Addendum and A Weight-y Thing

Two things, one quick, one not so quick.

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

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

I will have deserved it.

***

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

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

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

and

2. How did you do that?

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

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

This is my story:

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

So then, critically, I had an example:

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

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

Before I start, caveats:

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

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

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

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

NOW:

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

Phase 1: Strict Phase/Kickstarter

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

This phase last two weeks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phase 2: Transitional Phase/Set-Up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phase 3: Life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And you’ll probably fuck up less that way.

I know that works for me.

“I’ll use it as my profile picture.” I told Ro-Beardo Malone.

“Actually, I was hoping it would be the first picture on the next Feitelogram.” He replied with his half-cocked beard-smile, a tactic he frequently employed to try to inflame my inability to tell the difference between dry-sarcasm and his occasional earnestness. (e.g.: “Not enough films about the Kennedy assassination” accompanied by half-cocked beard-grin.)

It was 10:55, the hour of the always-breathless lead-up to The Chris Gethard Show, where my role as “The Man Behind The Plant” put me to some degree off-camera, getting ready to retweet people saying things like “Give me some jews 2fuk my boyfriend dumpt me” as well as home-brew images or cartoons having to do with the show. People frequently ask me, in bars or first dates, how I manage seeing my comedy friends with my friends from film school and the lucky thing is that the show is like a nexus of all of them.

Here, in one corner, is comedy-man Keith Haskel getting dressed up in a banana suit while his girlfriend helps him zip up. Over there is once-villain-man Andrew Parrish, warming up the audience and rushing around getting ready to punch Chris for an on-show bit, there getting in to an Evil Knieval costume is Ro-Beardo Malone, jimmying around trying to figure out whether his crotch muscles have healed enough that he can break loose and dance his fullest.

That night, a woman tried to book Rob to play a vuvuzela at her next bar mitzvah or event. That night, a woman called in with notes passed to the host with underlines to accentuate her increasing drunkenness. That night, a waltzing-seniors holiday special took over our studio so we were crammed in to a smaller one. I look forward to the show every week.

This week in improv class, I finished my last session of a 401, the class I was stressed out about enough last time around to write regularly about on this blog. Though I spent most of the class fairly confident, I lost that confidence in my last session and felt like crap going out for obligatory drinks with everyone after the show. That night, I started replaying a Mega Man RPG for the Nintendo DS.

In the haze after college that I am still in, I look for meaning all around me, for structure. When I didn’t feel good about my last 401 class, it made me feel down for two days.

I went in to my therapist asking why and she told me that in the absence of a significant other, my relationship with comedy and performance is the primary one in my life.

To that end, I went on two (unsuccessful) dates this weekend but things are looking, well, as they are.

In truth, I have to remind myself that there’s no control. To my friend’s perturbment, everything is like improv.

You can state your idea, your wants, your desires, but you have no control over where the scene or your life goes. Only where you choose to venture, preferably boldly, and the discoveries you make yourself open to with other people.

Tonight I go back to The Chris Gethard Show.

It’s a dating special.

I’ll be there again,

The man behind the plant.

***

My friend Jon Bander outed me yesterday.

The truth: I had been writing self-strokingly about the weight I had lost and telling people as much when they gave me a nice compliment or conspicuously in conversation (“Good show tonight.” “Yeah it was. I lost 50 lbs.”) but to outpour on social media was something else.

I had someone post on my wall that I was an “inspiration” my friends rag on me and people hold me up as some sort of symbol.

Meanwhile, on the other side, my parents were concerned I had lost too much weight (hovering somewhere around 175) and were wondering if there son was going to waste away. Their plans to have me see a doctor before I left were only foiled by a. A New York practitioners inherent lack of availability and b. them realizing I had been given a clean bill of health by that doctor about a month ago.

In the middle somewhere there was me, still self-conscious, still grabbing my belly at any passing moment, still wondering if I’d gain it back, if I’d added a pound. If now that I’d been “exposed” whether I’d just be another casualty, gaining back all the weight I had lost.

Friends told me it took them 5 years to get it back, others nodded knowingly as if it wouldn’t even do me any good to know.

The phase I’m in of “my new lifestyle” seems the scariest, the one without a plan where I try to find my own boundaries, set my own rules, figure out what works for me, what I’m allowed to do.

In Yoga (which I still think jokes and references to are stupid), my teacher talks about posture, as we stretch a belt across our backs to sit tall. When we arrive at our computers, we hunch over. When we sit on the mats we align our spine.

As I look in the mirror before the TCGS dating game tonight and put on a nicer shirt, now I wonder about my posture and how to fix that, how to get my body right.

Where is the happy medium between these things? My parents concern, my neuroses and the possible benefits of eliminating the things hampering me in my life.

What is the goal I’m trying to achieve (as Bander asked me as a necessary pre-requisite before instructing me on the diet I took to get to this weight)?

If it’s romance, as my friend Jason Chan has said, being skinny or even attractive (don’t think I’m there) doesn’t seem a large part of the equation.

If it’s happiness or self-contentment, isn’t that a state of mind rather than a physical pose? Haven’t I said before I was “happier” at my previous weight?

These are questions without too many answers as the holidays or my nearness to my Paris vacation grow closer.

Well, maybe I’ll figure it out in old gay Paris.

***

Or maybe my parents are concerned about me because they saw me split a cupcake into thirds.

My parents (seen above in soft-focus, head-cut-off form) were enlisted on a Sunday morning after a post-Faicco’s expedition to help me try out my latest point of exploration: Molly’s Cupcakes over in the West Village.

The place seems to have some reality-cred which I didn’t know too much about (not being an avid watcher of “Top Chef”-type shows) but I am fan of your down-home-style cupcake joint and the capacious milieu and swing-like chair seemed to draw me in.

Even though Mom pointed out their award-winning cupcake, a Peach Cobbler-blend with a real-peach slice on top, I was not interested. Such things struck me as being unnecessary, cupcake-wise, when for me the bread-and-butter of a cupcake should be simplicity.

I do like Pichet Ong’s cupcake inventions at Spot, to clarify, which often included Yuzu and berries and stuff, but even there, simplicity is maintained with the relatively small size and modest-icing of a cupcake being paramount. For me the monster-truck style-cakes of Crumbs are anathema and the Baked-by-Melissa tinies, while great, definitely suffer due to portion size on their value quotient.

So, I got the alpha-cake, vanilla base, chocolate-buttercream icing.

And I gotta say, it was pretty good.

The icing was refreshingly (unexpectedly) dark as opposed to milk chocolate and the base was also deceivingly lemony, a fact we interrogated the owner about to no avail.

What seemed simple ended up nuanced but markedly enjoyable, by no means a “perfect” cupcake (I think Blue Ribbon gets the closest to that), but certainly an excellent one.

My parents still looked perturbed though when I only ate my third of the cupcake.

“Too sweet for me.” My dad, the wuss, said eating about a third of his third before retiring. Mom and I tried to say something but well, you can bring a horse to water…

At least I ate half my huge Faicco’s sandwich in front of them.

At least they know I eat.

***

MOLLY’S CUPCAKES

Vanilla Cupcake w/Dark Chocolate Buttercream- $2.50

Bleecker St. bet. 6th Ave and Carmine St.

1 to Christopher St. ACEBDFM to West 4th St.

Marathon

I was going to start this post differently, but instead I’ll start by pointing out that I have one guy I know who writes a blog about going on a hundred dates with beautiful women who are all attracted to him and a girl I know who writes a blog about why do all men suck and I don’t have a boyfriend, etc.

Part of me feels like the two should just fuck and get it over with (or their blogs should fuck at least) and part of me just feels like it’s 1:45 in the morning and I’m just making connections that don’t bear relation to the world.

That said, welcome to the blog somewhere in between those two, in which I am a young man (guy) who goes on not so many dates and less wonders why he doesn’t have a mate than spends an awful lot of time bemoaning how ramblingly pathetic he may be.

Attractive, I know.

But you’re here reading.

So there.

Point for me.

Why I’m up this late is the 13th Annual Del Close Marathon (and my first), in which I volunteered to stand around and see shows as a festival volunteer, in order to get a pass to see more shows, not as a volunteer.

Oh yeah, I also get admitted to the party space where I can drink “free beer and alcoholic punch” all weekend, which is actually a pretty damn good perk, a near–infinite open-bar, except oh yeah, I’m on a diet and I can drink neither beer nor “alcoholic punch”/ In fact, up till yesterday, I couldn’t drink anything at all.

Which is to say, I graduated the first phase of my low-carb diet on Wednesday, having shed 11 pounds and made it to the second stage, which is to last a couple months, until I reach my target weight, the big two-oh-oh.

But having graduated to that second stage, I find myself saddened by how much it resembles the first. I can’t even eat a whole grain sandwich, but merely one slice of whole grain bread until several weeks in. I can’t drink but for red wine in moderation. Shit, I can’t even find anyone to drink with.

I stood in the back of the UCB Theatre for around 8 hours watching show after show, stone-dead-sober as bad improv piled up in my sinuses like pollen, needing to be cleansed by air and space, by lack of exposure to more improv, but I was there watching and watching. After all, even if it rains of a spring day, you still have your allergies. The only thing that keeps them out is some time inside with the air conditioning or some medicine, which booze-wise was not available.

I had had a conversation with my friend Jon Bander the other day and later with the vet-funny-man Kevin Cragg about the same thing: Improvised comedy works on the subversion of tension and expectations that comes from you, the viewer, thinking that the people you are seeing cannot succeed in making you laugh, since they are making things up on the spot. But as you learn the craft of improv and see more and more professionals, doesn’t that tension change or slacken? Don’t improv comedians become just like stand-up comedians: people who you have an expectation of to make you laugh? Does improv, in a sense, stop working after a while?

Bander gave a conditional yes to this point of view, explaining his own estrangement from seeing shows, from being there, from his younger days of waiting 4 hours in that Sunday-night line in front of the UCB. He was burnt in a way and it took more to get him there, like a writer, or an addict. Kevin on the other hand, another improviser I admire, and a man of his own subversive funniness, compared it to the adult appreciation of filmmaking one gets through studying film, where some things fall away, but:

“You still love the things you really love, don’t you?” He asked me. “That’s how it is.”

I said good night to Kevin in the awkward way I say good night to people who I think are obviously cooler than me and I said good night to Bander, that same way, when he told me couldn’t see any shows.

The next night there I was seeing show after show, burning out, until I saw “Horatio Sanz and the Kings of Improv” at the end of the night, optionally. It was fun and funny and unforced, in a well-lit non-basement, for a change. I talked with people who I knew who I hadn’t had a good conversation with before. A friend, Ritch, saved me a seat and a place in line for an hour. A friend, Mishu, gave me his extra ticket. A friend, TJ, told me how he thought I “got it” in a class I’d been struggling hard with. I felt good.

With this diet I’m doing, I’ve had a lot of feelings. My grandmother sent me an email tonight (something that happens now) saying that “you have set quite a goal for yourself” and te more I wonder about that, the more I believe it to be true.

I’ve strung together classes, improv and sketch, packing my schedule, attempting project after project, jobs and side-jobs. I’ve started performing in theaters and organizing groups. I even had someone I don’t know well, but respect as a performer, tell me I was “FANTASTIC” in caps like that in a show she saw me in. And I squeeze my belly and worry about food and wonder if I’ll wake up with all the weight back, all my effort in vain.

If all of this sounds like some sort of crazy metaphor or symbolism, maybe it is. Maybe it means I’m trying too hard, even as I always feel I’m not trying hard enough. I look at my friend Zac Amico who has an open mic he hosts on Tuesdays at CB’s now, who sells tickets at night, goes to open mics on his off time and interns a thankless job at Troma during the day and I wonder why I’m not doing as much. I wonder what my efforts add up to. I find excuses not to like myself.

And so I fill the time I would come to those realizations with things to do, with trying, so I don’t have to think about trying harder or why I’m trying harder or anything at all. I can think about rules, like improv, or a diet.

But the thing is, with both of those things, it isn’t about the rules. It’s just about being present and making better choices.

And knowing when to shut up and go home.

I started off this blog post, somewhat irrelevantly talking about the guy with his date-blog and the girl with her date-blog and how they should just fuck (or their blogs at least) and let the world get over it.

But the truth is (for whatever it means to say “but the truth is”) is that I wish I had that point of view. That certainty.

Because right now, what I have is not drinking in a room full of people.

And wondering what my life is about.

***

A quick addendum.

This used to be the playground attached to McDonalds I’d go to as a kid.

It was ugly and in fact it was part-owned by the city, though somewhat maintained by McDonalds.

I also remember it as some sort of hang out for druggies if I recall (my sister not withstanding).

It was torn down, bulldozers rest there and I’m not sure what it’s going to be.

I’ve become a more self-conscious person through all this everything.

And I don’t go to that McDonalds anymore.

Though I wish I could revisit that park.

Instead of looking at an empty lot, as I walk home, down 6th Avenue.

Just a thought, I guess.

***

I was invited by a comment on my blog to try this place and it was somewhat of a fiasco.

The woman asked if I could come there and that I should tell her when and I emailed back to her comment saying I’d be there in 20-25 minutes.

She wasn’t there in time (forgiveable) but I tried to go in there, on a slow morning, and order a Chicken Shawarma platter with no rice, only to be informed I could not do that, I had to order a salad and get the chicken on top of that.

I didn’t know why this had to happen, but I accepted it and grabbed the only salad I could eat on my diet and saw it topped with chicken, only to be charged extra when I asked for tzatziki.

“But tzatziki comes with the platter.” I told the kid behind the counter.

“Yeah but you got the salad.” He said.

Jesus Christ. You should just be able to get fucking tzatziki as a condiment at a greek fast food place.

Also, I wanted to bust out “Listen kid, I’m a food critic who was sent to review this place now give me the fucking tzatziki.”

But I said “You know what? I’m not going to argue.” and paid and ate some of the salad.

It was huge and good and I couldn’t nearly finish half, burgeoning with shawarma and “greek cheese” and shredded red onion and leafy greens.

I brought the other half down for my mom and she thanked me with email subject line “The salad was great!!!” later that day.

Also later that day I got an email back from the woman who invited me apologizing for not being there and asking how I liked the food.

“It was good.” I told her. “But you should tell your guy not to charge for tzatziki. It was kind of a hassle.”

I got an email back soon after saying:

“Nicholas. Glad you enjoyed the food. You switched from a platter to a a salad though and that’s why your tzatziki was extra.”

And I said to myself: “You know what? I’m not gonna argue.”

And wrote this post.

***

MAMAGYRO

Chicken Shawarma over Chopped Salad- approx 9 bucks.

Lexington Ave bet. 77th and 78th Sts.

6 to 77th St.

 

April Me’s

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

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

Which I felt like taking as a compliment.

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

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

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

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

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

Or just the manifestation of my own neuroses.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

Anyway, I love my practice group.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But you’re also having fun.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

Douchebag, am I right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

PETER’S ROTISSERIE

BBQ Chicken Sandwich- $4.92 (Sides additional)

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

ACE7S to 42nd St- Port Authority

Celebrity Night

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s strange to think about, really.

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

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

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

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

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

And how do you get away?

I don’t have answers to these questions.

I have work tomorrow.

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yep.” I replied. “Yep, it is.”

***

BIAN DANG TAIWANESE LUNCH BOX

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

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

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

***

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

But then again, I guess we’ll see.

Offers

“Naughty massage?”

“What?”

“Do you want a naughty massage?”

“Uh-”

“Blow job.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which maybe some people would call “moving on”.

***

Or not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not enough, not often enough, not good enough.

But I felt good when I did it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

PARIS SANDWICH

Green-Tea Waffle- $1.00

Mott St bet. Hester and Canal Sts.

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

***

So plugs:

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

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

Thanks dudes, for reading. And everything.

It’s Valentine’s Day, Laugh At Me

When this was first put up in the smaller of the two men’s room stalls of the Angelika Film Center, it read “She’s Allergic To Cats”, over and over, a few times.

I had seen the sticker around the city, occasionally, in the way one notices graffiti on the bottom of lampposts, or faces drawn on a sidewalk.

It was only recently that someone had come in and colored away half the sentences.

When I looked at it, I was almost surprised it wasn’t me.

I’ve been better lately I guess, if these things come from better to worse and back again, repeating.

Dull pains as opposed to sharp ones, infrequent memories as opposed to on the edge of my thoughts, symptomatic like allergies, not ever-present like asthma.

I’ll still think and get teary on a drunk walk home from dinner with a friend, or sitting in a chair waiting to see “The Evil Dead”, or getting up and doing something good and reveling, and then falling down a little to wish I could have shared it.

But that’s neither here nor there.

“You’re writing a depressing Valentine’s Day blog post?” Rob-virtually-bearded-Malone asked me over G-chat as I sat down to write this. “That’s pretty gay.”

“You pegged me.” I told him and kept writing.

Really, I’m better than I have been and this week was a good one.

A rewrite of a sketch that had tanked the first time over in class got big laughs and was pronounced “good to go” by our teacher Armando. A funny-guy classmate of mine, a guy named Jon Bander, even volunteered to be in it and provide the bear costume necessary (any more information, you’ll have to come see the show…)

One of the good things about writing and performing comedy is that the days that you do well at it, everyone wants to be your friend, or at least that’s how you feel. I think I’ve felt the same thing every time I’ve presented good writing to people, that sense of gratification that may not so much come from them, but changes your attitude, gives you some swag, or the ability to put yourself out there, your work as your shield.

Saturday, after the sketch went over well, I walked with Bander, as he goes by, and Matt Chao, who I had secretly drafted to come do some free improv with me, unbeknownst to him.

Bander was a funny guy, on a house team at the Magnet, where I took classes and I knew he did stand-up and was just getting into sketch like I was. I asked him about stand-up, since I kept feeling it’s what I should be doing as it was yet another way to put myself out there, to be a writer, to be a part of a community, not alone.

“It’s addicitve, but in a specific way. It’s kind of like heroin.” He said. “Wait, that’s not write. It’s kind of like having an opium plant, and you go out there and you get a little twinge and you think, great, I felt kind of good and that just with an opium plant. So you go back home and you refine it and you turn it into heroin and you go out there with heroin and it doesn’t go well and you wonder why you do so bad with that, but you just keep going back home and refining, but bringing back out whatever you have even if it’s 25%, 30% written, because you just want that feeling, it feels great to be you and get a laugh.”

Bander stressed the importance of going to more open-mics to me, which everyone told me, before he doubled back from Matt and I’s trip to get Bubble Tea to go steal internet from the Holiday Inn and try to write.

“Not much of a Holiday Inn, then.” I told him. “More like a working, trying to get stuff accomplished type of an inn.”

“Do yourself a favor,” He replied. “Don’t use that in the act.”

Matt and I ended up doing some decent improv and Matt, who hadn’t done it in forever, was particularly impressive with his blend of resolute nerdy-ness and sincerity.

It was bittersweet, because it was the last meeting of those free improv sessions, which for a long time, had been necessary after my writing classes, to shake out the bad stuff, I’d done and felt good about it.

I wondered how I’d do that now.

I ended up going to an open mic, after getting out of work early, just to see.

“Hi, I’m Nicholas, it’s nice to meet you.” I said, going on stage, after being called up by the ebullient host.

“And I just want to let you know, contrary to my appearance, I am employed, I do have a place of residence.”

Laughter.

“So, Ladies.”

More laughter.

The set went on-and-off, with some bits getting more laughs than others and particularly my last joke, which I went full throttle on, going off dead-on-arrival, but I came off the stage satisfied, having beaten back my fear and having a couple people compliment me on my act.

One of them was Zac Amico, the man I’d always admired, who was about a year ahead of me, stand-up wise and got on stage near last for the open mic, dressed in a too-long time and some baggy cut-off cargo shorts. He seemed locked in his persona, no nerves, moving quickly from jokes that worked less to jokes that worked more and not even sweating when he had to cut off a joke for the time limit.

Was that craft? I wondered. Was that what I would get if I kept working at it?

Chadd also came out and bought me a beer and sat with me and laughed when others wouldn’t laugh at my jokes. We sat and hung out, before and after, ate some dinner and drank a bottle of wine that made me self-conscious in its ordinariness, given my bacchanal upbringing.

“Dad,” I said, getting on the phone with my father at the restaurant. “I’m not sure what you’ll think of me after I tell you the name of this bottle.”

“Tell him Chadd wants to get drunk!” Chadd yelled into the phone and my dad laughed across the line.

It was the night before Valentine’s Day, that night and over dinner and as we walked down 6th Avenue, we argued about love and our place in relationships and what lessons can be taken from getting smacked for being a nice guy in this world.

It was a fun argument, the kind I like to have with Chadd, where we’re yelling at each other like maniacs, but never because we wanna kill each other, only each other’s ideals.

As I packed Chadd into a cab off Spring St, he told me “Thanks, buddy. You’re a good friend.” which was funny, cause he was the one who came out to see me perform at a basement on Bleecker St, who’d bought me a beer and who’d put up with my self-deprecating drunken whining all night.

I’d bet the label’d better apply to him.

***

Since I’ve been taking improv and writing classes, it’s arguable to say that my life has improved, feeling more fulfilled, more like I’m doing something, rather than just dicking around serving popcorn or meeting every other week to write stories about how I’m not doing anything with my life.

One aspect of my life that hasn’t improved though, has been my eating habits.

Since most of my classes are at 7 o’clock, I’ve had to try to rush into me whatever I could between class and the morning shift at work, maybe throwing in a little writing in that space as well, if I could handle it.

It’s a tricky balance since if I eat too early, I get hungry again and if I eat too late, well, I’m missing fucking class.

I usually try to handle this by going to Hale and Hearty and grabbing a soup and a salad so at least if I’m going to eat something later, I won’t be completely devastating my body.

But this past week Hale+Hearty did me dirty by not having my Cream of Tomato w/Chicken+Orzo soup ready for me and so I had to go somewhere else.

The place I found was incongruous, an out-of-the-way joint, stuck on a side street, over-looked by FIT, mid-block.

What it offered, however, was both rare and delicious: NYC soul food below 125th St.

What I got, from the familiar combination of steam trays, was the Fried Chicken combo with Mac and Cheese and stirred buttered cabbage, a meal I’ve been having in one form or another since I was 7 and would demand my mother take me to the Korean bodega “Fresh Farm” to obtain their version.

What I got were huge portions of juicy food, bricks of cheese and fried chicken skin entering my stomach, with hot sauce handy to be squirted over everything.

Hungry comedians take note: their lunch special is 6 dollars.

I missed it that day.

But return for it, I will.

***

I usually end my blog posts here, after the food section, but I thought I should just take a moment, given the day, to talk about it for a second.

For most of my adolescent and adult life, I never had a Valentine for Valentine’s Day. When I would, it would be some girl accepting out of pity in middle school, or some girl accepting out of pity in college, or the one girl who actually wanted to be with me, for a time.

So I’ve had a lot of bitter Valentine’s Days, as readers of this blog could probably surmise without me saying.

Today I feel spite, I feel anger, I feel depressed over my lack of OKCupid messages.

Most of all, I feel normal as this is my state on Valentine’s Day, going about my day alone, and then going to sleep.

But now that I can appreciate it, I guess what I have to say is this:

My friends who are in a relationship, who have a valentine, or just have someone they’re with today.

Take a moment before you hand over those flowers. Take a moment before you spring your surprise. Take a moment before you put on your elaborate or not-so-elaborate plan to woo and placate your partner.

At this moment in your life, for whatever it is, you have something, good or not-so-good, but it’s there and it means something.

Feel that, for all the bad shit for once, and let it soak.

As for everyone else, let’s beat those people up while they’re sitting there thinking like assholes.

And by the way, I’m Nick, do you have a Valentine yet?

***

SOUL FIXINS

Fried Chicken w/Macaroni and Cheese, Stirred Cabbage, Copious Hot Sauce- $11.00

28th St bet 7th and 8th Avenues.

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