Oncle), the main character is an animation revival of the writer/actor as Tatischeff (his birth name), a parlor magician in the waning days of cabaret/burlesque/illusion acts. As we see him, Tatischeff does from playing grand halls, to being wiped off by swingy rock musicians, standing in a store window, hating himself. Along the way, he finds a young girl, who acts as the family connection he never had in his life, someone for whom he can make magic, an audience of one who believes in you, which is what a daughter sometimes is. In Edinburgh they live together in a hotel for out-of-work performers and for a time, life seems grand or at least livable as Tatischeff works hard to make money to make “magic” for his girl, and the girl explores the wonder of the city. But soon enough, the world has no place for Tatischeff’s illusions, as the girl grows too and discovers her own pleasures. Tati and Chomet equate adulthood with a farewell to illusion, as illustrated in the film’s ending, but also a belief and a love for those who practice them. The Illusionist is, at it’s best, a tragedy about what we leave behind when we “move on”, a treatise on lost love and grief, done with all the wit and humor and poignancy of a revived Jacques Tati. It’s a marriage, one would hope, that the actor/director/writer would have smiled upon, from the beyond.

AND FOR THOSE OF YOU WONDERING, IN TYPICAL SPITEFUL FASHION, HERE’S A MOVIE NOBODY SAW:

1. FISH TANK

For the past while, Chadd Harbold (mentioned above as the guy who would have something “despicably French” on his top 10 list) was bothering about the number 1 film would be on my list and I kept telling him that it was a film we saw together and a film we saw in the beginning of the year. “Those are pretty big hints.” Chadd said, but he still wasn’t able to guess. He didn’t even say a single movie. Which was interesting as I think we both had the same reaction coming out of the film: we were floored by how good it was. Newcomer director Andrea Arnold has succeeded in my eyes in creating something new, exciting and meritorious, just as Joachim Trier once did on this list previously with his 2008 film Reprise. A worthy successor both to the Dardenne brothers’ style of gritty modern-day neo-realism a la L’Enfant and (yes) the sentimental filmmaking of Francois Truffaut in The 400 Blows, Fish Tank is a movie unsurpassed in its rawness, honesty and kinetic energy this year. The story of Mia, played by unreal newcomer Kate Jarvis in easily the best performance of the year, a 15 year-old scrappy-as-fuck white chick living with her trashy/abhorrent mother and her feral little sister in a crappy British ghetto, is a dystopian story played real. While one might be put off at first by Mia’s fist-fighting hip-hop dancing ways, her fighting instinct is quickly realized as survival impulse, when you find out that her life is one where the closest thing to familial love is familial silence and there is no one in existence to watch her back. When “mum” brings home a boyfriend (Michael Fassbender, quickly becoming one of our finest actors), it’s all Mia can do to reject and then latch on to the little bit of common-sense affection he throws her way; it’s like nothing she’s ever experienced before in her conspicuously father-less home. What follows is an aria of children breaking bad, adults breaking worse and a story of a place without hope. The title seems to represent both Mia’s trapped existence and our complicity in it, as the people in her life fail to help her, one by one, we sit on the outside and watch. Like Lorna’s Silence or (again) The 400 Blows, the ending represents the degree to which we can move on in our lives, our ability to escape and the recognition that the most tragic moment is the one where you can run no further. A feminist masterpiece, a humanist masterpiece, if you were to see any movie off this list, see this.

***

So, that said, we still have some cleaning up to do.

First:

MOVIES STUCK BETWEEN THE CRACKS IN YEARS AND THUS NOT ON THIS LIST:

LIFE DURING WARTIME- My previous sorta-number 1 from last year came out this year. Still a great film. Still one of Todd Solodnz’s best, if not the best. It marks a welcome return to form and a stunning display/tragedy of emotional honesty.

UN PROPHET- Of course this movie was great! It was fucking fantastic. Credit goes to Dan Pleck for pointing out that, other than the obvious comparison to “The Godfather Part II”, this movie also functions as an adaptation/retelling of the story of Muhammed! Crazy good, the best Jacques Audiard movie. The reason it’s not on this list is because it was an Oscar nominee last year and as such does not seem eligible for this year consideration.

UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES- Whoo boy, are you all in for a treat in March or whenever Film Forum decides to release this. The most acceptable movie by guy whose name no one can spell/pronounce so we call him “Joe” and, from what I hear, the best. A meditation on reinvention and reincarnation both national and personal, both fantastical and sometimes naturalistic, incorporating non-actors and actors from Joe’s previous films. A splendid mash-up and an amazing picture, disqualified because it was only at NYFF in 2010, but here’s hoping for an Oscar win for Best Foreign! Kudos to Cannes on recognizing the talent.

***

OTHER MOVIES THAT I SAW THIS YEAR THAT WERE PRETTY GOOD ACTUALLY BUT DIDN’T MAKE THE CUT:

Black Swan, Mother, True Grit, The King’s Speech, Vincere, Everyone Else, Inception, Four Lions, The Kids Are All Right

SPECIAL HONORABLE MENTION:

RED, WHITE AND BLUE- A great horror/mumblecore/”mumble-gore” film with a super-cool kinetic storytelling style and a star turn by Noah Taylor, previously known for playing nerds, who here plays an eerily-convincing Iraq war vet. The sort of “neo B-movie” that is made with some a subversive bent, but enjoyable on many levels for either its blood, guts and boobies, or for its filmmaking appeal/writing.

***

AND NOW WHAT YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR:

NICK”S SOOPER-DOOPER-POOPER SPITEFUL TOP 5 OVERRATED MOVIES OF THE YEAR (SURE TO PISS OFF HIS FRIENDS)

5. DOGTOOTH

This shouldn’t even need to be on here. No one has seen this movie. It played at Cinema Village for like 2 days. But for some stupid reason, Film Comment and Slant both thought it was the goddam beez-kneez. I saw this with Chadd too and we both thought it was pretty cool and fucked up, but not like, “best movie of the year” fucked up. Art kids need to get the fuck over themselves and stop saying cool things only they see are worth mentioning (cough, hypocrisy, cough, cough).

4. SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD

Sorry guys. I love Edgar Wright and this film is not terrible, but it’s not very good either. Mary Elizabeth Winstead, the main love interest, sucks and is uninteresting in her role as Ramona and, let’s be honest here, the Asian chick is much cooler, a much better match for Scott emotionally/maturity-wise AND she’s a fucking Ninja. That being said, whatever, I understand the apologists who elevate this because of the need to highlight a movie that was unfairly maligned, but that doesn’t make this “Best Picture” material. It makes it an uneven, interesting American film made by Edgar Wright. Here’s to the next one.

3. 127 HOURS

Shitty, some good James Franco moments. Glad the Oscars I think will shun this one. Ending/opening is corny as Chipotle-burrito induced shit.

2. THE FIGHTER

Wow. Like The Town was a decently good, silly movie about Boston-area Masshole hicks and I’m pretty sure The Town, which featured Blake Lively acting like she was Blake Lively high on a speedball, was a better movie than this one, treading similar ground. Full of over-the-top scene-grabbing, throat-yelling performances, you know you’re in trouble when the emotional center of your film is Mark-fucking-Wahlberg. I don’t care what people say about that “the people were even crazier in real life than the actors were playing them” and that Christian Bale’s performance was a “tour-de-force”. What Christian Bale’s performance was in that movie was a greedy, slack-jawed grab at grabbing a movie by the balls and saying “look at me, cause the rest of this movie sucks”. David O. Russell doesn’t as much as make a comeback as give-up and let the actors yell at each other, not that Darren Aronofsky, the original director, would have done much better. A rehash of a Rocky plot with some stuff about family thrown in there. Mostly boring and hokey and annoying.

1. TOY STORY 3

I never saw Cars and I don’t remember A Bug’s Life too well. Maybe that one was worse than this. Toy Story 3 will probably be remembered in the future as the movie where Pixar jumped the shark, from making beautiful original products and occasional story-continuations, to three-quels and hokey junk. The film re-assembles all the great actors from the first two films (classics) and sticks them in a shitty Michael Arndt script with an unconvincing love story, some cheap ethnic humor and a total cop-out ending with some hipster-B.S. embodied by a googling Kristen Schaal dinosaur toy. Toy Story 2 felt like the perfect ending and a welcome return to characters we loved, where Woody had to accept a life without human contact, love or longing, or obsolescence and death with real emotions. He chooses the latter and such has the quality of myth. No such greatness accompanies this film, whose only message is toys can be mean to each other and they’ll always be someone to play with you. It’s reassuring bullshit that, for the first time in my watching Pixar, actually makes children dumber rather than smarter. Even the WALL-E fat people scenes were better this. Kudos though to a welcome Michael Keaton as a dandy Ken doll. Here’s hoping for a revival of your career buddy.

***

SOME TERRIBLE MOVIES:

The Other Guys, Shutter Island, Dinner For Schmucks.

SPECIAL TERRIBLE MOVIE:

SOMEWHERE-

I actually tried to convince people on New Year’s Eve not to see this movie. “Is this really how you want to spend your New Year’s?” I’d tell them at the door. “Go see Blue Valentine, if you gotta. Or just hug? Enjoy each other’s company? I mean I guess it’d be fine if you just sat in the back or just slept or made out, but really, don’t do this to yourself.” It was mostly in vain, though I saved a few people. An accurate description: nothing happens. Another accurate description: Sofia Coppola used to fuck Quentin Tarantino, which is the only reason why this won the Venice Film Festival, since he was the head juror. Gotta pay for the pussy, QT.

***

So, there we are. Another year gone, another list done. I’m sure there are grammatical errors. It’s way too long. I doubt anyone will even read this.

But one thing’s for sure.

I won’t recognize Sam Song the next time I see him.

Cause he’s Asian.

And I’m racist as fuck.

Love you, Sam.

-Nick

What Jews Do Round Christmas Time

I went to see “Colin Quinn: Long Story Short” on a Thursday night I had off from work and nothing to do.

Some friends had texted me about maybe helping them out with some Final Cut problems and coming over to my place bringing some beer, but they’d canceled a little after asking, causing no small amount of melancholy to form in me.

With my most frequent quasi-roommate John Beamer back in Palo Alto again for the holidays, I wasn’t relishing going home with nothing to do and no one to talk to there.

Somehow, even when you’re in a relationship, even if you can’t see the person you want, times like those seem more bearable.

Though walking around the movie theater last night, waiting for shows to get out, I thought about all the times Eva never called me back or answered my text messages, when we were together, especially towards the end. Did she not want to talk to me, even then?

Anyway, it was a good idea to see the show, as it would garner me some company for the night.

I even went back, after some absent-mindedness, to my old lunchtime spot, Good N’ Plenty to Go over on 43rd St, where they still remembered me and even where I worked now.

Sometimes, having the illusion of friends like that can be enough when you’re feeling low. It’s probably why I wanted to go to a Chili’s after my last funeral.

The show was good, smart. Mr. Quinn was more energetic and engaged than I had ever seen him previously in his comedy and what’s more, he’d really worked out some funny characters, which was nice to see him expanding, since he was always known for his Brooklyn-y dry wit.

Courtesy of some good timing and an (expired) Student ID, I had a front row-left seat by myself in the theater and at the end of the show when I stood up to applaud, Mr. Quinn called me out from the stage, not by name, but by a double take, pointing to me and saying “Angelika!”.

After the show, I waited by the stage door with my program for him to sign, by myself. It was a slow, cold Thursday night and he seemed to expect me when he came out with his hat.

Our conversation was short, made sillier by his assistant (girlfriend?) who (of course?) instantly recognized me from “that Bethenny show” and wanted to talk about it.

When Mr. Quinn signed my program, it was to “Some guy who’s more famous than me”.

I wrote him an email yesterday, before going in to the movie theater, apologizing for talking about me and not congratulating him enough and thanking him for all the advice he’d given me.

I mentioned that my girlfriend had dumped me, a situation he referenced, in other cases, a couple times in the show.

He answered me a few hours later.

Nice guy, that Colin Quinn.

***

I had needed emergency text interventions by Rob Malone and Chadd Harbold the other night to keep from contacting Eva. I say emergency and maybe it’s fair, because I did want to talk to her, but similar to suicidal thoughts and actions, it’s much different to tell someone you’re thinking about something than to just do it.

Chadd and Rob though were buddies, as many of my friends have been, trying to step up to deal with my sometimes collapses.

Chadd tried to give me some practicals about th ways such things worked, having known as both dumper and dumpee, while Rob just tried to hit at my melancholy and sympathize, just saying that it wouldn’t make things better.

It’s been affecting me still in big ways and small.

I saw “The Illusionist” today, at its first how at the Paris, a wonderful theater, if you’ve never been there and a wonderful movie.

The film is about, for a part, relationships and accepting their decay and living in the sadness of them. I cried a lot at the end, which is appropriate to the film, but I can’t there weren’t some scenes that brought up memories to me.

My work had a holiday party the other day, which was fun, full of presents and sandwiches and drinks.

But the party, in a way, was just like the job: trying to connect with people who aren’t interested in your life.

As I sat, getting slowly drunker. I saw Andy with his easy-going So-Cal charm float freely and happily between people, while I just behind bottles making drinks, trying to feel like I had a purpose, if not a place.

As my co-workers flirted and kissed and bopped each other on the head and recounted stories, I fell deeper and deeper into myself, away from everything and finally, back home.

Alcohol lately has seemed like a trap to me, something that just sends me spiraling backwards towards thinking of her, puzzling out what we had, asking questions, finding unsatisfying answers.

And as for Mr. Quinn’s advice, the implementation seems hard.

As my therapist somewhat predicted, I have been “active” on the dating website I’m on, a feat made easier by the discovery, almost laughably, that it would seem that all my single friends are actually already on there.

It’s a mark of their comfort versus my discomfort that I could text a friend the other night, only to have him tell me he was “OKCupid dating”, a fact he had never revealed to me before, shot so casually in response to a “hey whatsup”.

I guess a positive out of all this is I feel less bad about my pratfalls, when a girl doesn’t respond to a smile in real life, or a message virtually, I don’t feel bad like I once would, judging myself for it. I feel good that I’ve put myself out there, step forward. It’s a numbers game, after all, just like college or jobs or anything else. You just got to find someone who’s looking for and who can give what you have, like a set of gloves or shoes.

I guess there’s some freedom in accepting you’re not the right fit for everyone.

Still, it would be nice if someone tried you on, once in a while.

***

I’d be remiss I guess if I didn’t say “Merry Christmas” to people.

As a Jew, this sort of day fills me with the sort of questioning ennui only made less painful by the sense that there are X million other Jews feeling about the same way right now too.

After I saw the movei with my grandma, we headed down to The Plaza Food Hall, a favorite spot of ours, to eat some lunch.

My grandma has a way about her, with her glamorous natural-red hairdo, more sensible and lighter than my hair, though you could see the resemblance.

Anyway, we skipped past various Omaha-ans and Frenchies to be seated in the crowded Todd English joint.

“Oh, Nicholas!” She exclaimed in her particular way, throwing her hands up on her comically high stool. “You should have last Christmas! I went by the Jewish museum and there was such a line!”

“Weird.” I replied, monosyllabically. “Why’s that?”

“One of the only options, I believe for entertainment for us on Christmas.” She opined. “Ooh and look at these people next to us! Swedish I think!”

The people were sitting but inches from us on a communal table.

“Excuse me,” She asked excitedly. “But are you Swedish?!”

The blond woman in glasses politely replied “Denmark.”

“Oh, but close enough!” Grandma said. I knew somewhere ex-Scandanavian Jonny-Jon-Jon was laughing at what was certainly in insult to the self-considered superiority of the Danish.

“Oh, but Nicholas!” she exclaimed further. “Do you know how the Danish pronounce Copenhagen?”

“Huh?” I replied.

“Kwapin! Kwapenin!” She said excitedly. I spared myself looking over at the people next to us. “The funniest! The funniest language!”

And our meal continued.

In addition to the Spit-Roasted Chicken flatbread pizza that was my usual dish there, I tried the “Risotto Tater-Tots”, tiny rice balls breaded and filled with white truffle cheese and some delicious garlic aioli.

They were delicious, but what more I can say about them, for the break in conversation they elicited, the people next to us seemed relieved.

***

THE PLAZA FOOD HALL

Risotto Tater-Tots w/White Truffle Cheese + Garlic Aioli- $8

Central Park South bet. 5th and 6th Avenues.

NR to 5th Avenue

***

BONUS-

Sometimes I use this area to plug things and I’m happy to do that today for some really funny stuff. Fellow film-schooler and current improv buddy Ben Perry has a pretty “dope” hip-hop group that you might have heard of called “Buckwheat Groats”. These guys are blowing up and they don’t need my help, but since I was the first comment on their new video on YouTube, I feel like I should at least mention it here.

It’s called “(Take U 2 Da) Shopping Mall” and, I should mention, my favorite moment has to be the “Hot Topic girls”.

Enjoy!

Stuffy Noses

I tried to describe to John Beamer the other day which sort of weather New York was actually good in.

“The fall, obviously.” We agreed on. “But summer nights too.”

“Not so much the summer days.” John chimed in, questioningly.

“No man, it’s fucking disgusting here on summer days. The humidity just hangs between the buildings. But summer nights, it doesn’t get dark out until 9 or so and at that point your night has just begun. Plus it feels beautifully temperate out in Jeans and a T-shirt, like you’re walking around San Juan.”

“Summer nights,” John repeated. “I regret I haven’t experienced more of them here.”

“Plus, as my buddy Chadd would say, the girls wear less.” I finished.

This was all mentioned in the context of a cold, windy December day spent walking up to Old Navy to go pants-shopping, since for the many-ieth time, my jeans had developed a non-useful hole in their crotch and John, well, John was just a girl who liked clothes.

He had been crashing with me on and off for a few months now, springboarding back and forth from Palo Alto, where life had less trajectory and I was glad to have him around. It had helped, so far, in getting through the transition of being partner-less, even if my former partner was only a visitor in my home.

At least, it was someone I could give my spare set of keys to, so they didn’t sit on my shelf, another curio, next to my big red hair-ball (gross).

“I think I’m developing a cold.” John told me one night, spoken loudly from the ceiling-snug loft he slept in at my place, known as the “John-cave”.

“Fair.” I told him.

“Nah, it’s a bummer.” He said realistically. “But at least I know this, I’ll get over it soon.”

What was unmentioned was my own impending illness, a symptom of the season, but also of the proximity to someone sick. I used to joke with Eva when she came over that the sniffles I had were an STD foisted on me and that I’d be looking out on the streets for men with tissues while we walked, to stare at her accusingly.

I wasn’t fucking John (sorry, everyone?) but living in a small space has it’s consequences and I’d rather accept them than Lysol the shit out of everything, like I see people do at work.

“I feel like I’ve missed out on too many summers here.” John told me. “Too many things I could have been doing.”

“Well, you’re here now.” I told him. “Shit’s here. Stay.”

But John had other places, other friends, other commitments in his life. He’d be home for Christmas and he’d be back again most likely.

When we got to Old Navy, I almost got some flannel-lined pants, until a call to my father (and an unsuccessful attempt at my mother) pointed out to me that they’d be hot when I was inside.

“And I can’t take off my pants when I get places.” I told my father over the phone.

Which must have drawn some approval, parenting-wise, on his part.

***

I sent this picture one morning in the movie theater this week, to Eva, which I didn’t like thinking about later.

I used to send her pictures like this all the time and after hearing from her once in a brief text-message exchange that took place over a vintage Mrs. Potato doll, it felt hard not to send her something like this when I saw it, sitting reading by the concession stand, on a chilly, early morning.

This past week I’d experienced a couple of breakthroughs of sorts. I got a girl’s number who snuck me jungle-juice at a comedy club. I even chatted up a nerdy-cute girl I had a crush on in one of my comedy classes while sitting in a holiday-themed McDonalds, an experience that made me feel “electric” on my way home and stopped me from falling asleep, until I did.

When I went to my therapist, she had little in the way of advice again, hearing my torrent of confessionary information until finishing off with a “what now?” question, only answered with a:

“Nothing. You sound better than most people in your position would.”

Still I feel diverted, I feel wanting, I feel like I’m in withdrawal for something that feels all the more painful for my denial of its addiction in my life. Is love an addiction or was this one just one? Is it an addiction that’s ok to have?

Amidst the responses that I got to my last blog-post was a cavalcade of friends (and my mom) chiming in to let me know it was ok to relax, to recover that in Penny-Arcade reader Matt Chao’s unusually articulate words: “You can’t outrun yourself, no matter how fast you go.”

Still, the words that hit me most were just from someone I didn’t know posting under a pseudonym telling me that the relationship I had entered into was some sort of faustian bargain, where the pain of heartbreak was endemic to the joy of a relationship. That my feelings would fade into pleasantness and nothing and “this girl you dated when you were 23″ would be just that.

I remember having a good day on Saturday, when I read my web-series adapted from my blog to my sketch-writing class full of stand-ups and actors and people who didn’t know me and they commiserated and felt for the characters. It was good to know that people outside my life could identify with it. But it’s strange to think how you stack an outsider’s word against your friend’s. How you wonder what someone who sees your life, your pictures, your facebook page thinks of you and your worries outside of your direct experience with them.

It’s a question I ask when I think about that still active, though less used, online dating profile from last week. But it’s also applicable here, where I write what’s on my mind, or near it, but there are invisible borders between representation and truth. Is the character I play in life more or less desperate for love and acceptance? More or less relatable? And how does this all translate to the way I see myself and my world.

All I know is when I tried to write last night for my writer’s group, I just kept writing about the break-up, stopping, realizing there wasn’t enough time, before walking to Kinko’s and printing out a sketch I wrote earlier about an irredeemable Charlie Sheen. I felt bad just walking in the bar, though people showed up and enjoyed themselves.

Half-way through the group, midway through Alex Hilhorst’s historical-fantasy about lion-headed rape-goddesses, I felt my nasal passages occlude to a place where I could no longer breathe. I struggled and was absorbed as I often am when such things happen, lamenting the alcohol and fighting the symptoms, though I knew there was no stopping it.

A cold is a cold after all, and all that stops it is rest and the certainty that, after reaching a head, it will get better over time.

There was talk of Holiday karaoke afterwards, but I excused myself, even from that, to go home, to lie down, and fell asleep early. I knew then it was right to sleep.

I guess sometimes, in some cases, I capable of some common sense.

I woke up to a cold apartment, after a few snoring stirrings in the middle of the night.

John had unplugged the half-broken electric heater, which lost a wheel when Matt Chao sat on it, months earlier.

As Rob-it’s useful-this-time-of-year-to-have-a-Beard-o Malone would tell you, the loft gets very hot at night, when the warm air collects near the top of the apartment, amplified by its tight walls and mirrored body heat.

John couldn’t sleep with it on though sometimes, so I didn’t blame him.

“I have your cold.” I told him, when he woke up to his chiming cell-phone.

“Really? Sorry about that.” He commented groggily. “I hate that.”

“It’s alright.” I replied. “It’s not like you could help it.”

“I guess it just comes with the territory.”

***

I sat alone for a while, after an improv class with some time to kill before my next event.

John was getting up for a 2 minute 55 second stint at an open mike at the PIT, where I was taking classes, but my last class had gotten out, and though I didn’t feel too bad about it, I still needed somewhere to be in the intermittent hour between class and mic.

I tried sitting lobby in the theater, inquiring if it was ok, hearing an affirmative, but realizing that sitting in such a small place for an hour was still a little too sad.

So  I found a place with four-dollar Peronis and a combination Garlic-Knot/Chicken Parm Sandwich.

I remember in the days I found myself in the fashion district playing Magic cards, Cavallo’s Pizza was remembered as the lesser of the pizzerias one could go to, when compared with the late-game refinement of a brick oven place like Waldy’s or the sheer beefiness of a nuts-and-bolts joint like (New) Pizza Town.

Since Neutral Ground closed however, Cavallo’s has changed it’s game somewhat, keeping its unimpressive slices, but adding the aforementioned Chicken Parm on Homemade Garlic Bread sandwich at the impressive cost of 2.75, which is how much it’ll cost you for a plain slice at some of the overpriced joints in this city.

However, the kicker was the little beer selection, all 4 bucks, which beat out the local bars for me which all were crowded with sports nuts and the 35-plus crowd and would doubtless involve tipping and bad looks. Though I had a Peroni with this sandwich, in an act of lax will/deliciousness, I got two of these babies as well as two of a different kind of beer, a sort of IPA made by Italian maker Moretti (think Italian for “Miller”) called, attractively, La Rossa.

By the time I got to the PIT, 45 minutes later, my stomach was as filled with chewy garlic and sauce as my head was with a light easy buzz, which I would later regrettably compliment with several Bud Lights.

The headache the next day was beaten with a single Tylenol and a good mocha.

So I’ll call this one a victory.

***

CAVALLO’S PIZZERIA

Chicken Parm on Homemade Garlic Bread Sandwich w/your choice of bottled beer (Peroni shown above)- $6.75

NW Corner of 28th St and 7th Ave

1 to 28th St.

***

BONUS 1:

A successful appearance of the “McGangBang” (a McDouble with a McChicken between it, 4 dollars in NYC, 2 dollars elsewhere) and my first visualization of it, courtesy of local fast-food master and eternal 17 year-old Blake LaRue:

***

BONUS 2:

Please check out friend of the blog Nandan Rao (who never calls me anymore, asshole) and Zach Weintraub’s trailer for their new film “Tender is the D”. Obviously they should have cast me in it, but seriously, fuck those guys.

Link is here.

***

BONUS 3:

If you are a reader of the blog but missed this, I will be being (not) funny on stage for my UCB class show on Saturday, Dec. 18th at 2:20pm at the UCB Theater. Improv, the most reliable form of comedy, eh? See, that’s what you’ll be getting if you decide to come.