The Wolfpack Files

City Chase a.k.a. The Amazing Race - NYC Style

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 11:44:00 +0000

This past weekend my friend Sarina and I entered an event called City Chase. As one of the quotes on the web site says, it’s like Fear Factor meets The Amazing Race. Basically teams of two run around the city trying to complete challenges. The first team to finish 10 of them and get to the finish line wins. I’m still not 100% why we entered, but it sounded like a nice way to spend a Saturday.

We arrived at the starting location around 8:30am on Saturday morning. We checked in, looked at the competition, and decided that we weren’t trying to win, just finish all 10 tasks in the time allowed. After watching other people warm up, the race was on. The first point we got was actually completed the day before when we got over $40 in donations to a charity (we actually ended up with $80 – so thanks to the people who helped us out!) The second point involved a scavenger hunt that basically took place right on 11^th street here in Manhattan. We were given a list of 10 items and we had to either find or answer 9 of them. A couple of them were easy since we were given the list the day before. Find the architect of Webster Hall. What was the current temperature in the World Championship city (Marrakesh). The rest were a little harder/stranger. Find a tan line. Find a team wearing their shirts and pants backwards. Find a non-competitor who was the same height as one of your teammates. Luckily, you didn’t have to actually do all this, you just had to take a picture of it. I’d say in about 10 minutes we were done.

At that point we were given a sheet of paper with 30 clues from which we’d now have to complete 8 of them. The top 6 clues were broken into 3 segments. We had to do 2 of the 6, but from at least 2 segments. So we spent the next 10 minutes trying to figure out the clues and get some idea of what we might be doing. Once we sort of figured that out, we took a look at the other clues as we started walking in a general direction. I spotted that one of the clues took us to a Kaplan Center nearby. When we got there we took a GMAT-esque test of 15 questions from which we needed to get 10 right. It had been a long time since either of us had to do questions like these. We each started working and after 10 minutes decided we’d just hand it in. Luckily we agreed on about 5 answers, I got a few more and then as I was walking to hand in the sheet, I literally started randomly circling answers. We ended up with 11 right. Point #3, done.

We left and continued walking West since that seemed to be where most of the tasks were being done. But almost immediately upon walking out we spotted that one of the clues was on St. Marks and Avenue A. While it was in the opposite direction, it was also pretty close so we hoofed on over there. That was the first of what turned out to be a few uncomfortable challenges. We, along with another team, had to go up on a little stage and sing. Well, not exactly sing… see, there was a guy in charge and we had to do whatever he wanted us to do. I ended up having to become a human beat box. I wasn’t all that bad. Sarina on the other hand… the guy asked her to breathe heavy. No seriously, that was it. As soon as he said that I looked over at her and tried really hard not to laugh. It was like she was auditioning to be a phone sex operator (don’t kill me for writing that!) After the other team was given their assignments, off we went, rapping and breathing upon command. Luckily it lasted only a couple of minutes and the crowd of other competitors that were watching seemed to enjoy us. Point #4, done.

We left and went back towards the West side. On our way there we crossed Lafayette street and I suddenly remembered one of the clues had mentioned Lafayette. I kind of wish I hadn’t because the tasks was as Crunch Gym. Those of you that know me know that I’m not really a gym person and I was afraid of what was going to happen. This particular location has a Pilates room with some exercise equipment that I had never seen before. Essentially what we had to do was work out on these machines for 10 minutes. It wasn’t all that bad I suppose, but not really something I’d want to do again. Point #5, done.

Once again we left and headed West. This time we were going to one of the mandatory challenges at a billiards hall. Here what you had to do was play ping pong and to win you had to get five points. Here’s the catch. One team member stood in front with their hands on their hips while the other one stood behind with their arms through the front person’s. Then you had to try and play. I was watching the teams ahead of us to get an idea of the best way to do this and well… we won our five points in about 30 seconds. Point #6, done.

We left and headed towards the Piers. It was at Pier 42 I believe where we had to go hand in our donation sheet to prove we had gotten the $40. But there was also another challenge there that I did NOT want to do. It involved cheerleading. Sarina of course threatened and mocked me and forced me to do it. So yes, for a short couple of minutes, I was a cheerleader. The task was, you and another team had to pair up and do a cheer that had 5 phrases in it (the 2 team names, New York City, City Chase and The Big Apple). You also had to include a kick, a life and a jump. One of the teammates had to wear a cheerleader skirt (thank God I had a girl as a teammate) while one of the other team’s people had to wear a cheerleader skirt. The other two of us had to hold pom-poms. So we came up with the following rhyme (for reference sake, the other team name was The Tex Pats and we were That’s What She Said):

We are the Tex Pats

Here in New York City

We’re doin’ the Big Apple City Chase race

Shakin’ our asses

Yeah, That’s What She Said!

As you can tell, we are skilled writers. So during the first three lines we were doing a Can-Can kick, then on ‘Shakin’ our asses’ we jumped and did a 180. And then turned back around so on the last line Sarina jumped in the air and the three of us caught her. After a few tense moments (because the judge could have said we needed to do it again) he asked us whether we did a jump. Sarina quickly demonstrated ours and he passed us. Point #7, done.

The next task was down at Pier 40 so we walked on down there. Let me tell you that around now I was starting to wear down. It was 80 degrees, sunny and muggy and the heat was getting to me. But Sarina was her usual cheerful self and kept prodding me to go on and just finish it. So we get down to Pier 40 for the eating challenge. Here each teammate rolled a die and depending on what it landed on, that’s what you had to eat. The possibilities were: Wasabi; an Anchovy; a live mealworm; a live cricket; nothing and I never did find out what the 6^th choice was. Why? Because we both rolled a 4 – a live cricket. Let me go back a few minutes and let you know that once we got there Sarina said there was no way in Hell she was eating a live anything… it took a little prodding but thankfully the judge allowed me to eat for both of us. So I had to reach into a bag full of live crickets and pull them out, one at a time and eat them. With people watching. I have to say, they weren’t that bad. I felt a little fluttering in my mouth before I chomped down. They were like little Rice Krispies. Point #8, done.

From there we finally were able to take a short break and hop on a Subway down to Battery Park. Here we were going to do the second of our mandatory challenges. It took a little while to find where the challenge was… this time one of us had to wear a Statue of Liberty crown and hold a barbell over our head like a torch and sing the National Anthem. On the streets of New York on a beautiful sunny day. Sarina doesn’t know all the words… I, after having gone to hundreds of hockey games in my life, had memorized it. So I got to sing. I’m sure Francis Scott Key was spinning in his grave at my seriously off-key (pun intended) rendition but I muddled through it. Point #9, done.

The final challenge was only a couple of blocks away and I was ready to pass out. This time were given Palm Centro’s and had to videotape 4 out of 5 things written down for us. The first one we did was, find a non-competitor and have her ride piggyback on one of the team members around the bull. In downtown Manhattan there’s a large brass (?) Bull sitting in the middle of the road where a lot of people take pictures. I have to say I wasn’t keen on this challenge at all since it involved finding random people to do random things for us, but Sarina was insistent we could get someone and I’m thankful I listened to her. She ended up getting one girl to do 3 of the things on the list. So first this girl got on my back as I walked around the bull. Then this girl had to play leapfrog with one of us, and Sarina took her on, although apparently this girl’s butt hit Sarina in the head twice. Then we had to have the girl do three cartwheels or three somersaults for us. She was a trooper and quickly did three cartwheels. That left one more thing to do. Either a) we had to get video of one of us riding in a rickshaw or b) find 3 non-competitors and get them to join one of us in singing the National Anthem in front of a Statue of Liberty. We didn’t see any rickshaws nearby so that left the last choice. Luckily in that area, since we were near where the boats leave to take you to the Statue, there were a few street performers dressed up at the Statue. So Sarina managed to find a foreign family who had NO idea what the National Anthem was and the four of them stood in front of a street performer (after paying him $10!) and sang the first 15 seconds of the National Anthem. Well, Sarina sang, the other 3 just stood there. We ran back to the check-in point and gave them our video and we passed. Point #10, done!

At this point I was hurting in all sorts of areas. Sarina didn’t complain once throughout the entire day even though she’s the one with actual injuries to both her feet. I have to say that if I had anyone else as a partner I would have quit a long time earlier or at the very least, we’d still have 2 tasks to do. But Sarina’s never ending enthusiasm kept me going. Which came in handy because for some reason the first three subway stations we found had no trains running! We finally got on the train and made it back to the finish line and we finished in a time of 5 hours, 8 minutes and 53 seconds.

We didn’t win, but I’m still waiting to see what the final results are. Because we finished in a decent time (an hour before the deadline) and because we actually did all 10 tasks (a lot of teams didn’t) I think we may have done pretty well. There were around 500 teams and even 30 minutes later after we ate and drank and headed home, I passed a lot of teams who were still walking to the finish. It was quite an experience, one which I would gladly do again (but only if Sarina was my partner) if I manage in the next year to get into shape because man, Saturday night I couldn’t move. Once I see the final results I’ll post them here…

The Notebook

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 03:57:00 +0000

I've been a member of Netflix since April of 2000. I was one of the first people to join up and I've been a member so long that my membership agreement is different than most. Netflix has been very nice at keeping to the original contract so that while the current membership allows 3 out at a time for $16.99, I still get 4 out a time for the same price. I've watched hundreds of movies through Netflix and it has truly been one of the great web site creations in my life time.

On February 28th of 2005, I had The Notebook shipped to me. While today I can get a DVD overnight, back then it took a couple of days to arrive and I got it March 2nd. 3 years, 5 months and 6 days after I got it, tonight, I finally watched it.

Once upon a time I had a friend who I cared for very much and when I got The Notebook, we promised we'd watch it with each other. We didn't see each other much and when we did, it was with a group of people or for a very short time and so as the days and months slipped away, we never watched the film. I haven't spoken to her in about a year now. I can't believe the time has passed so quickly. I guess I knew a few months ago that there was a good chance I would never really speak to her again, but I held on to the movie. I've erased emails, hidden pictures and all thoughts of her have been pushed to the back of my mind. But I could never bring myself to return The Notebook. It was like it was my last link to her. That maybe one day, by some twist of fate, we'd end up in the same place at the same time and we'd finally get a chance to watch the movie together. But tonight, as I shuffled through the other movies I had from Netflix, it was there looking at me like it has for the past three and a half years and for some reason, I knew it was time to watch.

The movie turned out to be almost everything I expected. It was a pure and beautiful love story with a final scene that will break the hearts of even the toughest person. It's strange how something as simple as round disc can have so much emotion attached to it, but as I took the DVD out of the player and put it into its sleeve, I felt very sad. I almost put it back in the nice DVD holder Netflix sent me a few years ago because I didn't want to send it back. It's been a single constant for so long that not having it there is going to make me feel a little empty inside. But, I did finally put it into the red Netflix envelope and tomorrow, it will at last be returned. I'm guessing Netflix probably thinks I lost it a long time ago and just didn't want to pay for it. Little do they know that a movie about a story in a notebook, has a story behind it as well.

Politics

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 21:47:00 +0000

As we head into the big 2008 political season, I think back to my brief venture into politics. I'm not generally one that feels strongly one way or another. I tend to lean towards the Democrats and nothing this year makes me feel like I'll be changing that. I haven't watched any of the debates this year, although I tried to record the Democratic one last night. Of course I set it to record on the wrong channel so instead I recorded a Morgan Freeman/Ashley Judd film. But based strictly on the physical, I would have to say Huckabee, Romney or Obama will win. They just look Presidential to me. Anyway...

Back in college I was a member of the Student Government Association for a year. It may have been two years now that I think about it, but only one year was memorable. My senior year I was the co-chair of the Health and Public Safety Committee. Did I get the job because I was the most qualified? No. Did I get it because I cared deeply about the health and public safety of my fellow students? No. Did I get it because I asked for it? Yes. See that year two of my closest friends ran for, and became, President and Vice-President of the SGA. I remember standing in someone's dorm room after they won and jokingly asking if they had any cabinet positions for me. Pete, the President, laughed and said, yes, Health and Public Safety. I asked if I could have the position and he said, sure, why not? And thus I entered politics.

Before you think it was just that easy to become the co-chair of a highly influential and important committee, it wasn't. I had to be confirmed by the Senate. The Senate was made up of mostly people I didn't know nor cared about. And there was also another co-chair, although I don't recall his confirmation hearing. So anyway, I get to the confirmation hearing and am fairly confident it would be an easy process. Most of the time these chairmanships are rubber stamped and everyone is confirmed unanimously. Of course, it wouldn't be much of a story if that happened. I sat there and the President asked if anyone had any questions for me. One girl, who was extremely serious about her position, looked at me and asked me if I had a working relationship with either the head of Health Services (whose name I didn't know) or Public Safety (lead by Chief Evans). I looked her square in the eye and said that while I didn't have a relationship with the head of Health Services, I had met with Chief Evans many times in the past and had a good relationship with him. She seemed a little wary of my answer (as she should have been - more on that in a second) but didn't ask any follow-up questions. No one else had anything to ask so there was a vote. I got 13 votes for confirmation and 3 abstentions, including one from the question-asker. Of all the votes for confirmation that day, I was the only one who got more than one abstention. Of course there's no way I should have been confirmed knowing what a slacker I am, but what can you do?

So, that 'relationship' I had with Chief Evans? Well that basically boiled down to one incident I had had the previous year. I don't remember if I've blogged about this before, so I'll just tell the story. It's my junior year of college and my friend Pete (remember him? He became President) had just gotten back from Israel and had brought me some incense. It wasn't like any incense I had ever seen - it was more like a foam triangle, about the size of my hand. It burned nicely and smelled good so I didn't question it. Anyway, as I'm burning it, a friend of mine walks into my room and asks if I could give her friend a ride to the train station. As I am a fairly nice person, I agree and we leave. Now normally, I'll leave incense burning because the smoke it creates isn't enough to do any damage. Unfortunately, it seems this Israeli incense was different in more than just looks. When I returned from the train station, I walked into my room and immediately noticed that my trash can had moved into the middle of the room. I thought that was rather odd, and then I noticed I had a voicemail. I checked my phone and it was from one of the Public Safety officers. She said that while I had been away, the incense had set off the fire alarm and they had to break into my room. While there, they had noticed two street/parking signs handing from my window.

Which leads to another brief side story... earlier that year I had taken two parking signs from one of the lots behind one of the dorms. For some reason I had a fascination with street signs (and in fact still have a couple at my parent's house) and so I took them. Needless to say (but I shall anyway) I hadn't planned on getting caught with them. But since when you walked into my dorm room they were pretty much staring you straight in the face, Public Safety had seen them when they came to put out my incense. And now I was being asked to come see Chief Evans to explain the parking signs.

I made an appointment and later that week went into his office. Chief Evans was a very nice, calm guy. He welcomed me and I sat down. He looked at me and asked "why did you take the signs?" I looked back at him and lied. I said that I had been walked through one of the dorms and seen them lying in the hallway and I took them from there. Meaning, I hadn't been the one to take a screwdriver to the back of the metal post and removed them. I simply took them from someone else who had done the dirty work. He looked at me and I'm not sure if the believed me, but he simply said "don't do it again." I looked at him and said "OK," and that was the end of our meeting.

And that was my working relationship with Chief Evans.

I don't remember really doing much in the SGA, much like I didn't do much during my two-year tenure as Vice-President of the A.S.I.A. Society. It was a nice thing to put on my resume however. Considering I was a Political Science major, you'd think I'd care more about politics, but it's rare that there's a politician that gets me interested. Most of them say the same thing, just in slightly different ways. I'm more of a showman and I like someone that captures the imagination. I like reading stories of J.F.K. for instance, since he became President at a very young age and captured the nation in a way no other President ever had or has since. Yes, it helps his legacy that he died in office and there's a chance he'd be seen just like anyone else had he done his two terms and gone home, but I'd like to think he'd have changed the way the office was seen in the public's eye. And looking at the current crop of contenders, the only one who really has the chance to change the nation's way of thinking is Barack Obama.

I honestly don't know enough about anyone's policies to know if he really is the best person to lead the country from a political point of view, but from a social point of view, he would shake up this country - this world - like no one has in decades - possibly ever.

Hobbies

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 01:05:00 +0000

If you take a look at various Facebook/Friendster/MySpace pages (as well as the random resume) you'll find that everyone has a hobby. One definition of hobby is: "An activity or interest pursued outside one's regular occupation and engaged in primarily for pleasure." So you'll see people list skiing or listening to music or collecting stamps as a hobby they enjoy. My hobby is collecting keychains. To those of you that know me, you know I've been doing this for quite a while. For those of you who don't know me - I've been collecting keychains for quite a while. I don't know when I first started, but at the moment I have about 225 hanging on my walls, and at least that many in various bags, as I've run out of places to hang them.

Collecting keychains may seem an odd choice for a hobby, but the way I look at it, they're usually fairly easy to find wherever you travel and they're rather inexpensive. And when people go away on vacation and say 'can I bring you anything' I can always say, 'sure, bring me a keychain.' Is there an airport in the world that doesn't have a gift shop with keychains for sale? I think not. So over the years I've gotten a lot of keychains. I can't say that I have a single favorite one, but there are a lot that I enjoy. I've got one that's a fake chicken's foot, which a friend sent from China. I've got one that looks like a piece of sushi, which a friend brought back from Japan. I've got a couple in the shape of feet with sand from the city it came from. I've got Popeye, Frankenstein, Homer Simpson and the Loch Ness Monster. I've got this cool one of a dog with a working clock in the middle. I've got keychains that talk (including one that has the 2004 Red Sox LCS and World Series championship final outs.) I've even got one with my name written on it, in Korean. I'm pretty sure I've got one from every continent, except Antarctica (and if my parents ever go on that cruise, I'm set.)

The reason I started collecting anything... now there's a story I'm betting no one knows. It all started, as a lot of my stories do, back in elementary school. I don't remember exactly what grade, but I'm thinking somewhere in the 4th-6th range. We had a Hobby Day in school where all the kids were supposed to bring in their hobbies to share with the other students. Me being the stellar student I was, I remembered the morning of Hobby Day. So my mother and I quickly scanned the house to find something collectable. Having traveled a little bit back then, we had coins from a few countries. So we rounded up different coins from Canada, India, England, the U.S. and maybe a couple of other places, put them into these plastic coin holders that you could get in Fruity Pebble boxes, and off I went to school.

As soon as I stepped into the classroom, I knew I was in trouble. People had all sorts of things on their desks. But the worst was this kid named... Chris Eastwood I think. Chris had a coin collection. But his was a real collection. He had coins from every place imaginable, and he had them in these official looking cardboard coin holders. Since my coins were in my bag, no one had seen them and I decided I was going to do the honorable thing and lie and say I left my hobby at home. So when my turn came up, I mumbled something about forgetting my collection at home. I didn't feel that bad because as I had sat down, I noticed that two other people didn't have anything at their desk. Gail and Steven if memory serves. So I figured I was OK - I wouldn't be the only loser. But something curious happened. As the teacher went around the room, she skipped over Gail and Steven without asking them anything. I thought maybe they had spoken to her earlier and said they had left theirs at home, so she was being nice and wasn't going to make them say it aloud.

We got to the end of Hobby Day (which was about an hour in the morning) and the day went on. I felt embarrassed, but since I wasn't the only person without a hobby, I didn't feel too horrible. Then gym class came and our teacher came with us. This didn't normally happen since there was an actual gym teacher, so I couldn't figure out why our regular teacher was there. Then she said "OK class, now Gail and Steven are going to show us their hobbies." I was mortified. It turns out Gail's hobby was gymnastics, and Steven's was basketball. They proceeded to show us a few moves and everyone clapped and blah blah blah. I ended up being the only person without a hobby.

From that day I was determined to collect something. I never considered playing baseball or tennis or soccer a hobby because it wasn't something you could show someone easily. I needed to collect something. My first collection? I shouldn't say this because it's completely ridiculous... but my first collection was the insert cards you get from magazines. Yes, those cards that let you sign up for other magazines. I had a ton of them under my mattress at one point. I'm not sure when I realized it was ludicrous to collect these things, but one day I came to my senses and tossed them out. The next thing I remember trying to collect was bookmarks. That didn't go so well since, while they could be cool, there weren't a lot of places to get them. That one re-emerged briefly in the early 90s when I was in London and found that they had a lot of nice bookmarks.

I also collected shot glasses for a while, and still kind of do, although not as seriously as before. They're nice to look at and all, but there was something odd about being someone who didn't drink and collecting shot glasses. And then the keychains came up. I don't know exactly what my first 'collecting' key chain was, but I think it was from a cruise we went on when I was younger. It's from Norwegian Cruise Lines - the M/S Sunward II. It's in the shape of those circular life preservers. I remember actually using it for keys for the longest time before I realized that I didn't want to eventually break it, so I put it aside and it now hangs in the center of one of my keychain squares.

So there you have it, the story of my keychain collection. It all started one fateful day in elementary school because Chris Eastwood (I hope that's his name) had a better coin collection. I wonder sometimes what would have happened if I had shown my coin collection that day. Would I have ever bothered to try collecting anything? Or would my keychains have been sold to 500 other people around the world? In closing I'd like to say, if any of you reading this happens to be travelling somewhere and sees a cool keychain or two... I'd be more than happy if you sent them to me :-)

Karma

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 22:12:00 +0000

This past week at work has been simply ugly. The power-that-be feeling the need to micromanage things they don't really understand since they're not involved in day-to-day activities. This of course causes large groups of people to have to scramble to make the higher powers happy for a couple of weeks before they crawl back into their offices and forget about us lowly people for a while.

In the midst of all this, we had a couple of massive downpours last week. It made life a little more miserable than it already was. One night I walked for 15 minutes in the rain which lead to me having to dry my shoes for two days before they got back to normal. The next night, as I walked in the rain from the subway station to my apartment, I decided to swing by McDonalds to get some dinner. McDonalds is normally busy and the people working there - well, let's just say they're either not very smart, or are so annoyed and depressed at having to work at a McDonalds, have stopped caring. Lines were long, people were wet and on the edge. I try to understand how people feel and give them some leeway, so I stood there, quietly waiting my turn.

I place my order, pay for it, and then stand aside to await my food as the next person in line orders. I didn't hear what he asked for, but it must have been a lot because his total came to $20.06. He handed the cashier a $20 and said something to her I didn't catch, and neither did she. She looked at the money and looked at him and said, "It's $20.06." He then repeated what I imagine he said earlier which was, "Can you give me a break on the six cents? I only have another $20." He held up the other $20 bill to show her. She looked at him and said "It's not my money" meaning, it wouldn't be her giving him a break on the six cents, it would be McDonalds giving him a break on six cents. Now, there are a couple of ways of looking at this. One, chances are all registers at the end of the night are counted and people have to explain why something is over or short. This happened to me when I worked at a video store. If it's under, by a reasonable amount, it comes out of your pocket. So I can understand the cashier not caring if it was only six cents. That kind of thing can add up. The other way of looking at it is, its six cents to a multi-billion dollar company. Considering the amount of times I've gone to McDonalds and not gotten correct change, I think they can afford it.

So anyway, upon hearing this exchange I reached into my pocket and fished out a dime and handed it to the guy. He looked at me and said thanks, and handed it to the cashier. While we both sat waiting for our orders, the guy kept talking to me, saying thanks and whatnot. Then he said "Karma man, it's all about Karma. See, I did something nice earlier, and now you're doing something nice for me. It's raining right? And I stood in the rain and held the door open for a woman before, and now you're doing something nice for me. Trust me man, something good is going to happen to you." I smiled politely and said I hoped it would. I got my order and turned to leave, and as I did I could hear him still say, "Karma man, Karma." Before you start imagining what this guy looked like, he wasn't a hippy. He reminded me more of a frat boy, only one who wasn't all that good looking.

As I walked out of McDonalds and crossed the road to go home, I kept thinking about what he said. He did something nice for someone; I did something nice for him, so that meant something nice would happen to/for me. It wasn't that I felt I deserved something nice to happen (not that I'd complain if it did of course) but I wondered if the world really worked that way. All I did was something I hoped someone would do for me in the same situation. I knew how I'd feel if I had to break a $20 bill for six cents. It would be a little annoying. So I handed a stranger a dime. I can afford a dime here and there. It was such a small little thing to do, but he seemed so touched by this that he felt the need to tell me over and over that something good would happen to me. And I started to hope that maybe he was right. I walked into my building and into my apartment. I went to the fridge to pull out a drink, then went and sat down on the couch and opened my bag of McDonalds. As I pulled out my food, I thought about everything that had happened in the last few minutes and smiled to myself. Then I looked down at my food and realized something...

They gave me the wrong order.

Karma man, it's a bitch.

Hyde & Sikh

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 23:46:00 +0000

Recently I've discovered that whenever I'm in the elevator in my building and someone else is on with me, I start to think about my breathing. And for some reason whenever you think about breathing, it's harder to breath. I'm not sure why I notice my breathing when someone else is on the elevator with me, but now that I know I think about it, I can't stop thinking about it. But that's neither here nor there. On to the story...

So as many of you might know, I've made a few short films in my life. The one I'm most proud of is one called Hyde & Sikh. A few years ago a couple of friends and I entered a film competition where each team had 64 hours to write, shoot and edit a 6.4 minute film. Every team had the same theme, which was "hide and seek" but spoken aloud, not written down. So, as you can probably tell, my team went in a slightly different direction and made a pretty decent romantic comedy. Although this may be disputed by one teammate, I came up with the idea and wrote the script. As a team we directed and shot the film, then one of us edited it in a 24 hour editing marathon. Due mainly to our ability to think outside the box, we took 2nd place in the competition. We didn't get much out of it, but it was nice that people liked our film that much.

As it turns out, someone may have liked our film more than I thought. A couple of days ago one of my teammates was on Facebook and he was uploading some of the videos he had made. It got me thinking about Hyde & Sikh and how both of us had independently uploaded the video onto YouTube. For some reason his copy has more hits than mine. So I decided to Google 'Hyde & Sikh' and 'Hyde and Sikh' and see which one of ours showed up in the search results. As it turns out, the version of Hyde & Sikh I uploaded onto Google Video is the first one that shows up in both searches. As I scrolled down the search results however, I came across this site: http://www.sikhnet.com/sikhnet/news.nsf/NewsArchive/36F7E49AB65E6D9687257209007947B1 which mentioned our film. It seems that someone somehow decided to show our film at a Sikh film festival last year. If you go here: http://jagomiami.org/filmfestival.html you can see our film listed. I immediately wrote to my friend and asked him if he knew anything about it and he said he didn't. And I know I never got contacted about it. So now we're sort of wondering how our little film got chosen. And did they use the crappy online version or did they someone get a DVD?

I know I made a bunch of copies for various friends and families, but you'd think if they lent it to someone and it made a festival, someone would have contacted me. I'm even listed as a director on the web site (sort of, they spell my name wrong.) It's not as if we're upset about it. It's just one of those things where it would have been nice to have known about it. Maybe we could have gotten some friends or family down in Miami to go see it. Maybe we could have gone down to see the audience reaction. So before I track down someone connected with the festival on my own, I thought I'd see if anyone out there happened to know anything about the festival, or knew someone associated with it. I just want to find out how this all came about.

Oh yeah, and if you want to see the video, go here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5854716159956251111

The American Dream

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 12:29:00 +0000

When I was in grade school, the year 2000 felt like it was a long time off. Which in fact, it was, having been in grade school in the 80s. Back then whenever someone would ask me (or I’d just think about) where I wanted to be when 2000 hit, I never said what you expect a normal boy to say. I didn’t say, oh, I hope to be playing 3^rd base for the Red Sox; or, oh, I’m gonna be a movie star! When the year 2000 came around, I was going to be 27 and my dream was that I’d be married with two kids, living in the suburbs in a white house and, to finish off the American Dream, we’d have a white picket fence. I couldn’t see who I was married to, but I could see two young kids - one boy and one girl. The house was small, but it was in a very nice neighborhood. There was a tiny front lawn with extremely green grass. I have no idea what job I had, but I knew that it got me home when it was still daylight outside, because I could see myself walking down the sidewalk and opening the picket fence, and my kids are playing in the front yard. When the actual year 2000 came around, I spent it in a friend’s house in Massachusetts, in freezing cold (since my friend didn’t like turning the thermostat up) surrounded by half a dozen friends. No wife, no kids, no white picket fence.

When I worked in a video store back in high school, I used to be able to rent movies all the time. Needless to say, that’s about when I became the movie junkie I am today. I watched so many movies that someone told me I should write them all down, just to keep a count of exactly how many I saw. So I started doing that. I think to this day my all-time record is 251 (theater and video) in 1992. And in case you’re wondering the 251^st movie that year was The Bodyguard. Back then I used to write down all the movies I saw in a small notebook. A year or so later I started using a date book to keep track of, well, important dates. So then I would write down in the date book every movie I saw, along with when I saw it and where I saw it. I was recently going through a box I had here in my apartment, looking for some Indian clothes I had stored away, and I found an old date book from 1996, the year I started law school. I have no idea how a 10 year old date book ended up in a box in an apartment I’ve only been living in for 4 years, but there it was. I sat down on my bed and started looking through the days and saw all the movies I watched that year. That was the year I first saw Braveheart (even through it was released in 1995.) It was a nice trip down memory lane. I got to the end of the year and kept turning the pages and there was a section in the back entitled “Goals for this year” and I had written 2 words in that entire section. Although I was in my mid-20s and had my whole life ahead of me I had one single goal for that entire year. The words I wrote back then are the words that still consume my life today. “Find someone.” Obviously, that never happened. I remembered, as I looked at the words on the page, that I had written those exact same words in every date book I ever used. And not once did I manage to fulfill my goals for that year. I stopped using a date book a few years ago.

And so now we sit in the year 2007. Y2K is a long forgotten memory. But when I close my eyes really tight, I can still see the white house with the white picket fence. I can still see the green grass in the small front yard. Now I can even see some flowers planted under the window sill. There are still two small children running around the front yard, and my wife standing in the front door as I walk down the sidewalk and open the fence. When I open my eyes however, I see nothing except an empty apartment.

Habits

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 00:58:00 +0000

As I ran into another wall today, I started to think about strange habits I have. Bumping into walls for one. For some strange reason, I have this habit of taking corners as close as I possibly can, while walking, which leads me to run into corners a lot. Not like I come to a complete stop when I run into them, but more like I brush into corners. But sometimes I cut the corner so tightly that it hurts. And for the life of me, I can't figure out why I do that. I know I do it, I've told people I do it, I'm writing to you about it now, yet I can't stop myself from taking corners really closely. I could understand if I was in some kind of race and cutting those precious few milliseconds meant the difference between winning the gold or taking second. I could understand if I was being chased by a homicidal maniac and I needed to escape. But to go from my desk to the bathroom, I have to go around 4 corners, and each time I brush up against the wall. What's the point? I wish someone could explain this strange phenomenon.

When I was in college I took a summer or Jan term class in creative writing. For one assignment I wrote about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I'm not sure what the overall point of the paper was, I just remember that I wrote how when I eat a PB&J, I have to eat it with the peanut butter side on top, and the jelly side (obviously) on the bottom. To this day, I still eat them that way. Why? How would my life change if I ate one of them 'upside down'? The other thing I remember about that class is being introduced to a little band called Pearl Jam.

When I go to the movies, I have to sit on the left side of the theater looking right. If I sit even dead center I feel like something is off. That's not to say I haven't sat on the right side of the theater. If I'm assigned a seat there, I'll sit there. If the theater is crowded I'll sit there. Or if it's a movie I don't really care about or have seen before, I'll sit on the right. But if I have my way and I can manage it, I will always sit on the left side. And more importantly, if I'm with someone, they have to be sitting on my right. I feel really backwards if I'm with only one person, and they're on my left.

I also have to go to the bathroom when I go to the movies. Even if the theater is 5 minutes away, and I went to the bathroom before I left, as soon as I walk into the theater, I have to go. I think after all the times I've gone to the movies, I've just developed a Pavlovian response to the smell of popcorn or something. Or maybe it goes back to the time I was watching Dances With Wolves, and after 30 minutes I really had to go, but I was so afraid of missing something I figured I'd wait until the movie was over. Not realizing the movie was something like 3 hours long.

Those aren't all the strange quirks I have. Although I do suppose everyone has a few things about them that are odd. I just really hope I can figure out why I cut corners so hard so I can stop scraping my shirts against walls. I actually have a hole in one of them now and it's a little troubling.

Vomit

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 00:22:00 +0000

Vomiting isn't something I'd generally talk about. Personally I feel that a person's bodily fluids are their own and should be kept to themselves. However, a couple of weeks ago I had a bout of food poisoning, and for a couple of days I felt like I was going to throw up. I never did though. It reminded me of that Seinfeld episode where Jerry says he hadn't thrown up for years, until of course that particular episode where I think it was a black & white cookie that did it to him. I honestly can't remember the last time I threw up. But I do remember one memorable time.

(Cue flashback music)

When I was younger, I had an uncle (now deceased) in India who was a judge. He was a fairly influential one, as far as I remember, and was always there when we landed to help us through customs (read: skip customs) and for that I shall forever be grateful. He was also part of what was arguably the biggest criminal case in Indian history. As many of you know, Indira Gandhi, while she was Prime Minister, was assassinated by her guards. The guards were quickly arrested, tried, and sentenced to death. My uncle was on the 3-judge appeals panel that upheld the conviction and the death sentence. Because of this, supporters of the defendants put him under a death threat. What this meant was, he had armed guards not only as the front gates to his house, but wherever he went he had a group of guards go with him.

Now, I never fully understood why there were guards around all the time. At that age I was a) oblivious and b) didn't really care since I would have preferred to be anywhere but India. On the other hand, I did find it kind of cool that whenever we'd go out somewhere, a guard would drive us, and a car full of 4 armed guards would follow us. It was kind of a powerful feeling. Oh yeah, and another reason I didn't like India when I was younger was that I always had a habit of getting sick. Regardless of whether I took medication before we left, or if I watched what I ate, sooner or later I'd get sick.

Do you see where this might be going? I remember distinctly we were getting ready to leave India. I wasn't feeling well, and we had an armed escort to the airport. I was in the car with the driver, while we were followed by the car with four other guards. I don't remember which one opened the door for me, but I'm betting he remembers me. As soon as he opened the door to let me out, I threw up on his shoes. While these days I'm bigger than your average (and above average) Indian, back then I was still a kid. And I remember throwing up on his shoes, then looking up into his face. Here was a guy who was taller than I was (especially since I was still sitting in the car and just leaning out, while he was standing) who was wearing a green military outfit, and had a machine gun around his shoulder. To this day I don't know if the look on his face was one of annoyance or understanding, but in my mind, I thought he was gonna shoot me.

Needless to say, he didn't and I don't really remember what happened from there, other than my parents asking me if I was OK. But to that armed guard who was nice enough to protect my uncle, I'd like to apologize. I realize the chances of you reading this are about 2 billion to 1, but if someone somewhere out there has a cousin, uncle, grandfather, brother-in-law, 2nd cousin twice removed or is best friends with a guy who knows someone who told a story about a brash young American who threw up on his shoes... please let him know I'm sorry.

5 Things

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 00:51:00 +0000

So recently on a friends blog, I was 'tagged' and now have to write 5 things about myself no one knows. I was going to just post them on her blog but I realized I hadn't written anything in a while, so why not just write them here. So, 5 things most of you might not know about me...

1. Back in college a friend and I used to steal those long fluorescent tube light bulbs and smash them against trees. For some reason, every so often, the maintenance people would leave a box of them in the hallway. What were we supposed to do? Ignore them? And you might be asking, OK, taking the light bulbs is one thing, but why smash them against trees? Because they explode. And as you will see from the following story, I enjoy things like that.

2. In the same vein, my friend Pete and I used to go out back into the woods behind college and light things on fire. It was nice finding a friend who had the same pyro personality I did. We used lighter fluid for the big stuff. And no, we never burned down the forest. The main building that went up in flames at our college happened the year before I got there. When I was really young, a family friend and I once sat in the closet under the stairs and lit many, many boxes of matches. And yes, I do realize these two stories involve me going with a male friend either into the woods or into a closet. Shut up.

3. Back in high school I had a friend named Jared who was really good at stealing things from our 7-11. He was so good he used to take requests. He never charged people however, which now that I think about it would have been a good side business. And yes, I also shoplifted from there once or twice. Mainly Snickers bars. And I also once stole a pack of baseball cards from a 7-11 in Florida. We used to own an apartment on Singer Island and on the way there, I think just before the bridge, there was a 7-11 we would stop at to pick up supplies. I remember taking the cards and rushing to the car before my parents were done and ripping them open looking for an All-Star card. Didn't find one. I made the mistake, about 20 years after the fact, of telling my parents. My father immediately insisted I send the store the money.

4. I once wore lipstick. It's not what you think. I was in a musical back in high school (The Pirates of Penzance - I played pirate number 13) and I had to wear it. Well, sort of. First off, we had mandatory sports during our trimesters and I would do whatever I had to do get out of it. Not that I wasn't good at sports (as my numerous tennis championship t-shirts can attest to) but I was just bored by them. So one semester I decided to join the musical, which apparently was considered enough exercise for a sport. I had to 'audition' and I chose the Star-Spangled Banner as my song. Not completely sure what I was thinking. Anyway, I was accepted and the first day of rehearsal I joined my other friends in the Bass section. I was then immediately called out and taken down to the Tenor section. At that point in my life, this was cause for embarrassment because it meant my voice was higher than everyone elses. There were only 4 tenors and the other three guys weren't the most masculine of people. Not fun. Anyway, the girl I had a massive crush on at the time happened to also be in the musical, happened to be my dance partner (I got to lift her in the air, that was fun), and happened to do the makeup. So even though with my skin I was told I didn't need makeup, any time I could get her to touch my face I went for it. So I wore brown lipstick. I then asked her to go to the prom with me and was informed she had just started dating someone else a couple of weeks earlier. Good times.

5. And lastly, a story to reaffirm my masculinity. When I was in high school I had a HUGE crush on Alyssa Milano from Who's the Boss. I used to tape all the shows and in my lesser moments I'd attempt to use my new Kodak Disc camera and take pictures of the TV set. Remember of course that back in those days everything was on film. Film that needed to be developed. And paid for by my mother. Who then saw what pictures I took and seriously wondered if I had issues, which it's fairly obvious I did. One day I remember I got my grades and they were less than stellar and my father got real, real pissed off. He rushed upstairs to my room on a mission. At the time I used to have a twin size bed with a headboard. The headboard had two sliding cabinets on the sides and two shelves in the middle. Needless to say they did not hold books, no, they were filled with pictures of Ms. Milano. I may have been the only guy who ever bought Tiger Beat for the pictures of women, of which there were generally two, Alyssa and whomever the other girl of the month was. Anyway, my father walks over to the headboard and reaches out to rip down the pictures at which point I scream 'NO! It's not her fault!' As sad as that sounds, it stopped him in his tracks. He didn't rip them down. Of course, my grades never got any better either.

So there you go, 5 things you may not have known about me. And likely 5 things you kind of wish you didn't now know.

India 2006

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 14:01:00 +0000

I have returned from India with many pictures but sadly, no wife. It amazes me how people over there are always talking about wanting to find me someone, yet no one actually does anything about it. The best they could do is find a girl from Bangalore who would have flown up to meet me. Excuse me? There are somewhere around 15 million people in Delhi, with who knows how many others in the immediate area around the capital city, yet out of all those people, the closest girl they could find was a 2-hour flight away? I nixed the idea of her flying up because that would be a bit too much pressure. How bad would I feel if she flew all that way only for us to take one look at each other and say, umm, no, I don't think so. So, I spent most of my two weeks with family.

Within the first 3 days of landing, I went through 4 family dinner/lunches. Most of my family live in an area called Noida, which is just outside of Delhi. It's a huge up and coming area. Back when my family invested in land there and built two identical 3-story apartment buildings, there was literally nothing else around. All you'd see is empty land for miles, then suddenly two buildings, then nothing. Within a few years however, there were apartments everywhere, along with shopping areas and now malls and golf courses. You name it, Noida has it. So in one building live two families from my father's side, and in the other building there's one from my father's side and now one from my mother's side. Talk about family togetherness. It does make it a lot easier to see everyone, but that also means they're always there. This trip wasn't all that bad though. All the cousins I have on my father's side are older than me and all have kids (the oldest being 20!) and I tend to get along with kids better. And then the two cousins I have that are younger than me are my favorite people in the world, so that's always a good time. When we weren't holding family gatherings, the girls and I would go out to dinner, go shopping, play pool at one of their friend's apartments and one night we went out drinking.

In the middle of all that, my parents and I took a 4 day trip to the cities of Udaipur and Jodhpur in the state of Rajasthan. Simply saying how incredible everything looked would be an understatement. At the bottom of this blog I'll post a link to the pictures I took while there and you can see what I'm talking about. Oh, and if you're a guy, please keep the comments on the relative attractiveness of my female family members to yourself. While in Udaipur, we stayed in a palace on a lake. The lake has four natural islands and on one of them, then built a palace/hotel which takes up literally the entire island. The only way on and off is on a boat. And lucky me, they don't allow cots in bedrooms, so I got a room to myself. There must have been 2-3 people working there for every guest, so everyone knew my name and they would all stop and wish me a good day whenever I walked past. If you ever want to go some place and feel like royalty, the Taj Lake Palace is the place to go. In Jodhpur we stayed in an actual palace which is still used by the royalty there. The rooms weren't as nice, but the sheer size of the place was overwhelming. We were taken to our rooms and an hour later when we tried to get to dinner, we got lost.

As per usual, my relatives all kept giving me money to buy stuff with. Normally I never buy anything because I never need/want anything, but this trip I decided to spend. Nothing major, but cheesy fun stuff. I bought a watch which my Masi (Aunt) said reminded her of Batman. I got a box with camels on it, which I now use to store my incense. I got an Egyptian sarcophagus which, when you open it up, has a mummy inside of it. One of my cousins works for a TV station as a dresser/consultant, so she knows a tailor who works quickly and does a good job, so through her I got 2 suits made in about 4 days at a total cost of around $150. Can I tell you how much I love the exchange rate? At one point we had two bathrooms with issues, so my Masi called a plumber over. He came, spent about 20 minutes working, fixed both bathrooms and charged 200 rupees. That's less than $4! Are you kidding me? Can you imagine how much it would have cost here for that to happen? She said, but you can't translate it back to dollars, here 200 rupees is a lot. But I paid 900 rupees for a backpack just a day earlier. You're telling me a backpack is worth 4.5 times as much as a plumber? That amazed me. So back to my shopping... I also got some little things like a belt buckle with The Godfather logo on it, some pillow covers, a couple of keychains, and this big tapestry of the Taj Mahal with glitter on it.

I'm sure I'm missing something, but all in all, I had a pretty good time. I didn't want to leave, but I knew I had to and get back to my life. Hopefully I'll get a chance to go back soon. Right now I'm on a 5-year streak of seeing my cousins and I'd prefer that didn't end in 2007.

And now, as I promised, the link to all the pictures I took. Let me know what you think!

India 2006 - The Pictures

The Motherland

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 03:07:00 +0000

In just under two weeks I'll be going back to India for the first time since February of 2003. I'd say in my life I've been to India 10-12 times, although I lost count a long time ago. Each trip has its own memories but after all this time, I couldn't for the life tell you what happened on what trip. So for the sake of a) trying to write down as many stories as I can remember and b) keeping all you entertained for a few minutes since I haven't written in a while, here are some of my India memories.

Both my grandfathers were in the legal profession, with one being a lawyer and the other a judge. When I was really young, I remember taking a trip to the courthouse where my judge grandfather was working. I can vividly picture the courtroom, which was nothing like American ones are. Maybe something special was going on, but it was a room with two judges at the front, on a raised platform, kind of like judges here are, at least on TV. But the rest of the room was filled with rows of benches where a bunch of lawyers were sitting. I have no idea what was going on, but I don't remember there being any sort of case being talked about. And the second judge was flipping through a book the entire time. I later learned he was a new judge so he didn't have a lot to say. The funniest part was that when the lawyers found out who I was, they all started kissing up to me. I was sitting in the back near the lawyers, and a few of them came up to me to tell me how great my grandfather was and all that good stuff. He laughed when I told him about it on the car ride back.

On another trip when I was in my teen years, there was an incident that to this day makes me shake my head. Now granted, I didn't go to India a lot, and in my younger years I wasn't a big fan of going. OK, I hated it. But still, I had gone a lot and even though every time I went some relative or another would pop up that I hadn't seen in a while and didn't recognize, but I knew who the major players were. On my father's side, my grandmother didn't speak English, and I didn't speak Hindi, so she and I never could talk to each other. And to be honest, I was kind of afraid of her. It wasn't like she was an intimidating presence, at least physically, but man, she had a look about her that scared me. I don't know much about her though, so that kind of makes me sad. My grandfather though, could speak English, so we had decent conversations from time to time. It was strange because he looked a lot like an older version of my father, and everyone says I look like my father did when he was younger, so I could kind of see what I'd look like when I got older. Anyway, one night I'm sitting in my grandfather's bedroom area (which was just off the kitchen) and he and I are talking. To recap: I am having a conversation with my GRANDFATHER. So in walks one of my Bua's (Aunt) and she steps into the room, looks at me, looks at my grandfather, looks back at me and says... 'This is your grandfather, do you know him?'

I'm sorry, what? What did she just ask? Did she ask me if I knew my own GRANDFATHER? The person I was sitting there having a conversation with? What the hell did she think was happening? That I thought I was talking to some random old man who walked into the room? That I was going to jump up and say 'Oh! Is that who I'm talking to? I thought he was my father in bad lighting!' The stories of this particular Bua could take up an entire blog in itself, but that moment was a classic. I wonder what my grandfather thought. I suddenly have this fear he thought 'Oh my, my own grandson has no idea who I am and needs someone to tell him!' Or, hopefully, he thought 'Damn my daughter is an idiot.'

What else... I could go into stories involving the bathrooms there, but let's just leave it with, for most of my formative years, it was a hole in the ground and with bad knees I could never fully grasp the concept.

Oh, the ghost. I'm not sure what I believe in when it comes to God or an afterlife. I know according to my religion, I should believe in many Gods and that we are all reincarnated after we die. And I'm not sure if I believe in ghosts or spirits, but I do firmly believe I saw a ghost one night. We were in my grandfather's house (my father's side) and I must have been somewhere in the 10-13 range. Their house, while kind of run down and in the middle of a lot of stuff in Delhi, was kind of cool. There were a couple of different ways to get in, but if you came in the front, you would walk into a small waiting room. Off to the right was my grandfather's study, which was filled to the ceiling with law books. And we're talking some pretty high ceilings. Straight ahead was what turned into his bedroom. Off to the right of that room was the living room, which was generally lit by a single fluorescent light which made everyone and everything look rather sickly. It was the room however which also featured a few pictures above one of the doorways. One of my father from when he was on the front page of the newspaper back home, and at least 2 of me from when I was a baby. Anyway, you continue walking into the house and you're in the dining room/kitchen area. Then out the back there was a small courtyard, which had another bedroom off of it.

Then you go these narrow, curved stairs (which, from what I've heard, I once fell down) and you're upstairs and outside. The main area upstairs was open which was rather nice. To the right, there was a sitting room, and farther down a bedroom. To the left, there were two bedrooms. OK, back to the original point of my story now that you can picture the house based on my awesome description. I was in one of the bedrooms upstairs off to the left. I remember that it was still early because everyone else was still awake, but I was in bed. It was dark out and I was lying in bed, on my left side, facing the window that lead out into the upstairs outside area. I was looking out the window when I swear upon whatever you want me to swear upon, that I saw a ghost. I'm pretty sure it was a woman, and there she was, just floating outside. No one else was around for me to call out to (I think they must have all been downstairs) but I don't remember being scared. I didn't think she was a bad ghost or something that was going to attack me. She was just there, sort of looking out for me. I looked at her for a couple of seconds then closed my eyes. When I opened them again she was gone.

I've never seen a ghost since or anything that would lead me to believe they're around, but I will go to my grave believing I saw one that night. Granted, I'm the same person who still believes he saw four girls get out of a car in Orlando, but after I create my time machine, and once I prove the whole girl thing, I think I'll go back to that moment I saw a ghost.

So in a couple more weeks I'll be back in India. Hopefully I'll come back with a few more stories, and some good pictures (now that I finally broke down and got a new camera.)

Fourteen Years Later...

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 03:19:00 +0000

Let me tell you about my Saturday. In order for you to truly understand the importance of this weekend, please take a moment to hearken back to my I Am a Marxist post. It's OK; I'll wait, take your time and read it carefully.

Shortly after reading (or possibly re-reading) that post a few weeks ago, my friend Monica decided to look up Richard Marx's tour schedule. And there it was. He was going to be performing (on his birthday no less) at the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut. I immediately said, 'let's go!' How perfect could it have been? It was on a Saturday, it was in Connecticut, and it was at a casino. Oh, and did I mention, it was free?! It's like the stars aligned for me. Monica said she'd go, and we then set out to find others who would go along for the adventure. Suffice to say, there aren't a ton of Richard Marx fans in my circle of friends, but the idea of a weekend road trip appealed to a few, so myself, Monica, Dan and Kerri piled in a car from New York and drove out to Connecticut on Saturday morning.

First up was the drive to my parents' house. Saturday was supposed to be rainy to start with, but we had pretty good weather, so that was a good start. The trip we had estimated was going to take two hours, but actually took only about 90 minutes. Another good start. We got to my parents place and had some lunch and sadly found out one friend from Boston wasn't going to make it. But our spirits refused to darken. We piled into my car to make the drive to the casino and listened to my very danceable Mohegan Mix CD I made especially for the trip. We got to the casino in about an hour where we met up with Shuchi and Prakash, who had driven into the area the night before. It was now around 2pm. The concert in the Wolf's Den wasn't going to start until around 8pm. People would start getting seated around 6:30pm, so we had some time. There wasn't a line or anything yet, so we all felt we could gamble, do some shopping and maybe get something to eat before we got seated.

Not all of us are real gamblers, but a couple of us are. I ended up at a three-card poker table. I pulled out $100 to start with and quickly was down to my final $45. And that's when the day really picked up, because with my last hand, I got dealt a 2, 3 and 4 of clubs. That's right, a straight flush. On a $45 bet, a straight flush pays off... $600! Whoo hoo! I seriously was giggling like schoolgirl when I saw my cards. I had been there for all of maybe 30 minutes and I was up $545. I played a few more hands, but I'm not an idiot. I know when to quit and I was determined to walk out of that casino with a ton of cash. Of course as I said, I had only been there about 30 minutes. So if I wasn't going to gamble any more, and we couldn't be seated until 6:30pm, what was I going to do? At this point all six of us had split up, so first we had to find the group. As it turned out, this is where I got a stroke of luck. Well, my second stroke of luck after my straight flush. Hehehehe. Anyway, Kerri and Shuchi had been wandering around as well and noticed a line starting to form and decided to stand in it. This turned out to be a brilliant decision because that line grew and grew and grew as the hours went on. All told, we stood in line for about three to three and a half hours waiting to be seated. But it wasn't all that bad. We took turns (most of us anyway) and once I got there I never left.

During all of this, they had been doing a sound check with the keyboardist singing some of Richard's songs. The great thing about the Wolf's Den is that it is in the middle of the entire old part of the casino, so you could be sitting at a table far away playing poker and still hear everything. They finished the sound test at one point and there was quiet (relative quiet I should say, we were in a casino after all) for a while. Then they came back out to do some more testing and I saw a few people in line ahead of me start waving towards the stage. I looked up, and there he was. Richard Marx, on stage. It was all very surreal to me. I mean, there he was! Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I don't have some sort of man-crush on him, but c'mon... Fourteen years! When was the last time you waited fourteen years for something and didn't feel excited? There were still a couple of hours before the actual concert started, but he was on stage, singing and I could see him.

At 6:30pm the gates didn't open. Richard was still on stage, which was kind of odd because you'd think he'd have gone backstage to prepare. Then word came which truly scared me. There was something wrong with the sound equipment and there would be a delay. I can honestly say that I thought 'you have got to be kidding me!' I was completely certain that they would cancel the concert. I mean, OK, the sound checks had sounded reasonable to me, but what do I know. Maybe Richard is one of those perfectionists that wouldn't take the stage unless everything was, well, perfect. I didn't say anything to anyone, but I was fairly certain that if the concert was cancelled, I was going to go bet $400 on number 13 and either win $14,000 or shoot myself.

Maybe 15 minutes later however, the gates opened and slowly but surely they were letting people in. The way the seating was set up was, there was the stage, then seats/tables on the floor in front of the stage and then around that and up a level were more seats. I really wanted to sit on the upper portion but along the rail so that we were closer to eye level and didn't have anyone in front of us. And this is where the friends who got in line saved us. We got seats almost exactly where I had hoped to be. Had we waited until later to get into line, we would have been shoved farther back on the upper level and had to look through people to see what was happening. So now we still had another hour before the show started. Kerri and I went and got something to eat and we got back about 10 minutes before showtime. And then, he walked out on stage.

I can't even begin to tell you what I was feeling. I had been telling my missing the concert story since it happened. All through college, law school and the rest of my life, if you're a friend of mine eventually you'll hear the story. At the time, it was a very sad experience, but as my life went on it became my go-to story to get people to laugh (and feel sorry for me. Well, not too sorry since to most people missing a Richard Marx concert would be a good thing.) But here it was, 14 years and three weeks to the day I screwed up the date of the original show, and I was FINALLY seeing Richard Marx live and in person. And it was free. And, as you can see from the picture on the left (click on it for a bigger version) I wasn't that far from him. I couldn't have been more than 10 yards away from him. It was, as I said earlier, completely surreal. And here's the best part: he put on a great show! He hit a lot of his classics, played a few songs I had never heard before, and was pretty funny throughout. At no point was I bored or felt like I had maybe built this all up over the last decade and a half. The entire show was just amazing. Thanks to Kerri and her camera, not only did I get a few pictures, I managed to get videos. Pictures are great, but for an experience like this, they don't tell the whole story. I had waited for a long, long time to see this concert and it was over in just under two hours. If all I had was a few pictures, it would have been nice, but having videos? It's like being there. And for you, my loyal readership, I have uploaded the videos for your enjoyment:

Angelia (:49)
Right Here Waiting (2:30)
Should've Known Better (1:38)

So let's recap, shall we? Fourteen years ago I had missed a concert. It turned out to be a very important moment in my life because it taught me that I should check and double check everything, and it helped turn me into the storyteller I fancy myself to be today. On Saturday, I, along with a bunch of friends, took a road trip to a casino in my home state where I won (when all was said and done, and taking into account paying for food, drinks and whatnot) $410. And at that casino there was a free concert by Richard Marx, the person I had missed fourteen years earlier. All things considered, Saturday, September 16, 2006 will go down as one of the great nights of my life. Before I go, I'd like to thank everyone that was a part of this weekend. Without you, it wouldn't have been nearly as fun and entertaining. And thank you Richard Marx, for making it all worth the wait.

Reality

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 19:57:00 +0000

I've been sitting here thinking about who I write this blog for. It's not really for me, since the stories I tell on here are ones I know by heart. It's not really for my friends, because I've told them all of these stories before. It's not for strangers, because I don't get a huge rush thinking some random person in (insert country here) is reading about my life. And yet, considering I'm not writing this for any one group of people, I continue to write. Today, I've decided to write about an experience I've had that not many people I know have. I was once on a reality show.

Now, before you get excited (or disgusted) it wasn't anything huge like Survivor or The Real World (although I do still plan on trying to get on The Amazing Race someday) - no, I was on a little TLC show called Date Patrol. TLC, for those of you who don't watch, is The Learning Channel. It's usually towards the end of your cable dial and has popular shows such as Trading Spaces and While You Were Out. Date Patrol was their version of a self-help dating show and was based on a British TV show, as most of their shows seem to be. Apparently the Brits do TV better than we do. Anyway, the basic premise of Date Patrol was to take a problem dater and fix them, using three different life coaches. But before I get into the show, let me give you some background (and I warn you, this entire blog post may be very, very long.) Some of the dates are a bit fuzzy, but you'll get the major points.

A girl I knew, the younger sister of a good friend of mine from college, was working on Date Patrol as a producer. Somehow she brought it up and asked if I would be interested in applying. At the time I was living back in Connecticut and said that if I made it back to NYC, I'd consider it. Then my sister decided to move to California for grad school, leaving her apartment in the city open. My parents own the apartment, so we could have sold it, rented it out, or... let me take it. I decided the time was right to leave Connecticut so I went to India for a month and when I got back, I moved into NYC. At the moment I'm at a loss for a reason as to why I would do that to myself, but there you go. So when I got back into the city, I met up with the producer who once again asked me if I'd be interested. I said sure, send me the application. The application sat on my computer for about a month. Then she got a hold of me again and said they were having a really hard time casting and was I still interested? So I sat down, filled out the application and sent it to her.

Now realize, I never in a million years thought I'd get on the show. I figured they'd look at my application and toss it out. I mean, The Real World had done that a few years earlier when I applied (for the Boston cast), why would this be any different? Literally a few minutes later, she called back to say that another producer was going to call me to set up a meeting with me. And a few minutes later, I did get another call. And the next day, I was giving a Cribs-like tour of my apartment, on camera, and being interviewed. And a few days after that, I got the call I was on the show.

I had NO idea what I was getting myself into. The whole thing still didn't feel real. I was initially scheduled to be the first person shot, but I believe I had family in India in town or something, so my production got pushed back a few months. So again, I still didn't believe it would happen, but a few months roll by and suddenly... So here's how the show worked. I get set up on a date. The date is videotaped and being watched by the host of the show and three coaches. Their job is to critique my dating style. Then they spend a month working with you, doing various tasks and such. You don't know what the tasks are in advance and they could literally be anything.

I thought I did pretty well on the date, but apparently they didn't. They didn't like the way I dressed, the way I walked, the way I reacted when the girl touched my shirt. And there really isn't much more embarrassing than sitting in your own living room watching yourself on a date. So I meet the host, she talks to me for a bit, I meet my segment producer, who follows me around all month with a camera in my face, and it's slowly starting to dawn on me that this is really happening. I can't remember in what order things happened, but here's what I had to go through. With one coach, I went to an Improv class so I could learn how to speak in something other than a monotone. On my date I guess I didn't speak very loudly or with much emotion, so the coach thought the Improv class would help. Now, I've worked in movies and been on camera a few times, so doing the class wasn't horrible, as I enjoy acting out. The one thing I couldn't bring myself to do was sing. For some reason, I can not sing in public. But overall, the Improv class was decent.

I have a fear of heights. That isn't very helpful when you live on the 19th floor of a NYC apartment, but what can you do. My couch equated my fear of heights with a fear of dating, and thought that if I could get over my fear of heights, I'd get over my fear of dating. I don't dispute I had a fear of dating, but I had no clue how heights worked into it. Unless I was dating someone taller than me. Anyway, I ended up going to trapeze school on the West Side Highway. Yes, it is right on the highway, so that people at stop lights could look up and see me, swinging like an idiot from one of those bars. That was terrifying. First of all, you have to climb up this rickety ladder to this plank of wood. The plank isn't all that big, and we had me, an instructor and TWO camera men standing on it. Then, you're supposed to grab the bar that you swing on. But the bar is out in front of you so the only way you can grab it is to lean. I had on a safety harness, and the instructor held on to my back, but for all intents and purposes, I was leaning off a small piece of wood, looking down about 20-25 feet into a net. Although I didn't see the net, all I could see was the ground below. I don't know the last time I was so scared. And then, after you grab the bar, the instructor lets go, and you go flying. I couldn't do much else other than fly through the air and drop into the net, but I have to stay, that was the good part. Getting up to, and standing/sitting on the platform, sucked horribly, but the rest was OK.

With another coach I took a kickboxing class. Now that was cool. I had a good time with that. Kickboxing is not to be mistaken for the kickboxing cardio class I took later, however. Kickboxing involves you and another person beating on each other. Kickboxing cardio involves someone trying to kill you by exercising. You know those cartoons where the dog gets kicked in the head and sees birds flying around? I saw stars. We didn't actually kick anyone, we just worked out, and by the end I literally fell to the ground and saw stars. I thought I would die right there. I've never been in such agony before. And the instructor, who had been so nice when we kickboxed a week earlier, just stood over me and smiled. Needless to say, I never went back. I found out later that he got kicked in the face by another student and broke his jaw. Oh yeah, and the guy who worked at the gym and showed me how to work out was named Rage. Rage Ng. Yes, his name was actually Rage Ng. It wasn't his given name, but he changed it. He was one of those people who was really nice, but looked like if you pissed him off, he'd rip your head clean off your body. And he was married to a dominatrix. I miss Rage.

Then there was the day I had to go to Central Park and hit on women. The camera was hidden in the shadows and I had to go up to random women and try and get a phone number/email address. That was the day I got into an argument, on camera, with my coach, over the point of the whole thing. Because the area of the park she picked wasn't well traveled, there weren't a lot of women wandering around. So for a while I was hitting on 50-60 year old women. I have nothing against women that age, but seriously? So we went at it. She ended up getting fired that day. I'd like to think I had something to do with that. By the end of the Central Park day I had managed to get the email address of a Russian model/actress. To this day I'm not sure if I did that on my own, or the producer, fearful the day would turn into a bust, went out and got her, but she was hot.

So at the end of the month, you've done all sorts of things and are supposed to find your own date for the final part of the show. Beyond what I described, I also hosted a party at my apartment, went to a club with a friend, and did a few other things. I had managed to meet a decent number of women, and even liked a few of them. Here's the problem. I asked 4 of them to go out with me on the show and they all said no. I was told by other friends of mine that a lot of Indian girls don't want their parents to know what kind of life they really lead. So appearing on a dating show might not be in their best interest. Which means the producers had to scramble to find me a date, and ended up asking a girl out for me. I might have been the only person in the (short) history of Date Patrol to not be able to get their own second date. That was a kick in the pants. So they found this girl for me that I had met at a club, but hadn't remembered too well, and we went out. Oh yeah, I was also given a small makeover, where I got a haircut, my eyebrows threaded and some new clothes. I basically looked like someone else. But it all went rather well. Granted, I haven't spoken to the girl since, but she said on camera that I was nice.

So there you go. For a month during the summer of 2003, I was followed around NYC with a camera, documenting my life. The show's production office was a block away, so anytime I left the apartment they asked that I call them so they could send a camera to follow me. That was a little strange, since sometimes all I did was go get food, but hey, they wanted footage. The show ended up airing in January of 2004 to critical acclaim. OK, maybe not critical, but people seemed to like it. The weirdest thing was, I was actually recognized on the street a few times. A couple of weeks after the show aired, this girl stopped me outside of a subway station to ask for the time, then said, 'You're the guy from that show, right?' She could have mistaken me for someone else, but I'd like to think she knew who I was. Then, very randomly, I was in Florida for a wedding, and a girl at a tuxedo rental place recognized me. I got emails from people I hadn't seen in years who said they were flipping channels and saw me.

So the bottom line... did the show help? Actually, it kind of did. Much to the chagrin of my style coach, who bought me all the clothes and some stuff for my apartment, my clothing style hasn't changed too much, although I did add some color to my life. But as far as dating goes, I've gone out a lot since then and don't feel so afraid. If someone doesn't like me, so be it. I'm not as afraid of rejection as I was before. I still haven't found that certain someone, where there is a mutual attraction anyway, but at least I can go out and look.

There you have it. My life as a reality TV star. I'd highly recommend everyone get on a reality show if they can. It's one of the strangest, most surreal experiences you can have. And you get free stuff.

Presents

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 22:24:00 +0000

I was at a screening recently for a new movie called Hollywoodland. What the movie is about isn't important, mainly because it wasn't very good. But at one point in the film (which took place in 1959/1960) a father gives his son a present. It was an Etch-A-Sketch. Boy, did that bring back a memory. I remember when I was younger I got an Etch-A-Sketch as a present. I don't recall if it was for my birthday or for Christmas, but I got one and I loved it. I must have been really young, because from what memories I have, it was wrapped and placed under my sister's crib, and I'm pretty sure I found it before I was supposed to receive it. Well, c'mon, if it was under her crib, I must have been about 5 years old. Can you blame me for opening found presents? Finding wrapped gifts at that age is an invitation to open them. Sometimes, even when they're not for you.

It got me to thinking about other presents I got when I was younger. I got a few good things here and there, but as I started thinking about it, I think my sister got the better gifts, and I just took them. Like once she got a remote controlled car. Well wait a second. She's a girl, four years younger than me, and she's the one getting the car? Why did I not get the car? So, I 'borrowed' it from her and used it myself. Of course, we had a lot of carpeting back then, so after not too long strands of carpet would get wrapped up in the tires and the car stopped working. At which point my sister got the car back. I also have vague memories of her getting some kind of Nerf ball. All I really remember is throwing it against the living room wall and trying to not let it get past me.

One time, on my father's birthday, my sister and I got presents. This was back in the Cabbage Patch Doll craze, and my sister must have been begging for one. So my mother got one, but as it was still seven months before my sister's birthday, my mother needed an excuse to give it to her. So, my father's birthday was it. I have no idea what my father got that year - likely the usual ties/cologne, because although we're Indian, we like to give stereotypical American gifts - but my sister got a Cabbage Patch Doll. Not wanting me to feel left out, my mother got me an album. Lionel Richie's Can't Slow Down. I liked the album, but I always felt somewhat ripped off since it only had 8 songs on it. Granted, out of the 8 at least 5 became big hits, but still... 8 songs? On an album, that's only 4 on each side. And you have to go to the record player and flip it over each time.

When I turned 13, I wanted to go to Benihana's for dinner. Even back then I loved going to Benihana's, I mean, who doesn't love watching people slice and dice chicken and throw it up in the air? Dinner can be boring, so any entertainment value is always appreciated. My parents tried to make it a surprise party, by inviting 2 of my friends and their parents. Unfortunately, they ended up following us to the restaurant, and as my father got a little lost, we doubled back, only to pass the other two cars. Back then, and for the most part, today, my mother is the one who picks out the gifts for the kids. But every so often, my father wants to get in on the action. I don't remember what my mother got me that year, but my father got me this big stuffed bear, which to this day sits in my bedroom. It was a nice bear. I don't remember what I named him, but he's still going strong. And yes, I realize I was 13.

Lastly, I once got a harmonica. I think it might have been one of those Christmas stocking stuffers, but I really wanted one. I have no idea why, since I didn't know anyone that played, but it seemed cool at the time. I begged my mother for one and there it was. It came in a red box, which was lined on the inside with something soft. It even had an instruction booklet. I was so excited. I ran up to my room, looked at the booklet for .5 seconds and started playing. Nothing sounded right. So I looked at the booklet again, and tried to follow directions. I never realized how small the holes were in a harmonica. And for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how to play any particular note. So, as you might imagine I threw it on my bed and never looked at it again. Man, I love presents!

The Great Pepto Caper

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 02:53:00 +0000

Tonight marked the end of an era. I just finished my last bottle of Pepto-Bismol. Why is this a momentous occasion? Well, I'm glad you asked.

Since I moved back into New York in 2003, I've done almost all my big grocery shopping online. It's just easier that way since I don't like carrying 7 or 8 bags of groceries 5 or 6 blocks. For small stuff, I'll walk to the store, but when I want to buy a lot, I'll just get it online. You can order pretty much whatever you want, the prices are good, and they'll generally deliver it within 24 hours. And delivery only costs $4.95, so how can you beat that deal? So three years ago, I'm online buying my groceries and I'm looking for some kind of antacid. I was hoping for Pepcid, but the store I was using only had things like Maalox or Tums. And Pepto-Bismol.

I was never a huge fan of the pink stuff, only because I believed that pills worked better. But as I was looking over the options, I realized that the Pepto was on sale. For 25 cents. Yes, that's right, a normal sized bottle of Pepto was on sale of 25 cents. Normally that kind of size would sell for about $5. So I looked closer to make sure that I was looking at a regular sized bottle, and not some kind of promotional size where you'd get one sip and that was it. No, it was the regular size. I added one to my cart, figuring, OK, there's some kind of typo, but once it's in my cart, the right price will show up. I thought it was probably meant to be $2.50, which is still a good price. When I added it to the cart though, it was still 25 cents. So, I added 3 more. 4 bottles for a buck. Not a bad deal. I then continued shopping.

When I was done with everything, the total price wasn't all that high. And I kept thinking about the price of the Pepto. So I did what any reasonable person would do. I went back and added 15 more bottles. I now had 20 bottles of Pepto in my cart, all for a total of $5. Again, I didn't really believe I'd get 20 bottles of Pepto for $5. I presumed that once the transaction went through and someone on the other end looked at it, they'd realize the mistake and call me and tell me there was a pricing error. Or worst case, they'd just charge me normal price, and I'd have to argue with them on the phone. But, the next day as part of my order, I got an entire box of nothing but Pepto-Bismol.

It was rather glorious to look at. 20 bottles of pink liquid staring up at me from a cardboard box. I get the feeling that with this online shopping, a computer handles the money part of the order, and then prints out a slip that gets handed to one of the human workers, who then picks out the order, not really caring about prices. I can only imagine what my guy must have been thinking... 'Hmm, OK let's see here... a gallon of milk, some Frosted Flakes, 20 bottles of Pepto... Damn! This guy must choke down hot sauce like it's going out of season! 20 bottles of Pepto? I hope his heart doesn't get set on fire.' I took a quick look at the receipt I got and yes, it was still only 25 cents a bottle.

My first thought was, I should go out on the street and sell this for $5 a pop. I'll break even after the first bottle, and make pure profit on the rest. That idea lasted about 30 seconds because who in their right mind would buy Pepto from some guy on the street. Right? So I decided to keep all of them. And anytime someone would come over, I'd offer them a bottle. It was sort of like a parting gift. Thanks for stopping by, here's a bottle of Pepto for the road. Not everyone would take one of course, but I had one friend who took a couple of bottles just because he liked the taste. All in all, I think I gave out about 7-8 bottles. Which left 12-13 for me.

And tonight, 3 years later, I polished off the last of the bottles. It's actually a little sad. When I first saw that box of Pepto, I thought I'd never have to buy some ever again. Foolish dreams of a young man I suppose. Nothing lasts forever. However, tomorrow I am planning on buying some more groceries, so of course, I'm going to have to take a look and see if by random chance, they have something on sale at a ridiculous price, so I can once again cheat the system. And if I do, I'll make sure to let you all know, so you can stop by and pick some up for yourselves.

Memories

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 05:00:00 +0000

Before I start this new entry (first one in a month, I know!) I wanted you to know that I have updated my I Am A Marxist post with the correct dates AND a picture of the actual concert tickets...

They say that when you're an older sibling, your first memory generally has to do with your younger brother or sister. As it turns out, my first memory is the day my sister was brought home from the hospital. I still remember it; not as clear as day, but still pretty clearly. My grandmother was in the country visiting, mainly to take care of me. We were sitting at the dining table in our old apartment in Bloomfield. She was peeling an orange for me. And, as I think I've mentioned before, not just peeling it from the outer peel, but the inside as well, so all I was eating was pure orange. Suddenly, the door bursts open and my father walks in, carrying my sister. A few seconds later my mother walks in, her head covered. Why? Because it was raining out.

That rain had been something of contention between me and my mother for years. I firmly believed it was raining, and she believed it wasn't. This being my first memory, I'd kind of like to think that I knew what I was talking about, but she, for years, kept saying it wasn't raining. But how do you prove that it was raining on a particular day back in... well, for the sake of my sister, I won't provide the year, but let's just say, we're going back a while. So for most of my growing up years, every so often I'd just randomly bring up the fact that it was raining out the day she was brought home and my mother would say no, it wasn't.

So a few years back I was working in the PR department of a hospital. Some days there would be a lot of work to do and others... not so much. On one of these not-so-much days, the whole 'was it raining or not' discussion came into my head, and with the help of the internet, I thought I could prove it once and for all. But amazingly, rain records from that time are hard to come by. The afternoon adventure turned into a week. Every day I'd spend some time trying to figure out what search I could do to come up with the answer. Then, by chance, I happened upon a web site run by someone who said they kept weather charts for that time period. I sent off an email and continued my search. After a few more days, I gave up. I pride myself on being able to find just about anything, but I can only really find something if it's actually on the web.

A couple of months later I get this strange email in my inbox at work. I open it up and there is an email from this guy with the weather charts. And attached is a chart showing the rainfall in our town for the entire week. But there is a catch. It only rained one day that week. I printed out the chart and went home and asked my mother one, very important question. If my sister was born on the 6th, how many days did you spend in the hospital before coming home? My mother thought about it and said she spent three days in the hospital and came home on the 9th. I shouted 'ah ha!' and pulled out my chart. There, in black and white, was a chart that showed that the only day it rained that week in our old town was on the 9th.

I might have said something like 'in your face!' to my mother (in a nice way of course) but most importantly, she had been served with concrete evidence that my memory of the event was correct. And there was nothing she could do about it. The best part however, was the fact that from then on, anytime my mother and I got into an argument about something that happened in the past and we disagreed, I could always bring up the fact that her memory has been proven to be faulty. You know when you get into an argument with a parent, most of the time you, as the child, have to concede because it's just assumed they know more. But not any more. Granted, my mother is still right 99% of the time, but... that's not 100%.

Summer

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 23:30:00 +0000

Ah, summer. Baseball, the ice cream man, getting beaten up at camp. Such memories! I was talking to a nephew of mine the other day, and he mentioned that he was going to basketball camp for the first time this summer. It reminded me of my camp days. I never went to an overnight camp, but I went to a lot of day camps. They were fun, for the most part. I don't have a ton of memories, and the ones I do have aren't good ones, but considering I went for most of my childhood, I'd have to guess the rest of the time I had fun. Once I was hit in the face with a golf club. We were playing mini-golf and I was standing behind someone who was about to putt. He, for some reason, decided to go into a full, Tiger Woods-esque back swing and smacked me in the face. The next thing I remember, I'm in the nurse's office, eating a grape popsicle. Surprisingly, my love of mini-golf only grew after that.

I went to a sports camp once, where every 'period' you got to pick between two different sports to play. That was fun, and I even got to play field hockey. I never got the hang of only being able to hit the ball with one side of the stick, but it was an experience. While there, we would sometimes have sports celebrities stop by. I remember Daryl Dawkins came by once. Dawkins was famous for having destroyed a basket during a game with a thunderous dunk. When he got there, we were all sitting around the court and he put on a dunking display. By the end everyone was chanting for him to 'break the basket!' You could tell he really wanted to, and he even asked the director if it was OK for him to do it, but the director immediately said no. Another time Jim Rice came by. He was late and only stayed for 15 minutes before he had to fly off to a game, but man, Jim Rice! He was my favorite Red Sox player at the time. A few years earlier I had stood in line for hours trying to get his autograph, but I never made it to the front of the line.

Then there was the summer I was beaten up pretty much every day. It must have been the summer between 7th and 8th grade. Now, for those of you that know me, I'm not a small person. I may not be the most intimidating man ever to walk the planet, but for the most part, people leave me alone. When I was in college, I used to have friends ask me to go into the city with them because people wouldn't come up to us for money or things like that. Even now people stay out of my way. But back then, well, apparently I didn't put the fear of anything into anyone. There were two guys, Mike and Hub. I'm not sure what Hub stood for, or if his name was just Hub. But every day, for reasons I can not remember, they would tease me or punch me in the stomach. Suffice to say, it wasn't the nicest way to spend a summer. I had friends at camp otherwise, so it wasn't a complete waste of a summer, but it wasn't the best year I had. Needless to say, I was happy when camp was over.

I went to a private school for junior high and high school. At the time, 7th and 8th grade was held on the lower campus, and 9th thru 12th grades were held on the upper campus. Every October we had our version of homecoming, which was held on the upper campus. So October rolls around and me and my friends are on the upper campus celebrating when, from around the other end of the soccer field, who do I see walking towards me? Yes, that's right, Mike and Hub. I could not believe my eyes. Did they actually go to my school?? I suddenly had visions of getting my ass kicked every day in high school. They walked over to me and sat down in the grass next to me and started talking to me like we were best friends! I could not figure out what the hell was going on. It turns out Mike has just started high school at my school (which is why I hadn't seen him before) and Hub was just visiting. They both apologized for their behavior during the summer and laughed it off as 'one of those things.' I wasn't convinced, and at least I didn't have to run into them the rest of the year.

The next school year started and Mike and I were on the same campus. As it turned out, he was a nice guy. During the three years we were in school together, we ended up being friends and playing tennis together. Until an incident towards the end of my junior year. Mike and I, along with most of our friends, all hung out backstage (yes, I was a drama nerd/geek/whatever) and we were roughhousing, as boys will do. I had Mike in a front face lock and he started to shove me back into the wall. Well, when you have someone in a front face lock and you're being shoved back into a wall, your back isn't the first thing that'll hit the wall. The person's head you're holding will. So Mike shoved me back and smacked his head against the wall. I guess he didn't like that feeling and blamed me for it, because when he regained his senses, he shoved me and wanted to fight me. Now, this all took place before school had started for the day. And that morning we had an assembly in the auditorium, so people were walking by us on the way there. And I'll be damned if half of them didn't walk by me and whisper 'kick his ass!' I'm not sure I could have kicked Mike's ass, but I would have given him a good run for his money. Throw in the fact that back in 8th grade I had knocked a friend of mine cold with one punch, and I wasn't looking forward to a fight. Contrary to what you might think, knocking someone to the ground isn't all that exciting. So we stood there, staring at each other for a couple of minutes, before I walked away.

We didn't speak much after that. But I kind of like to think that head vs. wall smackdown was a little bit of payback for what he had done to me years earlier. I mean, I knew what was going to happen when he shoved me backwards and I didn't let go. Hmm... :-)

Regrets, I've had a few...

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 01:49:00 +0000

Back in college I had a friend named Rachel. She and I were extremely close. We talked all the time, hung out all the time, did a lot together. I can honestly say at the time she was the closest friend I had. Well, one day she was waiting for me outside of class so we could walk back to the dorms together. My class let out and there were a lot of people filing out into a small hallway. So I, with my head, nodded towards the stairs to tell Rachel that I'd meet her downstairs. Now, maybe I didn't nod hard enough or maybe she didn't see me do anything, or maybe I should have actually said something. But I got to the bottom of the stairs and waited... and waited... and finally she came downstairs and walked right by me and out the door.

I admit I can be stubborn and pigheaded at times, but back then it was almost my calling. I felt like I had been snubbed. Rachel was pretty stubborn too and so we didn't talk. For months. We hung out in the same crowd, but ignored each other, since we both felt the other had been treated badly. Eventually we did talk and apologized to each other, but the damage had already been done. That time apart separated us to a point where our close friendship was reduced to being acquaintances. It's one of the biggest regrets of my life not talking to her immediately afterwards, just to find out what happened. At the time she said she felt I hadn't treated her like a friend. I thought she was full of it, but as my life went on, I started to understand what she meant. Yes, there's no question we both overreacted to the situation, but I blame myself for feeling that my pride was more important than my friend.

Since then I've developed this (sometimes annoying) habit of saying what's on my mind, whenever it pops up. Sometimes it can be funny (as when I used to interrogate random women in college - OK, you had to be there) and sometimes it can backfire, since it's not always the best idea to just blurt out what's on your mind. But if, with Rachel, I had gone immediately to her room and even just yelled at her (we yelled at each other a lot), we could have worked it out and maybe today still been close friends. Instead I sat back and expected her to do something, while she expected me to say something. And then neither of us did anything and the rest is history.

Over the years I've come to the realization that I am not a one man band. In order to accomplish things in my life, I need my friends and my family and I try and be a good person and help out whenever asked and be there for the people who need me. And at times I'll go overboard in wanting to help or I'll say things I shouldn't, but I also think that's better than hiding away and not being honest. I don't want to live a life of regret, and I never want to lose another Rachel.

I am a Marxist

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 00:58:00 +0000

A long time ago in a land far, far away, Richard Marx was a pretty popular artist. I was a huge fan, even going so far as to use a quote of his in my yearbook (I believe it was 'Lord I know I'm bound for Heaven, 'cause I've done my time in Hell.' Apparently at the time I thought high school was Hell. Then again, who doesn't?) So when Marx had a tour coming near Connecticut, I was all over it. My friend Mike and I were gonna go see him perform at an outdoor venue in Mansfield, MA on Wednesday, August 24th. We decided that the night before we'd go to my parents' beach house since getting to Mansfield was easier from there than from where we lived. It was gonna be great!

Now, I've seen a lot of artists in concert that many people would consider to be 'uncool'. My first concert was of course, Barry Manilow. I've also seen Lionel Richie during his Dancing on a Ceiling tour, the Beach Boys with Chicago, Huey Lewis and the News (with my mother!) and not once, but twice, I saw Michael Bolton. The first time was again with my friend Mike. Actually for that concert, Mike had gotten the tickets and left them in his house. When we went to get the tickets we realized Mike had locked himself out of the house and neither his parents nor his brother were home. So Mike had to climb to the second story of the house and break in through an upstairs window. But we got to see Michael Bolton! The second time was with a girl, so you know how that goes. We saw him at another outdoor venue and it was drizzling, but hell, I was there with a girl! The best (or worst) part was during the intermission, she got up to go to the bathroom. She was gone for 30-40 minutes and I just assumed that there was a long line for the facilities. While she was gone the concert restarted and I was more afraid that she was going to miss something than being afraid she was lost. She shows up again 3 or 4 songs into the second half and as it turns out, she was cutting back up through the covered seats to get to our place in the lawn when the concert restarted. And as luck would have it, Mr. Bolton started the second half of the show in the audience, about 5 feet from her. So of course she stood there, nice and dry and watched him from close up, while I sat in the rain, all alone, against a fence. Needless to say at the time I was rather jealous, although looking back on it, eh, not so much.

But back to Richard Marx. At that point in my life this was the one concert I really wanted to go to. I was all excited and couldn't wait. We get to the beach house on Tuesday night, hang out and watch TV, basking in the fact that we were high school students without parents and siblings to deal with. Just two single guys in their own beach house, drinking soda and having a wild old time. The next day we spend it again hanging out, playing mini-golf, doing whatever. Finally it gets to be the late afternoon and we walk out to the car to head to the concert. It was at this point the story takes a sad turn. Or a stupid one. See, today I always like to know what time it is and what the date is. As I sit here, I've got the clock on my computer, one on the wall in front of me, a watch, my cell phone, and about 3 clocks behind me. I've also got a one-a-day calendar, one on the wall and my watch shows the date, not to mention the calendar I use online. But back then, I wasn't that concerned with time and date. So once I got the tickets, in my mind, I was always thinking the concert was on Wednesday, August 25th. Once I had the date in my head, I let it go and just went with Wednesday, so to me, the concert was always on a Wednesday. As we got into the car I finally pulled out the tickets and took a look at them. I think I may have uttered a small 'oh no' before turning to Mike and asking him what day it was. He replied 'the 26th' at which point I groan and hand him the tickets, which were for TUESDAY, August 25th!

I am proud to say that since then I haven't made such a boneheaded mistake. That may also be why I constantly need to know what the date is and what time it is. But back then... well, Mike saw the date on the tickets, let out a scream, ripped the tickets in half, got out of the car and did one of those things you only see in the movies where he yelled and screamed and danced around the parking lot like a lunatic. I just sat in the car, with the ripped tickets in my hand, and stared out the front window. After a few minutes Mike calmed down and got back in the car and together we stared out the front window. Eventually we drove to KFC, got a big bucket of chicken, drove back to the beach house and ate ourselves sick. Mike was nice about it. He never blamed me or yelled at me. I think he could tell how disappointed I was. And I did feel horrible and really rather stupid. I kept the tickets. I taped them together and taped them to my desk. I still have them, buried somewhere in the piles in my room back home.

The saddest part of the story? To this day, I have never seen Richard Marx in concert. Ray Charles? Yup. Billy Joel? Definitely. Kenny G with Peabo Bryson? Sure... but not Richard Marx.

View the tickets

First Love

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 18:01:00 +0000

I'm at that age where most of my friends are married or at least on the road to marriage. I of course took a wrong exit somewhere and am frantically looking for the on-ramp back to the right highway. But it got me to thinking of my first love. Her name was/is Corey (I'll leave her last name off so no one goes ahead and Googles her, and on the off chance she reads this, although she does know.) I think it began back in 4th grade. Corey lived somewhat down the street from me. I say somewhat because the street she lived on was actually a dead end road, but if you cut through the woods behind the dead end, you would end up on my street. By coincidence, the other end of her street was across the way from the path that lead to school, so years of kids walking through the woods had created a small path. So on random mornings I'd walk (in a group of course) to school with her, or back home from school. Did I ever tell her back then that I liked her? Of course not.

I was never in the 'popular' group, and that's something that went with me throughout my schooling. I was always in between; I hung out with a lower class of person, but I was on friendly terms with the cool kids, so I got a pass. I don't recall ever being tormented that badly growing up (except for one year at summer camp, but that's a whole other story). Corey was one of the cool kids, so she was 'dating' another one of the cool kids. To this day I'm not sure what 'dating' entails at that age, I just know I wasn't part of it. Corey wasn't the hottest girl in school, but she was very pretty, had a lot of freckles, and was left handed. These are the random things I remember about elementary school. Anyway, I think the reason I fell for Corey was because she was nice. Even back then the girls that everyone considered to be 'hot' were stuck up about it. I've never liked that in a person and today I still go for the pretty and nice girl.

I remember this one time my friend Alex was having a birthday party at his house. Alex was the first person I knew with divorced parents, and they let him get away with a lot. Well this party was the first one that included dancing. Not only dancing, but Alex decided it would be fun to have all the girls put their name into a hat, and have the guys pick out one of the names, and that was your partner. I was terrified! Not only would I have to dance, I'd have to dance with a girl! I reached my hand into the hat and as luck would have it, I picked out Corey's name. I was actually happy because as I said, Corey was nice and I knew I'd have a good time dancing with her (relative speaking of course). But something happened - someone complained or a name was missing - and we had to start all over. I ended up picking another girl's name from the hat. I barely knew this girl, except for the fact that she was taller than me and that intimidated me (another thing that has carried over to my current life. I'm suddenly starting to realize my life was formed in elementary school. Odd.) I was afraid I was going to be stuck with this new girl, when, thankfully, there was another re-do of the hat. This time though, the girls picked the guys names. And as I was standing off to the side, Corey comes up to me with my name written on a piece of paper.

I still don't like dancing, but back then it was all foreign to me. The music started and it was like a serving line - two long lines of people facing each other. I couldn't bring myself to get in the line opposite Corey, even though everyone else was dancing. I vividly remember violently throwing down my Red Sox baseball cap on to the ground, sucking in my nerves, and dancing. I looked down the line and saw some of the guy/girl combos actually touching each other while dancing! Of course these days that might be something bad, back then it was just hands clasped from a distance of a few feet. I remember thinking, am I gonna have to do that with Corey?? I never did, but she did wear my baseball cap. It ended up being a pretty nice time.

After 6th grade, I got shipped off to a private school, while all my other friends were off to public. I never saw Corey after that... until... flash forward many, many years and I'm back in Connecticut, working at a hospital. One of my jobs was to look at competing hospital web sites. As I'm looking at our main competitor's web site (the only other major hospital in the city) I happen upon a job listing and at the bottom it says 'Contact Corey *** for more information.' I was floored. My first thought was, hey, she's not married! So I quickly send off an email asking if this in fact was the same Corey from elementary school and if she remembered me. She wrote back shortly thereafter, just as shocked as I was, saying of course she remembered me. We traded emails back and forth a few times that day.

Now for those of you that know me, you know that I live with my head in the clouds. I firmly believe my life is a movie and therefore I will have some kind of fairy tale romance. So when I see that the first girl I ever had a crush on still lived in my hometown and happened to work at a hospital, I thought this was perfect. Think of the stories I could tell the grandkids. Your grandmother and I knew each other when we were young, didn't see each other for years and years, but fate brought us together. It was almost perfect. So I asked Corey if she wanted to get together for a drink the next night. She replied with 'I'd love to but I'm looking at houses with my boyfriend, maybe another night?' Ahh... I should have known better! So we never did get together for that drink. Fast forward a few more years and during that time she and I keep in touch. I know when she got married, I know when she got pregnant, hell, I even got pictures when the kid was born.

Then one night last summer I'm back home with my family, including my relatives from India who were in town for my sister's wedding. We're getting ice cream at a place called Maggie Moo's and sitting off to the side is none other than Corey. She looked almost exactly as I remembered her, except for the 2-week old baby in her lap. It was honestly like looking into the past when I saw her. I froze and wasn't sure what to do. After almost finishing my ice cream I finally got up the nerve and went over and said hi. She's still the friendly girl I used to know. Even while sitting with her husband and 2-week old child, she was talking about how the next time I came home I should call her so we could go out and catch up. I re-introduced her to my family and everyone awwed over her kid and then we left. Haven't talked to her since. I suppose it's time for me to send an email.

I probably wasn't all that close to my fairy tale romance, but I'd like to think I was. I guess I still have time for all that to come true. Hmm... The second girl I ever had a crush on was in junior high. Her name is Carrie. I wonder what she's up to these days :-)

Ice Cream

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Wed, 31 May 2006 05:10:00 +0000

Earlier tonight three good friends and I went to Cold Stone for some ice cream after some good Thai food (there was a 5th but he left before the actual ice cream eating began.) For those of you that have never heard of Cold Stone, it's an ice cream lovers paradise. You choose what ice cream you want and they take a big scoop of it and slam it down on to a cold stone slab (get it?). At that point they add in the toppings. Two of the girls got cake batter ice cream mixed with brownies, sprinkles and fudge. The other girl got cake batter ice cream mixed with I believe M&Ms, Snickers and Kit-Kats. They mash it all up together and you get a gooey treat. It really is pretty amazing stuff. Tonight I decided not to partake, but I have in the past and never had a bad time.

It reminded me of something that happened years ago which turned me off ice cream for a while, or at least turned me off Dairy Queen. My parents have a house on the Connecticut shore and each summer my college friends and I would head down there for a couple of weekends. There's not a ton to do there beyond sitting on the beach (or deck), watch TV, play mini-golf and go out to eat. It's rather relaxing. My college friends aren't really big party people, so we were never that interested in bar hopping or getting smashed (which is in huge contrast to my law school friends. I've never figured out how I ended up with two completely different types of friends. But I digress...) So we would go to the beach and just chill.

Well, one night we go to Dairy Queen after dinner. Everyone gets their ice cream and whatnot. We take it back to the beach house and one of my friends decides she's had enough. She had a simple vanilla cone, but she barely ate any of it. So she tosses it on the beach. Now remember, this is the middle of summer. The next morning we all wake up and make our way outside. And there, still sitting where she threw it, was the ice cream cone. With the ice cream! I realize she threw it out in the middle of the night, but it was still a good 60-70 degrees that night, and then with the sun the next morning? How in God's name was there still ice cream? The entire thing should have melted, but there it was in all its glory. And this story, unlike the one with the girls during spring break, can be verified by others.

I have no idea what goes into a Dairy Queen ice cream cone, but it ain't ice cream. It was seriously disturbing. To this day I have not eaten ice cream from Dairy Queen. Thankfully, there are other ice cream places at the beach (including one where Katharine Hepburn used to eat) so we were never at a loss, but to this day I can still see that 'ice cream' sitting on the beach after laying out all night.

Monsoon

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Sat, 27 May 2006 06:17:00 +0000

After we left the Yankees game tonight, we got hit with a massive rain storm. I have never gotten that wet in my life. As I was walking to the subway, and walking through rivers that soaked me to the bone, I was reminded of sitting through a monsoon while at my grandparents house in India. That lead me to think about my grandparents and my relationships with them. Recently on a repeat of the show 'Yes, Dear' one of the characters was talking about how everyone has one set of grandparents that they're closer to than the other, and that was certainly true in my life. But there were a lot of reasons for that.

The first, and probably biggest, reason I was closer to my maternal grandparents was simply that there were less of us. There are only four grandkids on my mother's side of the family. And out of the four of us, I'm the oldest and only boy, which makes me that much more special. And before you say I'm full of myself, ask the other three which is the favorite grandchild, and they will all point to me. On my father's side there are... well, I lose count after 15 grandkids. My sister and I are two of the youngest and we're also the only two that didn't live in India. I always felt like we were an afterthought. They had so many other kids and grandkids that they could see on a regular basis, we were lost in the shuffle.

The house my paternal grandparents had was also cold and never very welcoming. When we used to go to India, beyond the general dread of leaving my life behind and going to a place I didn't like and understand, I hated going to my father's family's side because it wasn't a warm place to be. Even though there were always people wandering around and the house was full of people, it never felt full of life. The main living room was lit by a single fluorescent light bulb that made everyone look sick. The house was also in a downtown, heavily trafficked area so it was always noisy and dusty. Then there was my mother's side. My grandparents lived in a house with a front and back lawn. There were guava trees in the backyard and even now all the memories I have are of a warm, welcoming place where the sun always seemed to be shining. My grandfather was a judge and I used to go to court with him and sit in the back and have all the attorneys act nice around me to butter him up. My grandmother used to peel oranges for me - not just the outer peel, but the inside, so all I ate was the actual orange.

They also spoke English, which helped since I spoke no Hindi. On my father's side, my grandfather spoke English, but my grandmother did not. And God help me for saying this, but she was a scary woman. She always looked so mean. She may have been the nicest person in the world, but all I could see was a little old woman who I couldn't communicate with. My grandfather and I got along well enough, but I don't remember talking to him too much. On my mother's side though, my grandparents and I talked all the time. And they used to come visit more often, which naturally made me feel closer to them, since they would come into my world. My grandmother was even here the day my sister was born. And the exact moment my sister was brought home from the hospital, she and I were sitting at the dining room table, and she was peeling me an orange. It was heartbreaking the day my grandmother died. I was working in the hospital at the time and I got an email from my cousins. It was the first time I ever thought about not ever being able to see someone again and I wasn't sure how I would deal with that. I'm still not really sure.

Both my grandparents on my father's side died years ago. The last time I ever cried out of sadness was the day my grandfather died. Not so much because he was gone, but because I knew my father had lost his last parent. He got a call from my uncle (his brother) and even from 10 feet away I could hear my uncle crying and screaming on the other end. He was completely hysterical and my father just stood there, silent. Even though my father is the youngest of his siblings, he's also the most successful, and the one everyone turns to for advice. He couldn't be emotional; he had to be the rock. And so I cried for him. I've shed tears since, but never out of pure sadness. My grandmother dying is a whole other story.

I don't remember how old I was exactly, but I must have been in my younger teens. As I said, she and I were never close, due to distance and the language barrier, among other reasons. So when she slipped into a coma, I, for better or worse, didn't feel much. There was some sadness, but I didn't know her well enough to be really broken up about it. I realize that may sound cold, but it's the truth. But she must have been a tough old lady, because she was in that coma for almost a year before my mother, sister and I had the chance to go see her. We used to go to India every two years, so it must have just been our time to visit. My father of course had gone on his own to see her, and everyone knew there was no way she was going to survive. But she hung on for a pretty long time in that coma. My mother, sister and I finally got to Delhi and were ushered into her room. She was being kept in the house instead of a hospital. It was so awkward. Here was this woman I barely knew, but who was my grandmother, lying motionless on a bed, oblivious to everything around her. And there I was, a young kid who always had a chip on his shoulder, being told my all my other relatives to go talk to her. To say something. What was I supposed to do? My mother sat next to her and said a few things in Hindi. My sister and I looked at each other, not sure what to say. We yelled a few things but nothing that meant anything. After a few minutes, we got up and left.

Later that night we boarded a train to Allahabad, where my mother's parents were. It was an overnight train ride, and when we got to the station the next morning, we were told that my grandmother had passed away during the night. Even at that age I knew what had happened was extraordinary. Whether you believe in God or not, it was amazing. She had been in a coma for almost a year, and everyone in the family had gotten a chance to say their goodbyes, except for myself, my mother and sister. She had held on to that last bit of life inside of her until we got to see her, one last time. And then, with her life finally complete, she passed on. I refuse to believe that was just a coincidence. To this day that is the single biggest thing that makes me think that there is some kind of higher power inside all of us. Something kept her alive and something told her when it was OK to go.

I can't say I regret not being closer to my father's parents, because it was what it was. I'm not sure, with all things considered, I could have been any closer to them than I was. But I'm very happy that I lost that chip on my shoulder and my opinion of India changed over the last few years, so that I was able to make a trip before my maternal grandmother died back in July of 2002. I only have one grandparent left. The last time I saw him was in August when my sister got married. Out of all the grandparents, he was the one I was closest to. And one of the fondest memories I have is a small one. I was in Allahabad and we got hit with a monsoon. I had never seen that much rain before in my life. Everyone else was used to it and didn't give it a second thought. But I was amazed. I sat outside on the veranda and just watched the rain come down. The driveway turned into a river and my grandfather and I made a paper boat that we could sail. It only lasted a few feet before it took in too much water and sank, but I'll never forget that moment - just me and my grandfather, sailing a paper boat down the driveway in a monsoon.

Underachiever

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Mon, 22 May 2006 01:39:00 +0000

I've always been an underachiever. If you look at my report cards for basically my entire schooling life, they all say pretty much the same thing... he's smart but doesn't work to his full ability. I guess you could say I'm the poster child for 'potential.' It's strange though because when I do put effort into something I usually do pretty well. My biggest achievement in college was when I studied for one Economics exam. I got 110% or something on it, beating all the 'smart' kids. I like to bring that up from time to time. It's either that or my massive winning percentage on NHL '93.

I usually get my work done, but not under the best of circumstances. Back in high school I wrote a paper on A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. My teacher liked it so much and said it was such a great paper, I should enter it into this yearly contest they had on that sort of thing. I didn't tell her I had written the entire five page paper on the bus on the way to school that morning. Luckily my handwriting is normally horrible, so writing on a moving bus didn't make it any worse. I think when I like something, I put a lot of effort into making it the best it can be, but for the most part, I don't like much. I also probably have some undiagnosed case of ADD but that never came up. I just talked too much and never paid attention.

My crowning achievement may have been in fifth grade. I know, it's sad I peaked when I was, what, 10? But what I did for one project is still talked about today. We were supposed to make a shoe box farm for class. Basically you take a shoe box, load it up with dirt, put a little farmhouse on there, 'plant' something (like cotton balls or carrots or something) and hand in. We must have had a week to complete it. Needless to say, I waited until, oh, the morning it was due to think about it. I literally had to be in my carpool in about 15 seconds when I realized I hadn't done the work. So I grabbed a huge shoe box, took some dirt from a potted plant in the living room, threw it in the box and ran out the door. I get to school and some time that morning we all have to show and hand in our work. I walk up, show my shoebox to Mrs. Stringberg, who takes one look at it and asks me what this was. I look at her and with a straight face say, 'this is a farm after a drought.'

Must have been the next day my parents got called in for a conference about my shoe box. Back then, for reasons I don't recall, I had two 5th grade teachers, and one student teacher (who I don't remember exactly, but I know she was hot and I probably would have pulled a Debra Lafave with her. Aw who am I kidding, I would have passed out if she had come on to me, much like I do now with women. Umm, back to my story). So Mrs. Stringberg was the one who called the conference. Mr. Carboneau was the 'main' teacher and he was the one holding the meeting while Mrs. Stringberg stood behind him. He pulled out the box, showed it to my parents, then repeated what I had said it was. And then, much to my delight, he started to laugh. He said it was arguably the most brilliant thing he had heard in his years of teaching. He said that I definitely had a quality about me that would come in handy in my later years.

Mrs. Stringberg didn't seem too happy with the turn of events, but Mr. Carboneau was the guy in charge so there was nothing she could do. I didn't get in trouble for the shoe box, all I had to do was actually make a real one. I went with the cotton. To this day my mother still brings up the story from time to time. Something about how my mind works in very strange ways. I'd like to think that day was less about underachieving, and more about coming up with a smart ass response to a legitimate question. Which is how I've lived my life since.

March 29, 1999

noreply@blogger.com (SC) — Thu, 18 May 2006 13:06:00 +0000

Recently, over on MySpace, my sister sent out a bulletin asking people for good late-night places to get something to eat. I sent her a place I knew of back in Harrisburg, and in the message I said something along the lines of 'the night I got drunk we went there for hot dogs at 2am.' She wrote back saying, 'you may be the only person I know of that can actually say 'the night I got drunk.'' And she's probably right. I've only gotten drunk one night in my life, and it was March 29, 1999.

Life was simpler back in 1999. You could still party like it was 1999. Conan O'Brien's In The Year 2000 sketches still made sense. The upcoming Y2K bug allowed Chris Jericho to enter the ring and call himself Y2J. And I still had the chance to fulfill my childhood fantasy of being married, having 2 kids, and living in a house with a white picket fence by the year 2000. I would likely have to be married and get my wife pregnant by the end of March 1999 for that last one to happen, but it was at least possible.

I was in my final year of law school in March of that year... the final couple of months in fact. I had managed to build up a small group of really close friends, and a large group of regular friends, thanks to my Jesus hairstyle, and my ability to fly through law school doing as little work as possible and still passing. That year was even more special however, because my beloved UConn Huskies men's basketball team was in the Final 4 for the first time in history. On March 27th, 1999, they beat Ohio St. to advance to the finals against the much hated Duke Blue Devils. I wanted to have people over to watch the game because if UConn won, I wanted to celebrate with friends, rather than alone. My apartment could comfortably hold 4 or 5 people, so I figured get some friends over, watch the game, eat some pizza, have a good time. But how to get them over? Only one of my friends was a real basketball fan, but no one else really cared. So I floated the idea that if UConn won, I'd drink that night.

Now realize, I'm not a real big drinker. To this day I don't really drink all that often. I honestly had my first drink on my 21st birthday (a shot of Mad Dog 20/20 orange flavor - not a great way to start.) And I had never gotten drunk. Many, many people had been waiting for the day that I finally broke down and got wasted. My college friends had been waiting close to ten years for it to happen. Hell, even my mother was waiting for it to happen. I was told it should be turned into a pay-per-view event so people from far away could watch. So when I told my law school friends I would drink if UConn won, it was a big deal. And on March 29, 1999, I had close to 20 people in my apartment to watch the game.

As you might have imagined (since I'm writing about this) UConn won in a thrilling game. My only reaction after the final buzzer was to stand up and yell 'Whoo hoo!' and quickly sit back down since I forgot to put on a belt and my pants were starting to fall. I sat back on the couch, and I'm not ashamed to say that tears were in my eyes. UConn had won a national championship. About 2.3 seconds after my yell, my friend Keith (his real name) said, 'OK, let's do this!' and ran off into my kitchen. Another friend of mine joined him and a few moments later they came back and handed me my drink. It was in one of those frozen plastic mugs (I believe with a Batman Forever logo on it) that was large enough to hold a can of soda. This was filled to the brim with a Screwdriver (orange juice and vodka.) If I'm not mistaken, there were 2 shots of vodka mixed in with the orange juice. It was nasty tasting (which is the reason I don't really like to drink) but I polished that sucker off in a few minutes. I should have sipped it because as soon as I was done, Keith took the mug and refilled it. I drank three of those concoctions in 30 minutes. At the time I didn't realize it, but now looking back, 6 shots of vodka in 30 minutes is a hell of a lot to drink, especially for someone who has no tolerance.

But it was a little strange. All those people came over to watch me get drunk, yet out of the 20 people, 17 left before I finished my drinks. I think they were all satisfied just watching me drink, and didn't care about the after effects. By the time I finished, only Keith, Wes and JD were still there. I hadn't moved from my place on the couch, but I could feel my head swimming. Wes asked what I was going to do now, and I wasn't sure. But good old Keith was there to say 'we are NOT wasting this opportunity... I don't care what we do, but we're doing something!' I agreed, and Wes and JD nodded, then said they had to go. So it was just going to be me and Keith. Keith suggested we go for a drive and I agreed, as soon as I went to the bathroom and put on a belt. I stood up, took two steps, and fell sideways onto my closet door. Wes and JD were already walking to the stairs so they didn't see, but Keith did and laughed. I slowly made my way to the bathroom and then to my bedroom and came out ready to go.

We hopped into Keith's Wrangler and took off. Neither of us had any idea where to go. So Keith suggested we go buzz by the house of this girl he was in love with. She lived about 20 minutes away so we had a nice drive there, found her house, drove around the block a few times, then took off. Keith still didn't want to take me home, so we went to downtown Harrisburg to a place called The Spot. It was a late-night restaurant, known for their hot dogs, among other things. We got there and went inside. Behind the counter was this large, hideous woman with the biggest moustache I've seen on a female before. Now, I do remember seeing her and thinking this, then quickly turning away. Keith however says that I stared at her for a solid 5 minutes with my mouth open as we waited in line. I suppose that's possible because I know it took a while before we got to the front of the line and ordered, and frankly, I don't remember much else about being there. We got our hot dogs, ate and took off. There was some talk about going to a strip club, but as it was around 2am and a Monday night, we did have class the next day.

Keith dropped me off at home, shook my hand, said congrats, and went back to his apartment. I stumbled up the stairs, still lightheaded, and got on the computer. At which point I sent out a mass email to about 30 people informing them that I had gotten drunk. In my stupor, I thought people might want to know. Of course, looking back on it, I probably should have waited till the morning because I'm not 100% sure what I wrote. I am 100% sure though that my mother and my sister were included in the email. I may be the only person in history to email his mother and tell her that her only son got drunk and ate hot dogs at 1am. She must have been proud. Afterwards, I crawled into bed and somehow made it up for class the next day. I had a small headache, but nothing I couldn't manage.

March 29, 1999 will go down in history as the day the UConn men won their first national championship and as the day I got drunk. Since then UConn has won a second title, but I'm still waiting for my second time. And if and when it happens, I'll be sure to email everyone... including my mother.