A Sandwich Story

I’ve been cheating on my favorite sandwich.

Scintillating, I know, but it’s true.

For the past 2 or so years, I’ve lived in SoHo, just south of Prince St. When I moved recently, it was literally only one block over, from the quiet tree-lined block of Sullivan over to the quiet, but slightly more commercial block of Thompson. While my old block had only a bar, two sandwich shops and a magazine shop on it (as well as a few high-profile but, for my purposes, moot restaurants), Thompson had a coffee shop, a Cuban restaurant, a hair salon, a Greek restaurant, a Pizza place, a full-service Korean grocery story, a DKNY and, oddly enough, the bar my dad used to go to when he was about my age when he lived in the city, about 3 or 4 blocks away from where I live now.

It might not sound like much, but for me it was funny how it constituted a relative sensory overload from the previous nonchalance of my small apartment, one block away. 

Anyway, I went exploring in this new wonderland in the week following my move-in and found a little bistro-type place huddling in the back of a DKNY, a place I had summarily dismissed at first glance, but which I was inspired to try out of a mix of perhaps boredom, perhaps virulent DKNY branding.

The place was called Tisserie, another branch of which I remembered from my time living on Union Square West, where that branch was, once upon a time. I say “once upon a time,”, because now where that Tisserie was, is a Pret a Manger, the popular British sandwich chain, that I admit some small amount of admiration for. I was supposed to have a phone session with my therapist and decided the large space along with the extreme lack of people at 9:00am in the morning would be a good area to not be disturbed while having some coffee or some food.

I ordered off the menu, off the suggestion of the nice girl working behind the counter, named Abby. I introduced myself to her, since I figured she was about to introduced to most of my life’s secrets and thus, might as well know my name. She was pretty though I’m not sure I fit the model of the sort of boy she would like to meet in a bistro in back of a SoHo DKNY and I wouldn’t know anyway, because it turned out when my therapist called that I didn’t have a phone session and that I would have to jump in a cab to her office.

Before I left though I got Abby’s suggestion, their Goat Cheese, Roasted Red Peppers and Basil Pesto Panini, with Grilled Chicken added into the mix. The price was relatively expensive ($9.75), but the Sandwich which I ate on the subway ride home from my tussled journey to my therapist’s office, was very good in several ways. The peppers were obviously not from a can, enjoying a crisp juiciness that I didn’t get from my local Pepe Rosso, whose peppers were imported from Italy. The Grilled Chicken was savory, not fake (always a turn-off), and was cut in chunks interspersed in the sandwich. The pesto and goat cheese held it all together, blending indistinguishably from one another in a mixture that both flavored the sandwich and acted as its glue. The bread, a wide-pressed baguette, was both soft and chewy at the crust. What’s more is that it was served with a little salad–an appropriate portion–and “veggie stix”, which sounded abominable, but turned out to be fairly tasty lightly salted, hollow rectangles, vaguely reminiscent in their airiness of a snack-food favorite, Pirate’s Booty. All in all, the portions were very well-sized and the food all complimented each other in excellent accord.

It felt very… tasteful, in several of its meanings.

By contrast, my previous winner (the cuckolded party) for a local sandwich was the brunch-restaurant Jane, a place I had been a regular at for the 2 years I had lived in SoHo. I had once proclaimed their Grilled Chicken Sandwich ($13.00, give or take tip+tax) as the best example of the genre. First of all, where the Tisserie sandwich is tastefully portioned, the Jane sandwich is huge. It is a monster 6-8 inch hoagie, filled with multiple-pressed grilled chicken breasts, the best Joe’s Dairy mozzarella, arugula-almond pesto and improbably fried-peppers, which are greasy and drippy and delicious. To top it all off, they don’t play around with the sides, giving you about as many french fries as would fit in the size of your sandwich, if your sandwich was a hollow mold of itself, filled, brimming with french fries. The fries are slightly curly (a plus) and topped with rosemary, which cuts a little bit of their greasy and saltiness with a hint of sophistication. It is a huge, comforting, mouth-filling lunch.

Every time I go to Jane though, recently, I feel more and more disappointed. Jane is too much of a hip spot, for one, and often I spot “celeb-utards” sitting at other tables and on any of the weekends I try to go there is always a line. I usually cut this by sitting at the bar, a tactic I learned from both my grandmother and my friend Davis, the manager of another local haven, Dallas Jones. But the whole place is crowded and noisy. The waiters are picked for their looks (they look like a crowd of mostly spokes-models) and the whole place just feels out of sync with my wild-haired down-trodden post-hangover need for their comforting sandwiches.

The last time I went, a Monday, I sat at the bar and ordered a special, which I usually don’t get, but when I asked the waiter for advice, he neither had tasted the special, nor the dish I had had on the menu for the previous two years, one of their few menu items. The special, a Fried Chicken sandwich, was pretty terrible, stringy and tough and topped with a regular tomato when it had been advertised with a roasted one. What’s more is that it was salty to all hell and I felt tormented, sitting at the bar, peering at the taps, when I was first given a glass of water (bizarrely without ice), which was then never refilled. In fact I never saw another waiter again until the time I went to leave and had to go walk over to the host to give her my credit card. I was pissed, when I got the check and decided to express my anger the only way I felt I could: democratically. If I had talked to the manager, perhaps they wouldn’t have cared or perhaps someone would lose their job, a fate not equal to my 30 minutes of neglect. If I had accosted the waiter, they would have apologized but probably not cared, thinking instead about their next corporate gig and how they were going to make “renewable annuities” sound like “rim job”. So I did what I could, an angry act, but an act nonetheless: I withheld my usual one-to-two dollar tip and wrote instead in the “Tip” area:

“Service Was Poor”

***

This morning, I was hungry.

I had gotten back at 3am from a party I had attended at Rob “The Artist Formerly Known as Beardo” Malone’s house in Western Pennsylvania, slumming on an NJ Transit train, talking with my friend and co-party-goer Blake LaRue about the best way for him to break into playing Magic: The Gathering while he pretended to listen while sleeping.

I woke with a start at 7am, a mental-alarm clock, realizing that today was the last day to edit at Tisch.

I got my stuff together, threw on some clothes,  didn’t make my bed.

It was about 10:30am when I finally headed out. 

And I was hungry.

I made my bee-line over to Jane, now more convenient than ever to my house, but as I passed it, I saw the waiter who I’d snubbed the other day, who glared at me, as if I were a witch or, once upon a time, a Jew.

I kept going towards Tisch, still hungry.

I guess I’ll be eating at Tisserie, a lot more now.

***

TISSERIE@DKNY

Goat Cheese, Roasted Red Peppers, Basil Pesto Panini (w/extra Grilled Chicken)– $9.75

Thompson St bet. Prince and Spring Sts.

CE to Spring St

JANE

Grilled Chicken Sandwich (Fresh Mozz, Arugula Pesto, Rosemary Fries)– $13.00

West Houston St bet. Thompson St and LaGuardia Pl

1 to Houston, BDFV6 to Broadway-Lafayette

Wherein Video Games Consume My Life (Again)

Pardon my absence.

I don’t really have any good excuse.

I’ve been playing video games, lying on my bed, in my room for untold hours a day.

Well that and trying to find a job.

“Come back in 3 months when you’re really pathetic.” seemed to be the message of the people in my alma mater’s career development, who very nicely told me to “keep looking, keep positive and talk to everyone you know.”

We stared down my resume together in the career office as I looked down the list of internships marking off mentally why I wouldn’t be calling them for jobs.

1. Only worked three days where no one liked me.

Check.

2. Laid off (with rest of interns, to be fair) and then when asked for feedback was told “Stop smelling so bad”.

Check.

3. Had the director call me on the phone leaving angry voicemails about my inability to properly pack boxes.

Check.

4. Director was sleeping with real estate agent of place we were squatting illegally and job was suspended for a week to put up leaflets about her missing dog.

Super check–that may be the worst one.

“Be positive.” The nice woman told me. “Just let them know where you are in the world. You may think they might not like you, but hey, it’s been years. Who knows what they think now?”

***

“So what are you doing now?”

A family friend had been instructed to “reach out to me” to talk about life in the entertainment industry.

“Well, I graduated college about a week ago.” I responded.

“Ah,” He interjected. “Go no further. I know what you’re doing. Sitting on your couch and getting drunk at 2pm. Don’t worry, man. I was there.”

And that seems to be the expectation of me, generally speaking.

Less of “Why-don’t -you-get-a-job?” and more like “Well-you’re-fucked-in-this-economy-anyway-oh-look-at-the-time-ttyl.”

But this sort of attitutde is dangerous, because it seems like the less-and-less structured time I have, the more I devolve in to the last known state of unstructured free time I ever had: childhood.

***

“But do they ever actually eat pizza?” Rob asked me.

We had settled down in his lunch break, editing a cooking show for bachelors/Jews, to watching the opening of “Samurai Pizza Cats” just for me to prove to Rob they were real.

“But I don’t get it.” Rob told me. “I get the reference to TMNT, but do they actually eat pizza?”

“Well, uh, yeah.” I countered. “Didn’t you see it in the intro? They were eating pizzas, like at the end there.”

“No.” Rob responded with a sigh. “They were not eating pizzas. They were getting them ready to be delivered.”

“Well, I think I remember them eating pizzas.”

“Nick,” Rob turned to me. “They’re cats.”

“Samurai Pizza Cats.” I reminded him.

“Cats.” Rob continued. “All they eat in the intro are fish. Because they’re cats. Cats don’t eat pizza.”

I was less certain.

“But they’re Pizza Cats.” I offered.

Rob sighed, unwilling to take on this sort of folly.

I sat back a bit.

“Let’s go to Muppet Babies.” Rob offered, conciliatory.

I obliged and we watched that into on YouTube.

“Hey!” Rob declared. “Isn’t that scene from Ghostbusters?”

“I bet they owed Jim Henson favors.” I offered.

“Probably blow.” Rob offered up and gave his beard a scratch, a beard he hadn’t shaved despite 82-degree weather.

“Hey, one of the commenters thought Miss Piggy was saying ‘just close your eyes and beat your meat and you can be anywhere.”

“Actually that’s pretty disturbing.” Rob pointed out.

An awkward silence.

More beard-scratching.

We ran the gamut in that room, going next to Warner Brothers and skipping some worthy Nickelodeon, but not before checking over the worthy DuckTales and the inter-related Darkwing Duck.

This prompted more conversation.

“So what was Scrooge Duck’s relationship to Donald Duck?” Rob asked. “And was Donald Duck also Darkwing Duck.”

“No, fuck no.” I told him. “Look, Darkwing Duck doesn’t even look like Donald. And Scrooge is Donald’s Uncle. Ditto those little ducks from the show.”

We kept watching.

“Can you believe they actually made a show called Chip and Dale, Rescue Rangers?” I asked. “They’re fucking chipmunks.”

“What the fuck are they supposed to do? Eat nuts and get rabies? And then eventually get run over by some hick on a service road?”

“Ch-Ch-Ch-Chip and Dale! Rescue Range-as!” Rob offered, with an olympics-style fist-raise.

From there, it was the usual stuff we’d seen before: Tiny Toon Adventures, to Animaniacs to eventual spinoffs Pinky and the Brain and Freakazoid!

“I used to want to be that dude from Freakazoid.” I said. “‘Nerd computer-case.’ I think it was because he was funny and got off-putting girls.”

“That or a brilliant marketing strategy.” Rob replied. “I used to watch Histeria.”

“What”

“Histeria. History show.”

I had forgotten, but when we stumbled on it on YouTube, it came back.

I remember it as a late-coming show, probably the last one on before the weird sports-programming came on Saturday mornings. It wasn’t bad, another Animaniacs spin-off, though the rest were Spielberg related and this wasn’t.

“I think these shows might be the best things Spielberg ever did.” I said.

“Saving Private Ryan? The Color Purple? Jaws?” Rob listed.

“Lame.” I said. “This had more effect on us than any of those shit-holes.”

A pause to reflect on our childhood.

“Now kids are watching Hannah Montana at their age.” Rob said, considering beardily.

“They must be getting very confused. Which one’s Hannah and which one’s Montana.”

“Word.” I replied.

“You know what really killed this shit.” I said. “Pokemon.”

“Yeah, it did.” Rob conceded. “Fucking Pokemon.”

Anime’s popularization did signal the end of great-humored shows by Warner Brothers, shifting the playing field to Japanese imports or to ahows which seemed like them, shows with a lot of action like Static Shock or The Batman.

“Must be why this generation’s so damn dumb.” I offerd, but by that time I fet old and codgery and it was time for Rob to start editing and any attempts at cajoling or beard-stroking were met with vicious swats and groans and finally I went back, back, the end of my day.

***

It’s a little ironic I named this post after video games.

In reality, I did spend more time playing them yesterday than talking with Rob or Career Development.

But there’s just less to talk about.

Video games are like a black hole for time; your creativity and energy shuts off; they eventually even pervade your dreams.

This is why they are great as a way to unwind and poor as a way to spend unstructured time; because it disappears before you know it.

But I’m not in it for the long haul; a shut-in like those people in Japan who become agoraphobic playing MMORPGs prefering the world of the interior to the metropolis without.

I’m just trying to find some other way to sink my time.

Or to not regress past 7.

That’s when I watched Power Rangers.

Ig.

Karaoke, Lap-Lickings, Interviews and… Life?

It was a good night.

I met Zach and Rob and Mike over at Two Bros Pizza-their place not mine–the sort of insidious joint where a slice is a buck, insidious and tasteless, but unfortunately suited to cater to the tastes and the expenses of the post-college graduate.

It was early, but we thought to head out–after all, this had been planned.

I wound up with the first one.

“This is embarassing.” I told my audience, my friends. Before grabbing and going.

“A lawng december and there’s reason to be-leave, maybe this year will beeee better, than the last.”

I crooned in my nasal faux-half-country twang.

It was my graduation party, or at least as much of a student (ex-student)-driven one as I was going to get. I knew I loved karaoke and drinking and doing so with friends, especially those who are into karaoke or at least willing not to half-ass their way up to the microphone, an honest effort is key.

As such, I couldn’t have picked a better bunch. Zach Weintraub, newly-moustached (a fact I was not in favor of), pounded out some heavy metal stuff with the appropriate vocal-bending “wows” and “awooooos”. Ro-beardo Malone managed a couple good ones including a Carly Simon song and something I didn’t know but Zach and Rob described as “that song from Jurassic Park. John Beamer showed up, friend-in-tow, at one point and managed to do his standard “Bad Touch” while the friend just marveled in a frozen-mixture of amusement, envy and disgust (Aside: Sounds like a Coffee Coolata).

Jason Lee showed up in time to try to do an amusing pass at “Higher” by Creed and Junior non-graduating animator Blake LaRue showed up but was either unwilling or unable to withstand the rigor of proper song-deliverance. Perhaps the greatest achievement of the night was the bespectacled Mike Sweeny, a one-time English-and-Philosophy major and full-time Ohioan who managed to pick up Karaoke for his first time ever and by his second song (fourth beer) he was grooving like the rest of us.

Even though I describe the Karaoke as such, with the enthusiasm the experience afforded me, I understand that Karaoke is one of those things that defies description through the written word. While it’s one thing for me to tell you that John Beamer, consumate Nor-Cal white dood, got up and did a dead-on Louis Armstrong to close the night, it doesn’t come close to the drunk-skeazy lounge-awesome experience of it, something that can’t be bought.

Speaking of what can’t be bought, the bar definitely under-charged me for the night and even with my promotion intended to encourage first-timers (Do a song and your first beer is on me) and the beers I bought for my friends beyond that, the charge was around a hundred dollars less than what I would have thought. Add to that the bartenders are some nerdy white guys, one of whom did an excellent rendition of “Parents Just Don’t Understand” by DJ Jazzy Jeff, makes this a place I want to come back to. Planet Rose is the name over bet. 14th and 13th on Ave A.

Like I said, my writing didn’t do it justice. But Karaoke is one thing though; having a fuckng-good time with your friends is another. My party was reluctantly advertised on facebook to try to attract whoever wanted to come (more friends/songs=more goodness), but no one who said they were going to come on Facebook came. There were like two maybes and a few who didn’t respond. I guess it meant more to me then, despite the failure of my half-hearted attempts at social networking, that a bunch of people did come and that we had a good-goddam time.

Like I said, it’s difficult to describe, but there’s little like joining in on the chorus of a Sum 41 song, banging into your friends crowded round a wireless microphone trying to belt out something about casualty and society, when you’re approaching too drunk to read the screen.

***

The party also felt good because of the morning I’d had.

My days had been vacillating somewhere between panic that I didn’t have a summer job, to intense self-hatred that I didn’t have a summer job, to general anesthitizing depression about the prospects for my life and general wonderings as to whether I should apply for a job at Starbucks or Pret a Manger (stock options/benfits vs. higher pay), before settling down to the conclusion that the question was moot since as a BFA student neither would hire me and instead I should just go home play video-games and eat month-old Newman-Os.

That said, I got kind of excited for my job interview.

It was for a company, one of those small production companies with cool indie-ish directors, where I’d be reading scripts and writing about them, something I did in fact feel qualified to do and something which it felt like did not take me away from the film-school education that now seemed less like an education and more like an extended game of Candyland.

So I took the interview seriously. I had writted a good cover letter. I wore a nice shirt. I arrived 15 minutes early and took a seat.

I was fine taking a seat. A nice receptionist greeted me. I felt confident. I reclined.

And that’s when the dog started barking.

The space was the sort of unseparated yoga-ball-type loft that some artsy-type places have and in the middle, between these unseparated desks, there was a dog, a toughed-up black lab, who immediately started barking upon my settling in.

I adjusted myself a bit up. Chill out, I thought, maybe there’s like another dog somewhere. Or a bird at the window. Or like someone is testing the dog and said “Speak, doggie!” and I just didn’t hear it.

Bark. Bark, bark.

No, that’s definitely me.

From the midway between the desks, the black lab started advancing on me barking.

The response was fairly quick.

First the production staff yelled from their desks at the dog, then they got up and patted him, then they had to restrain him physically, then they had to bring him into a corner where I was not in sight. Then finally, once they went back to their desk, the dog just ran out towards me again and the whole debacle begun anew.

My strategy throughout was to sit where I was, a strange, uncomfortable and semi-confident smile stapled to my face, like I was going in for an interview at Domino’s.

“Yes, I think I do value punctuality.” I would tell the Domino’s manager, smile-on-face, as he would size me up to be a fat, incompetent Jew and proceed to hire the high-school-dropout behind me.

Back at reality, the dog was settled and the woman I was interviewing with was ready to see me.

I tried to answer her questions honestly and directly–No I hadn’t done coverage before but I’d taken a class on Script Analysis and I had been a film critic for 4 years. Yes, I was from New York. Yes, I’d be around all summer, except for maybe a week for a film shoot. Yes, I’d done a few internships before.

But during this line of questioning, the dog returned.

I saw him from out the corner of my eye as he returned, placid this time and I exhaled my held-in breath.

“C’mere, Doh-gee.” The interviewer intoned and brought the dog over, stroking it’s black-lab head.

I just smiled and look straight forward.

I began to answer questions about my past internships.

“Well, I was more of an office intern at American Teen.” I told her. “I did payroll, some assistant editing stuff, logging and sec–”

A sensation. I stared down.

I have struggled in recounting this story on how to describe this and have come to only this conclusion, through some futzing around.

I was interrupted to find the dog aggressively licking my crotch.

.

I tried to laugh a little. I put on that nervous smile.

Later, my father upon hearing the story had told me: “You should have pushed the dog away. They probably think you’re weirder for not doing that.”

But I wanted to antagonize neither dog nor owner, so I just smiled and continued while the dog licked my crotch.

“Secretarial and office stuff. Really a lot of stuff really.”

The woman said she’d get back to me and send me a script.

But I haven’t heard back yet and I’m skeptical that I even will.

Thus is the world as I’ve come to accept it and I’ll keep on meeting and sending out resumes, looking for somewhere to go.

But I did have to wash those jeans.

***

As I said, I seem to go through these days in a sense of mania–from doldrums to up-moments and back down again into the dead-end-life of video games.

It feels like the summer, even though it’s the spring, which makes me wonder whether the rest of my life will be the summer; a time of waiting for things to happen.

I know that it won’t, that it can’t (I couldn’t eat). But as I contemplate Pret or Starbucks (Pret has better sandwiches, Starbucks better coffee), I wonder “is this the real life, is this just fantasy, caught in a landslide, no escape from reality”.

That would have been a good song to do.

But they’ll be more nights of Karaoke meanwhile.

Of that, at least, I’m somewhat sure.

Dave and Buster and Haircut

This picture was taken by someone who identified herself to me only as “Catwoman”.

She was my haircutter, assigned to me by the man in front, the man in charge of the throngs of haircutters in the subterranian basement/occasional-karaoke-bar that is Astor Place Hairstylists.

I asked her to take it, with my phone, for posterity’s sake. It’s an insecurity issue, I suppose. Every time I go for a haircut, I assume that my hair will never grow back, that I, like my uncle and grandfather before me, will lose my lustrous mane at an early age and withdraw into the true and irreversible depths of nerd-dom: the realm of male-pattern baldness.

Thus, I begged the woman who idenitfied herself as “Catwoman”–she looked round, petit, saucy and potentially Hispanic–to take my picture just in case such a thing might never come again.

She acceded and showed me the picture.

“You want ‘nother one?” She asked.

“No.” I told her dryly. “I think I have no one to blame but myself.”

As I contemplated running from the subterranian abode, fleeing from these people who so murderously wanted to steal my hair (For what purposes? To eat it?!), I realized as one must in one’s attempt to accept adulthood, that it would unbecoming to run from a haircut and so instead I spent the next half-hour or so being lectured on how hot showers were killing my hair because they opened my pores to the toxicity of New York and how they could give me a series of injections to cure my dry skin.

I left half-a-man, haircut-wise, at least, with a do that might seem Lynch-ian if it weren’t so damn jewy.

Still, it was a compromise and though Catwoman had spent all that time berating me, I was assured by my friends that it looked fine (though that dtill didn’t stop me from trying to hide in the bathroom with my PSP as soon as I got to school).

I meandered for a while. The school was playing people’s junior-movies and I thought Is hould stick around, though seeing an 8-hour-block of them last year was almost more than I could stomach. I got to see my performance played wide in my friend Beardo-Malone’s movie Our Friend Baldwin wear I play some sort of hipster-nihilist romantic-novelist writing a piece of historical-fiction set between the two Kennedy assasinations. I liked it, but it was still hard for me to watch myself on screen.

Particularly because the “me” on screen up there still had hair.

All-in-all, though the festival was better than the 8-hour block I’d seen previously, it was still clear that NYU was half-assing it in a major way, sticking it in another basement (the school’s) as opposed to their three-screen theater and having s guy make a lot of noise as he shoved unqueued tape after unqueued tape, loudly and visisbly near the screen.

But I had been in basements too long to hang around there, so I ended up meeting with a bunch of assorted non-school friends to go on an Odyssey to a place I had never been: Dave and Buster’s.

Now, I was familiar with the concept of Dave and Buster’s: it was Chuck-E-Cheese with beer. Such a thing sounded awesome for several reasons. If you were a kid, video-games and tickets hooray! If you were a parent, you could go get smashed while your kid did all that stuff, or better yet, get just smashed enough that you could try to crush them in their favorite video game. And if you were a hipster-nihilist post-teenager, like the bunch of us, you could enjoy both the video games of your childhood along with the new-found sousing your New York State ID that made the DMV guy laugh would allow you.

The problems with this theoretical explanation of Dave and Buster’s though became apparent in the practice. First off, it was crowded as hell. It took us about twenty minutes to get the bartender’s attention (who in her braces didn’t seem like she could legally drink), who then carded us for the second time, before declaring that it was happy hour and luckily our beers then would only be 9 dollars.

Joy.

The second were the people there. Unfortunately, even though I had delineated three categories, I had excluded an unexpected category: parents who are close enough in age to their kids that they all like video games. Surprisingly, Dave and Buster’s as an arcade was far more ghetto than even the Mott St melange over at Chinatown Fair, my usual stomping ground. The most common patrons were Sean Joan and Rockafella-clad papis with their kids, taking turns playing DDR or looking to get in a little “daddy-son” time cheating on the skee-ball to get tickets.

I’m even pretty sure (though I didn’t get too close) that I heard some people fucking in one of the men’s room stalls. Jesus, man. Why can’t you just get a sitter?

I also underestimated the people I was with. While I enjoy the occasional game of DDR, I like to prescribe my nerdiness to certain places in my life. It became apparent very quickly that the only other people my age at D+B (other than the baby-daddys potentially), were people with stringly long-hair, the obese and the pimply; the very categories I had spent my whole life fleeing.

When one of my friend’s girlfriends kept on making sexual jokes to me and talking about how I was “awesome”, I decided it was time to go home for some Adult Swim and some sanity.

So I suppose the day ended well. Every time I get a haircut, I go through a period of insecurity. People cultivate images of themselves and it’s hard to look at yourself in the mirror and realize that right now people might see you a different way.

But then I take solace in the parts of New York City I can relish and am happy that though I may not be at my romantic peak, at least I’m not teaching my 8 year-old DDR with my beer in one hand and my mami in the other.

Give that one a few years.

Blackouts, Photo-Finishes and Throw-Up-Records (Part Two)

Yesterday, I finished shooting my film.

It was tense (intense) at times, wondrous and a great environment and I really feel fulfilled in a lot of ways. The process of filmmaking itself is so great because it really allows you to find in yourself hidden reserves of energy that you never knew you had. It’s like something out of a comic book, as if you were Clark Kent in Smallville realizing you could fly (or The Blob realizing “hey i guess im really fat )

But I’ve waxed lyrical already about my experience filmmaking. I can’t thank my crew enough, including my parents, all of whom were on point, adding to the atmosphere and working hard past their lazy-bone director.

This post is not about filmmaking.

This post is about the morning after.

***

A gory film, carnival-atmosphere, like something out of Rob Zombie-Malone. A man is being shot at in front of a red velvet curtain while a bald clown laughs “HAHAHA! HaHAha!”

I awaken.

What a weird dream. I don’t even normally remember my dreams. But I remembered this one. Why do I feel so weird?

It’s 6am and I’m lying fully dressed on my bed, my phone on its charger. My head is reeling when I realize: I have no idea how I got home last night.

Backing up, it was the eve of wrapping picture for my film, I knew that and I had decided to go out for drinks with anyone with my crew who would have it. The place we were going was a cheap bar I’d been to before with 4 dollar shot-and-a-beers and I had drank a few (maybe 3 or 4) and my DP Chadd was having a conversation with my gaffer about how Steven Soderbergh was a good director, while I thought he was fucking terrible. Beardo-Malone, who was also there, kept on butting in trying to change the topic to weird Paul Schrader movies from the 70s and 80s.

I even remembered further back in the evening from the whole day of shooting to introducing Jason Beasly (the gaffer-and-general-good-guy) to Trapped in the Closet, which I in turn was introduced to by friends Dan Pleck and Najia Malic-Dar.

I remember it specifically. I played the first 5 chapters to him and he told me “This is the greatest thing ever”, which was very satisfying to be thought of cool-ly by a hipstery 26 year-old.

But now I was here, back in bed, ugh. I was fully clothed. A Gatorade was next to me which I did not remember purchasing.

There was only one explanation: Between the exhaustion from the film, the under-eating and the quick succession of my drinks, I must have for the first time in my life become black-out drunk.

Urgh. I felt awful.

First I grabbed for the Gatorade next to me and swilled as much of it as I could. Then I felt around my pockets. Miraculously I had my phone, wallet and keys near me. Even more miraculously, I had my credit card and license which meant I must have managed to close my tab.

It was time for a better explanation. I reached for my phone to send out a text to Beardo, Chadd, the adorable Ant Jones and ladies’man/jews’ man David Broad to see if I could get feelers for what happened last night.

It was about this time that I realized: I only had about half my glasses on my face.

Well, to be honest it was more like two-thirds. But the side of my glasses was missing, leaving the rest of my glasses to balance precariously on my nose.

I also realized I was about to spend the rest of the day in a truck doing returns.

This in turn caused me to vomit.

Red, I thought. Why was it red? I stared in to the toilet and remembered, oh yeah, the Gatorade.

I also noted that as throw-up experiences go, this was my easiest one as Gatorade tastes about the same coming up as it does going down, at least when you have an empty stomach.

I proceeded to drink water as I heaved myself out of the apartment, half-glasses and all, listening to Adam Green. But the ever-present recollections of what I must have drunk last night to get me to this point caused me to do my first sidewalk barf of the day, down the street from my parents apartment where I waited for the truck and Dave–this time just water, along with a pat-on-the-back from my Albanian doorman Osman, telling to me stick to either beer or whiskey next time but not both.

Urghb, I replied.

When I finally got in the truck and started heading over to tisch, the texts started coming through and I gathered that my DP, my producer and my sound man–the impressive, braces-laded Mr. Anthony Jones–had put me in a cab last night and though I didn’t particularly want to know the details, had informed me that I was just talking about “how happy you were about making a movie.” Apparently, according to my phone, I had also called Matt Morgenthaler and informed him of this as well. Goody.

It was around this time that all-around-good-guy Dave attempted to cheer me up with a New York Breakfas: a slice of pizza and a diet coke. The thought was nice, but unfortunately the pizza wasn’t: it was from the utterly contemptible Cafe University, a place I wouldn’t have eaten at even in my dormitory days and upon one bite, the pizza didn’t taste like pizza, my stomach wasn’t having it and I made it outside the truck in time to puke right outside Tisch an orangish mess that seemed remarkably like the fake vomit I’d used the day previously on my film.

At this point, upon third vomiting, I had now reached the chills-and-dizziness phase of the day and though my attempt to garner sympathy and help from the production office failed (fuck you a lot Matt B.), my friends Brennan McVicar and Dan Pleck showed up to help me take stuff up, along with Dave who, as I mentioned, was a sweetheart about the whole deal.

However, the problem I had begun to have was a normal problem of the serial-hungover-vomiter, which is that, eventually, you start to get hungry. So, analyzing the problem as a lack of sufficient deliciousness, I went to McDonalds to get a Chicken Biscuit and a Hash Brown along with a big-ass Sweet Tea, which I thought might provide some hydration.

Again, this worked until I realized that we were about to drive a lot in a truck.

Even as we got the equipment back to Tisch, we had only gotten 3 blocks down bumpy Broadway on our way to Brooklyn to return equipment there when I told Dave to pull over and this time only kind-of-made-it out.

Instead, I threw up on my t-shirt and jacket before getting out the door. Now finally, after vomiting all day, I was finally covered in it. And damnit if I hadn’t used all my paper towels, along with Dave-the-producers, on the three prior vomiting sessions.

Lacking paper towels and seeking some respite from my vomit-coveredness, I made a snap decision on Broadway.

“I’m getting a shirt.” I told Dave and headed in to Urban Outfitters.

“Shirts.” I told the man at the door. I was covered in vomit and half-blind, having left my glasses in the truck to spare them any contact with the rest of my body.

“Downstairs.” The stylish black bouncer told me, backing the hell up as he rightfully should.

I grabbed the first shirt I could find, pushing past hipster-bitches comparing v-necks and cougars trying to look like clubbers before I found what turned out to be a t-shirt with Bill Gates 70s arrest photos on it and put it on ripping off the tag for the woman when I was in line so she could scan it.

“Can I see an ID?” She asked me as I handed her my dad’s credit card, left over from filming. I just stared at her blankly, still somewhat covered in vomit.

She just said “Nevermind.” and ran the card.

By the time I got outside, Dave was in the process of getting a ticket and getting in a fight with the traffic cop, a woman whose language he mocked.

“You ‘done told me to leave’?” He asked. “I don’t think you ‘done told me’ to do fucking anything.”

It didn’t help but he took the ticket and ran.

When we finally got to the rental house in Brooklyn, I went to their bathroom useless, only to find out that they also didn’t have any paper towels.

“Company-wide shortage.” The company man said. FML.

I left my vomit-stained old t-shirt there as a thank you.

But the day got better from there, I’m glad to report. By then it was almost 3, the time I had predicted my hangover to be over and it was getting there. My dad took me out for the hangover-killing Dallas Jones. I had someone be real nice to me when I dropped off my film. I even got my glasses replaced by LensCrafters for a discount, after they told me they couldn’t repair the two-thirds-frames.

I ended the night with my hunger finally in force, downing arepa after arepa from Caracas arepa bar with friends and walking home though the wind-and-rain, listening to Dylan–Shelter from the Storm.

In the end, I guess, I felt better. That’s what I’ve always liked about drinking: at the end of a hangover, you feel fantastic. You appreciate anew your body feeling good, feeling normal. You feel superhuman being human, after a day of debilitation.

But it also could have just been the thrill of making a movie, how well it had all went, the excitement of going to editing and post, transfers and cuts and maybe even festivals.

At least I didn’t have to vomit any more.

At least not for a while.

A Brave New World

So yesterday, I found out that my parents read my blog (if you are reading this Mom+Dad, please don’t comment :p ).

To be sure there were hints before. The thought had crossed my mind.

After all, my mother had already been commenting on my Lincoln Center blog for a while, posting comments like “pithy!” and “this one’s even better!”

The real kicker was last night though.

After a weekend producing a relatively calm shoot for my buddy Chao, I was having a combination wrap party for his film/getting-to-know-you party for my film. It was a beautiful day, it had really warmed up and the night stayed that way, warm and mostly pleasant , save for the wind. 

My parents had let me use their roof for the party along with getting some beer for me on the way back from New Jersey, which I appreciated but also made me cringe inside a little with uneasiness (a symptom of my arrested development). 

They wanted to meet all my friends as they came in to use the bathroom–a fair proposition as it was their apartment–but when I introduced Rob Malone to them, my mom said:

“So this is the Beardo.”

Geez, mom.

Way to remain incognitus.

Later, I confirmed it easily by just pressing back on the browser on my parents computer to see the blog search for “Feitelogram”. Confirmation.

Which led me to consider.

Like I said, I had thought of the possibility before that my parents could read my blog and though it makes me somewhat uncomfortable, I kind of embrace the whole idea of this blogging.

I consider this place somewhere cathartic, an area for spinning my emotions, experiences, reactions or ideas into something else: a story. Something in writing. It’s what I’ve been doing since I was 6, since the teachers at my elementary school asked me to bring in the story of “My Day”.

But one also has to accept the consequences of such actions–that anyone can be privy to that if you post it on the internet.

However, it’s my opinion as someone who aspires to an art of storytelling, who tries to tell stories of his life, that this is always the way that it will be and I should embrace it.

To be a writer on any level is personal; it is impossible to write what you don’t know, don’t love, aren’t interested in: it is impossible to write from anywhere else but your self. Thus to release writing in to the world is to see yourself trampled upon, be misinterpreted, misunderstood, reneged, rejected and spat on by people you do or don’t even know.

This is not the life I lead it; it’s the one I aspire to.

Frightening, eh.

So what if my parents read my blog. So what if whoever else does to. IF I’m aspiring, trying for a serious life as an artist or a writer, I’ll always be showing parts of myself that might be difficult or private or strange and unwieldy–but ultimately I write for myself, because I feel I have to, and nobody else.

So I left the window up and went back upstairs to the party, where I got too drunk and tried to high-five a rosebush.

I stuck my hand in my mouth as my father prepared the band-aids.

“Well at least you’re having fun.” He said.

“Mwahad.” I said, hand in mouth.

Mwahad, indeed.

Slam-Crunch-Bam-Blood-Lithuanians

So last night as I was leaving I let my hand drift back as I was closing the door and the door closed and it closed on my middle finger of my middle hand but it only grasped the tip as I felt nothing and then looked back and saw bloodandbloodandblood and wrapped in my shirt as I walked downthestairs and outhedoor and out in to the street.

For some reason, I’m one of those people who is squeamish at the sight of their own blood. It’s not like seeing a mouse to me. Just like seeing, well… you’re own blood. It feels like it’s escaping you and it’s not going to come back and you know you have a lot of it, but damnit, you need it to live and stuff and things and this is definitely not good.

I passed a Key Food as I was walking around the corner but figured the employees who didn’t see me defraud a self-checkout machine with a mix-and-match six-pack would be any use in first aid. Rather, I limped with my blood-soaked t-shirt to Two Boots Pizza, where I’d actually been to earlier in the night (at their NoHo location) for some pretty decent slices. I guess I figured that what with the pizza-cutters and all, they might have a kit.

And that they did, giving me Neosporin and band-aid after band-aid to encapsulate my bloody-and-bloodier swollen digit.

I had gotten into this mess when, after turning a 4-page paper for a 5-page assignment, my friend Beardo Malone had informed that they were sousing people on the 8th floor. In a general malaise about my life, this sounded good.

The event was full of arty-kids with oversized prescription-less plastic-rim glass and Three-Buck-Chuck; your typical art school scene. But I figured with my friend Malone already drunk and beardy, I could at least hang around and have a few laughs.

And that I did. The party was centered around a small nondescript room (which turned out to be the booze room) full of some people I did or didn’t know, including friends of Rob, former friends of Rob and a producer who’d grown a beard. I even managed to find, amidst my cups and plastic cups of cheapo-wine, a nice girl to hit on, who apparently was from my Post-Modern Travel-Fiction Class

O.B. (Original Beardo) and teacher Tom Drysdale commented on this when he heard it:

“Why the fuck are you in that class?” He asked, taking his chewing-cigar from his teeth. “Let me tell you what post-modernism is: the failure of teachers to teach students to make up their own goddam minds, leaving them instead spewing back the same crap.”

Nevertheless, the girl was cute, freckled, with a smart-style black-dress with cleavage enough to make me wonder. What sealed the deal was that I found out that not only was she in my class, but she sat behind me.

This instilled panic for me in a second. Oh fuck, I thought to myself. This girl has seen me pick my nose and scratch my hair or my butt or whatever the gross things are that I did that I don’t notice that I do and this, man, this is just terrible.

Play it off as a joke:

“Oh, sorry about that. Ha ha. That must not be too much fun.”

“It’s fine” She said. “You ask good questions.”

Whoof. A comment I’ve been getting since I was”Curious Nicholas back in 3rd Grade.

Still, if this girl had seen the back of me for nigh on 8 weeks and wasn’t instantly repulsed, I knew I was going somewhere and kept on talking.

“That girl’s cute over there.”  I said, consolidating myself to Beardo Malone.

“Her?” He replied. “Oh, yeah, I thought so too.”

“Wait, were you trying to hit on her?” I asked, anxious. “Cause man, I mean, I don’t want to–

“No, I mean she’s Jackie’s friend, I mean whatever. I’ve probably already lost my chance.” Beardo replied.

“Well, I mean, dude you can, like, try.” I told him.

“Well, we can both hit on her.” He said.

Crossing swords.

“…That’s a terrible idea.” I said.

“Well, we could at least both get more wine” Beardo offered and we did, since she was the bartender.

But upon the break-up of our consolidation to get some wine, we turned to see two club-looking-guys in suits talking to her.

I heard their accents and after a moment of wavering trying to cut in to the conversation, I tried:

“So where you guys from? Scandinavia?”

“Lithuania.” One replied.

“Lithuania.” The other replied.

And they kept on talking to her.

Back into the corner with Beardo–

“Those Lithuanians are talking to our girl!” I told him.

“Lithuanians?” He asked.

“Yeah,” I replied. “I mean, I thought they were Scandinavians but then I found out they weren’t but they’re blond and shit and really good-looking and they’re just not letting up.”

“Think they’re going to split her?” Rob asked. “Think we should have split her?”

“No!” I told him. “No.”

Rob finished his cup of wine, crumpled it, threw it. Took out his empty Jack Daniels’ flask and threw that too.

“All I’m saying is if we did then we could be those Lithuanians right now.” Rob said.

And we split.

The place we went to was a pre-party hang-out, the purpose of buying that mix-and-match six-pack. But once I got there, the only place to sit was the elevated but non-bunked bed, several feet above the couch and where everyone else was talking. And it was there where my drunkenness was fading and there was no freckled girl to hit on or O.B. Tommy D to make cool comments that I realized it was 10 o’clock, my fun-times were over and I was just sitting on a bed of a bunch of people I only-kinda-knew.

It was about then or shortly after that I slammed my finger in the door.

The guys at Two Boots were actually really nice. They even gave me a cup-of-ice to put my finger in, band-aids and all, as I limped home in fading stupor. 

At least I got some sleep.

At least I got some sleep.

Beers and Blogs and Burying-the-Hatchet

I drank too much tonight, but I did ok.

It’s strange what drinking too much to me means. Tonight, it meant four of the small beer-mugs given out at McSorleys as I was asked by an ex-not-girlfriend-and-presently-talented-filmmaker to go with her there.

It wasn’t that it was too much for me to handle or that I didn’t like the beer. McSorley’s has one of the best, cheapest beers you can find in New York. Even with the price hike (up from 8), Mc Sorley’s still offers you 4 pretty decent-sized beers for 9 dollars and the beer far outstrips a Coors or a Rolling Rock.

Also, I can hold my liquor. Well, in some ways, at least. I can drink a pretty decent amount and still be okay–meaning not blackout, make my way home, be okay the next day, etc–but the one think alcohol really does take it’s toll on me with is bladder control. By the way, I think it’s become okay in public to talk about peeing. There’s so many other nasty discussions that have entered the public realm (lube-use, fisting, the economy, Afghanistan) that it just seems like it doesn’t really matter anymore.

But anyway, it makes me wanna pee.

And when I gotta go, I gotta go. A swift walk back to my place only made more difficult by the fact that my urinary tract seems to know the closer I get, applying gradually more pressure as if holding a yellow knife to my throat if I didn’t go faster-faster-faster-damnit.

But really, the problem was that I felt bitter, after those beers, after the night, as I walked down Lafayette with that ex-not-girlfriend.

It hadn’t been such a bad day. I’d gone back to my high school to put up posters with a friend and manage to sneak in some good video-gaming. I got to rehearse with my lead actor and I really thought we’d made some progress. I scouted a location for my film and cracked some holocaust jokes, met up with Armond White for Sake and buried the hatchet with a flame-on-flame-off-enemy.

But in that four-beer-walk, it felt hollow.

My high school empty when I got there with Langston and I’d spent the whole time on the train describing to him the different people he’d meet. With all the associations I have with my high school and that I’d really not like to see them, in some way, I felt let down that Langston couldn’t see what I had seen, the people, the pressure.

High School can be one of those things like a story about Bigfoot; without the evidence, you might just be making it all up.

My lead actor is a good kid but he just gotten off a shoot where his job was to get raped by another ex-not-girlfriend of mine (not the beer-walking one) and this one was particularly crazy.

A funny conversation I had with Dan Pleck over email:

Nick: Dan should I be worried that my lead actor changed his facebook picture to a picture of him getting raped my sort-of-not-really-ex?

Dan: The crazy one?

Nick: Yeeah.

Dan: Is this the actor who’s supposed to be playing you?

Nick: Yeeah.

Dan: Fuck, then I suppose he’s perfect.

Fuckin’ Dan, but he’s right.

From there, the location was good but we’d have to deal with a building manager “out of the Sopranos” as the owner put it.

Armond was nice and sufficiently kooky, but also told me I wasn’t a film critic.

I even spent most of the day orchestrating how I was going to make right with Dan Clifton.

It feels particularly embarrassing on this blog to admit that I made up with Dan. But that I did. I’ll tell you what did it for me.

The morning after I wrote my scathing diatribe I was so proud of tearing him apart, I called my father to proclaim my awesomeness for standing up to a bully.

To my surprise, he sounded disappointed when I told him the story.

“Nick,” He asked me. “Why are you in film school?”

“Uh,” I replied, trying to sum up the last four years of my life concisely.

“To make movies, I guess?” I told him.

“Right.” He replied. “Everything else is a distraction.”

And as I thought about more-and-more, day-after-day, he was right. But that still didn’t change anything.

Finally, Dan, self-promoter that he is, but at least a shameless one, called me to “bury the hatchet” by coming to see his film at the NYU Film Festival. It took another prompting for me to finally man-up: I asked my producing teacher and the person whose opinion I admire the most when it comes to working in the film business: Sharon Badal.

“Prof. Badal,” I asked her, in the moments preceeding class. “If you have a really public fight with someone in the industry, unresolved, and they extend you an olive branch, do you take it?”

“Yes.” she replied unequivocally. “The industry is too small.” And she too was right again.

I planned my effort well, deciding against calling back Dan in order to show up for his film unannounced.

I came to festival, sat down, watched the films (his included) and at the end of it all, I came up to him with a bottle of wine, I’d been holding all day.

“Congratulations, Dan.” I told him and shook his hand. “Congratulations on the film.”

As I turned to leave the theater, Beardo Malone waited at the door.

“You’re my favorite.” He told me. “That was a real-classy-move.”

“Soul-crushing.” I replied in a phrase and we headed out.

So that pretty much brings me back to the four-beer-walk-home where I felt bitter.

I thought about the day. I thought about my life. I thought about Thursday and the paper I hadn’t written and the class I would miss to write it and how bad I felt that all my academic integrity had come to this–skipping one class to complete another. I had skipped class too to make up with Clifton, something that my teacher, a man I respect and who has helped me greatly, excoriated me for.

Also I finally got to pee as I got home on the nervous jaunt past gate after door after door after open-restroom.

I also beat my video game with the worst possible ending–the one where you slay your nemesis, only to be sent to hell for eternity, understanding and accepting of your fate.

But you can always replay a video game, start a new one, or just wake up tomorrow and be.

It’s just that sometimes hope ain’t forthcoming on a four-beer-walk-home.

***

MCSORLEY’S

2 beers (Light or Dark)- $4.50

7th St bet Bowery and 2nd Avenue.

6 to Astor Pl

P.S.- Kudos to Brennan McVicar for taking that cool picture of me with a sword on set and for generally being a good, sane dude when others lack.

P.P.S.- I’ll link to my interview with Armond when they put it up. Good stuff.

Midterms, McNuggets and Aborted Ass-Beatings

So today I had someone try to kick my ass.

Maybe?

The first part of the day was tranquility.

I wrote a midterm, met up with my DP, Chadd, and my Gaffer, Jason, an affable skinny sort of fellow, who came on timed and looked like he was kind of surprised by everything, which I don’t think is a bad thing. Anyway he looked like he’d be fine on set, so that’s cool.

But then really after that, I had nothing to do. I had done my midterm, due by 5pm, replete with semi-double spacing and a good deal of Microsoft Word-generated smiley faces (figured it would cheer the teacher up who was reading them). I had met with those film dudes and invaded the temple sanctum, where my rabbi (rabette) was receiving practical guitar lessons and I was done.

I headed down to my film school, because sadly, that’s the only place I could really think to go.

I was supposed to have helped someone there unload equipment, but I was so late with printing out my midterm (smiley faces take time) that by the time I was done, they didn’t need me. Still, I figured it was a nexus and I might as well go somewhere. I felt idle though, restless and unsure and this brought me to a worse place than even my film school: McDonalds.

It was there, staring blankly at the plasticized menu, looking for a snack, that I came to the shocking conclusion that it was actually more cost-efficient to get 12 McNuggets than it was to get 10. 10 McNuggets on their own were $4.19 before tax, but the 4-piece McNuggets out of the happy meals were on the dollar menu and thus only a dollar each. Eureka.

So I had to get them. After a thorough interrogation of the thoroughly not-caring McDonald’s manager, I discovered that indeed, I was right. But now I had 12 McNuggets. What was I to do?

I decided there was only one thing for it. I would walk through the hallways of New York University-Tisch with a sack of McNuggets and ketchup and announce:

“Anybody want a McNugget? It’s Spring Break.”

My first victim (McNugget) was my beardo-friend Rob. It was going to be his supervisor, but I figured that wouldn’t be as dramatic, but I didn’t want to be mean, so I offered her one after. Rob was getting ready to go down to Delaware to play some beardo-scamp in someone’s film, but first we had to go up to the production center to see if they had some cable or other.

One thing led to another and as we wandered around, we offered McNuggets up as two guys might who don’t have enough to do in some span of time. We ended up giving away the last of them when we finally got to the production center, Rob having eaten several and probably having lost several more to his beard.

We then ended up helping a friend load his truck for his film shoot, which was serendipitous in one way or at least karmic, because I got to meet two nice girls working on the guy’s movie. I even manage to have pretentious film-kid conversatiion with one of the girls (“So why do you make movies?” “Oh isn’t everyone so pretentious?”) as Rob distracted the friend with Kennedy assasination talk intermingled with discussions of Disney’s Tarzan. I was so turned on by the conversation that I tensed up immediately when the tall, lank-ster producer came on and called the film girl “toots”. I frantically text messaged Beardo and my friend to ask if they knew if they were dating but to no avail; no one knew.

A measure of how fucked up I am: having film-kid conversation with a girl fucking turns me on.

Robeardo and I helped them pack up the truck and then left when Rob had to go meet his fellow actors. I hung around for as long as I could but then realized, short of going to Delaware with Malone, I’d have to go home sometime and so I headed back.

But here’s the thing: as I left to walk back home, the truck I’d helped loaded was still there, so I stopped to say hi to the dudes I was helping, when around from the other side of the cab comes Dan Clifton.

Now the first time I met Dan Clifton, it was freshman year in the courtyard of one of the freshman dormitories. He was an acquaintance of Jonny-Jon-Jon, who back then was having a contest with Dan to see who could fuck the most annoying girl in our year, an (818) area code who I enjoyed having a mutual “hate-the-fuck-out-of” relationship by the end of Freshman year. Dan, the last we’d met, had won that bet, describing in detail how he’d covered her mouth and closed his eyes, a thought odious even to me.

As I saw Dan growing up at NYU, as I had been, he became one of those people I disliked on principle. Sure, Jonny-Jon-Jon was a dick to people, but at least he made no qualms about it and got out of Film when he realized it’d get in the way. Dan was much smarmier, talking shit and smiling a fake smile as he acted like a bigshot to everyone around him. He became the sort of kid, the sort of person I knew I didn’t want to be.

Recently, for those following the issue, Dan had offered through his production company to insure student films affected by the loss by NYU–for a fee of course. Later, at an emergency insurance meeting, he was outed by teachers and students alike, when a teacher got up to warn us about “production companies” offering their “executive producer” services.

“Cough, Dan Clifton.” I said as written.

To which others followed.

To which laughter and applause followed as well.

The next question asked at this meeting- “Well could you tell us who these bad insurers are? I’ve never heard of this Clifton insurance agency.”

So I outed this film-school-Madoff online when I started posting the aggragate data from my insurance information.

And that was the day before I saw him there, standing from the side of that truck.

I smiled.

“Hello, sir.” I told him. “How are you doing today?”

At which point he grabbed my jacket.

And then immediately backed off and walked away.

I just kept smiling and heard:

“You’re dead!”

As I walked down the street.

Later, I wondered why I didn’t use the judo I’d learned on him. It’s for these sorts of situations. But I suppose, it never really got to the point where I needed to.

When I told Jonny-Jon-Jon later, he said “You should have kicked Dan’s ass with martial arts. It would have made my day.”

I guess in my mind it kept playing out that I’d trip him or throw him, choke him and then get up and dramatically say:

“Jew-do. Get it?”

But I just kept walking. It’s silly anyway.

But you know, that’s a day.

Chocolate in My Pocket and The Fucking French

I hate French movies.

Well, not Truffaut–I find him humanist–but other French movies.

Godard and Company and those endlessly stream of oh-so-french youths on screen trying to separate their multiple lovers from their existensial ennui.

Of course, my principal qualm in all of this is not really the ennui, as that’s something I sometimes in engage in, or the filmmaking, which varies, but the situation:

Here are these froggy fucks complaining over how they can’t decide between la blonde and la brunette, while I’m sitting at a bar in the East Village hoping that girl across the room won’t notice the caked snot on my sweater sleeve.

I should really dry clean it anyway.

It was for this reason that I was initially hesitant to watch Two Lovers.

Sure, it wasn’t French, but the title itself implied the sort of movie that a studly sort-of fellow (Joaquin Phoenix) has to decide between the bangin’ Jewish chick (Vinessa Shaw) and the indie party-girl (Gwyneth Paltrow).

Subtract Paris, add Brooklyn and you’ve got A Bout De Hipster.

Friend and DP/Director/Watcher of Pretentious Films Chadd Harbold was ultimately the one who convinced me.

Chadd’s the sort of guy it’s fun to argue about movies with, not only because he doesn’t precisely have your same tastes, but mainly because he sees and engages with films. Emphasis really on the “sees” part, but Chadd is that rare-particular human specimen like myself that obsessively attempts to see everything, anything that is supposed to be “good”. He is constantly on a quest to see good movies which is very refreshing for a film nerd like myself.

To give some sort of broad analogy, in real life, talking about movies in a general audience is like talking about March Madness to the guys throwing beanbags at each other down on the lawn and calling them “+4 fireballs”.

Not that I know anything about March Madness.

Other than that it’s in March.

And that people are mad.

For some reason.

Anyway, Chadd’s refreshing as a movie-watching ally, someone to watch with, someone to argue with; the sort of sparring partner necessary in order to hone one’s movie-watching skills and also, of course, let’s be honest here, to reinforce one’s own pretentiousness and one’s sense of geeky film-cool.

Unlike myself, Chadd aspires to a more “Jean-Paul Belmondo” life style–while I trudge more toward “Harold Lloyd”–and so he is a fan generally of that type of French movie previously discussed. Still, he pointed out to me the rave reviews for Two Lovers, nearly unanimous and the down-home-jewy setting of it all and finally, through much texting, I was convinced.

And impressed. Two Lovers is as much a movie about the titular females as it is about the world of the main character, Leonard. Leonard’s a melancholic and a prisoner of the benign-seeming machinations of his parents and of the Brighton Beach Jewish community around him. Even the initial situation of the film, a suicide attempt preempted by a separation, is the act of parents splitting young ones apart. At its best the film functions as a meditation on Jewish identity and the self, balancing past and present, assimilation and dudty to one’s elders, finding an inescapability in the hierarchical chains of identity; that is, there is no escape from who you are.

Even though I called the story out as specifically Jewish, it’s really something anyone, college student, New Yorker, young person, could feel for. And an excellent performance by Phoenix, with an appendix.

For those interested, this is an interview with James Gray, the filmmaker. The appendix comes here in the form of a story.

Apparently, Mr. Gray was trying to give Joaquin Phoenix a note, talking to him about his character.

Mr. Phoenix, perturbed, closed his eyes and self-consciously interrupted him, saying: “Eight.”

Mr. Gray, who had been working with Mr. Phoenix for some time now, was confused.

Mr. Phoenix explained: “I’ve been doing this, I’ve been acting since I was eight, I know, I know.”

With that out, the filming resumed.

Still, however bizarre, it’s a fanatastic performance and worthy of a praise and an interesting movie that balances comedy with serious matters, romance and family.

Chadd, I suppose I owe you a beer.

But Vincent Gallo still sucks.

***

When I went to see the film, quintessential beardo Rob Malone asked me why I no longer had chocolate in my jacket, a policy I had upheld for a while.

You see, as a fan of dark chocolate, in my freshman and sophomore years, I pitied the poor film students who might not know the joys  of such confectionary pleasure, assuming their needs filled by a Snickers or some such abomination.

Thus, every 2 weeks or so, I would purchase two different chocolate bars and put them in my jacket pocket of my beat-torn paint-smeared leather jacket and hand them out to students and faculty with the pleasant offer:

“Do you want some chocolate?”

As summers came though, the chocolate would either melt or I would eat it, neither one of which was helpful to my cause and I eventually, over time, abandoned my chocolate crusade.

But now, what with this inclement weather, with the prompting of a beardo, I have decided to resume my chocolate-giving ways, like a red-jewy-Santa-Claus or a Willy-Wonka-Yid. I purchased recently a small, burlap sack full of bulk 72% dark Jacques Torres Chocolate Haven chocolate and have decided to make room for it in my winter coat.

So now, brave Nickolyphytes, readers of this blog, I invite you, if you see me on the streets with a shock or a slump, or in the hallways of the school pretending I have three more years there, feel free to ask a chocolate.

Upon askance, I will produce my burlap sack and yum-liciousness will begin.

Avast!