Friend and I like to cook, and having just been to costco, had a marinated pork roast on our hands. I threw in a grilled onion and canelli bean salad, roasted potaoes with herbs and olive oil, and garlic dill cheese bread (thanks, mom). Then we sat around and got drunk (with several late night trips to the 24 wine store) and played word games and charades. I think the evening peaked when someone mimed "Moby Dick reading Moby Dick" and we got it in less than a minute.
Whoa, wait a minute. What is becoming of that pie?
This place is the bomb bomb bomb Holy shitness
Yo, that sucks. Btw, G train is running screwy
I just got out of jail.
Ew. I think I just finished my Gadamer paper...
Oddly mesmerizing, sleep inducing
Omg im drunk in long island.
Wanna do easter?!
Well, it's a very hip hipster queer bar in wilsbrg.
Drop that deuce yet?!
Hey babe. Drunk. Miss u. How u doin? Prob asleep.
I don't have any memory of like the last hour of the party AND i threw up IN BED (also dont remember that).
Shit girl lets ride.
Look left
I think i'm straight-up gay. Blink 3 times if you can hear me.
Give me 5 mins to finish this cereal
Poured rain all day and all night, got no reading done, but I picked up and went to the potluck on the Upper West Side anyway and Grace was her hilarious best and I brought a $20 fruit salad and that woman was outrageously endearing. My situation is dire, but there is always something more and always something next in this city and right now it's all better. I love to you, New York. Good night.
I ate Easter twice yesterday, first brunch at Ulysses in the Financial District, where your $20 includes a bloody mary or mimosa, coffee, and as many trips to the bacon, french toast, custom omelette, croissants, cakes, fresh fruit and cream, smoked salmon and raw oysters as you can fit in.
Then we kicked it in Bushwick, which I have mentioned many times before is the hispanic neighbourhood where they hate you white people, and with good reason because your presence means their rent is about to triple, and had ham and scalloped potatoes and salad and hard boiled eggs. Now, when a pulsing blast of Spanish music goes driving by on the street outside, guess what kind of car that is. Nova? Souped-up Civic? No, fool it's an Astro minivan. You know, cuz you can fit your whole crew in there. And you can get them at auction for like, $800.
Then we sat around and used Google Maps to show each other where we lost our respective virginities. New party game!
Friday was a dinner party with real grown-ups, Saturday was a couple of houseparties, Sunday was a potluck on the Upper West Side - first time I've been to that particular part of town. It was in a fabulous apartment: high ceilings with curved mouldings, hardwood floors, big dining room, doorman, rooftop view of the midtown skyline across the park (the picture is of another view from the roof)... How do you get an apartment like that? Someone dies. No really - this was inherited. Har har. The crowd was slightly more diverse than I usually hang around with: a chef, a few DJs, a clothing designer. I am moving up.
P.S. You know how when you grow up in Calgary you know, like, one Jew? It's the reverse here. And it's me.
Hah hah! Jay-Z and Biggie Smalls, nigga shit ya drawers
(Where we from?) Brooklyn goin out to all
(Bushwick...) You don't stop
(Fort Greene...) You won't stop, niggaz!
Bushwick I've mentioned, but last night I was in Fort Greene, which despite what Jay-Z says is actually very hipster and cute with tiny restaurants (all filled with 30-somethings wearing black sweaters), and well-kept brownstones. As with almost every apartment I've been to, there were no internal walls or rooms, so all the partying takes place around the bed/kitchen sink/small open floor area. There's no storage space either, so it makes me wonder where they put all their shit when people come over. There was a GIANT bass case in the front alcove - apparently it belongs to the bassist for the SNL house band; he lives upstairs. I brought a tiramisu cake that I had bought at Ferrara, which is a bakery in Little Italy that is supposedly world famous. Meh. Cake was not that good.
The night before, well... The most dangerous thing in New York is to go out with people who actually have money. In this case it was to "Beauty Bar", which is set up like a beauty salon but is actually a bar, see! Although you can get a manicure for $10. It includes a free drink. Anyway, someone was buying us drinks all night, and roommate and I can't believe how much we imbibed and lived to tell. Also, Grace left her wallet and cell phone there and got both back the next day. I myself have left my (pre-paid) phone in the back of a cab and got it back. Had to find the garage in Soho where the cabs get fixed, but there it was, as promised.
P.S. I have discovered another New York thing: "giving someone a ride home" means splitting a cab with them and not making them pay their fare. Hee!
Another Friday night and another soirée in Brooklyn. Thank God parties here don't start until 10. Gives you time to get stuff done during the day. Like go to a brutalizing pilates (pronounced "pa-LOTS") class hungover, and have the instructor chastise you for not being flexible. And have grilled cheese and a milkshake at a diner. And go see the new documentary on Kazakhstan, which has a male nudity scene in it that I am still recovering from. Wawaweewah!
Yes, I have to post about something other than drinking and philosophy, but this quote from Hume will help explain why I keep doing so:
In other words, it's literally methodologically necessary to drink with friends so as to emerge from the depths of philosophical skepticism. Just as it is impossible to stay away from philosophy once one has had one's fill of merriment.
Very good night last night. Went to a talk in the philosophy department which they followed up with wine and pizza – those giant, floppy slices of pizza that are stereotypically New York. (The trick to eating them is folding them in half.) Then went uptown to Murray Hill/Grammercy to meet the lovely Karen near her hotel, and drank margaritas at a place called Dos Caminos. Real, limey margaritas like you get in Mexico. The best part of that place though was the guacamole truck. There is a guy whose job it is to wheel a tea trolley around with ripe, fatty avocados, fresh tomato, cilantro, garlic, etc., and make guacamole for you to your liking. We devoured two bowls and what must have been 6 avocados, because let’s face it, no indulgence – not cake, not wine, not chocolate – is better than avocado.
Then we went crosstown a little to a rooftop party at someone’s walkup (see how I can just drop those New York words right in there?), where there was all manner of substance abuse and fun and frivolity with the other philosophers. Actually, we have been socializing a little, but this party really congealed the scene quite a bit, which was good. There had to have been 80 bedroom windows in the immediate vicinity and I don’t know how or why the neighbours let us get away with that crap: a raucous chorus of “Happy Birthday” for a guy who, upon closer inspection of his driver’s license, was born in March. Accidentally smashed glasses. A naked guy. We split a cab home with that guy, since he lives in our building. As we were walking towards where we hailed the cab, we chided him to get naked again, and before we could even turn around he had done it. And then did a naked backflip. And the guy nearby loading baked goods into his street vendor stall at 3 am was so delighted with our antics that he gave us doughnuts and pound cake.
