Little Surprises

Last weekend I went to a 30th birthday party in NYC. We rented out a bar in Hell’s Kitchen, a quaint little place the likes of which only exists in New York. The party itself wasn’t a surprise for James, our birthday boy, but there was to be a little surprise.

At approximately 8:30, Trish, James' wife, told Marty and I to keep James distracted. We dutifully obliged, chatting him up about nothing in particular, par for the course. Everything was going according to plan when suddenly I noticed James' eyes drift over my shoulder and follow someone or something behind me as it moved through the bar and back towards us and the bathroom.

“Did you guys see that?” James asked, brow furrowed with confusion.

“See what?” Marty and I responded in unison.

“I think a midget just went into the bathroom.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about…” we responded more ore less in unison.

At this point I was ready to explode. This was too good. Cool Hand Marty continued telling some stupid story in the hopes that James would drop the subject. I tried to play it cool.

“Did you guys get me a midget?” he asked, his face suddenly lit up with hope. “You guys... got me a midget!”

“We didn’t get you anything,” Martin said. I just shrugged. Any second now, we wouldn't have to pretend anymore...

Practically on cue. the midget emerged from the bathroom appropriately dressed in a teddy and a thong. Everyone cheered as she spun James around on his bar stool and gave him a crazy little lap dance.

Little did I know, it was a bad idea to be standing so close to the action. Once she was done with James she grabbed me and sat me down on a stool in the middle of the bar and she took all my shirts off one by one (sweater, button down, then undershirt) and suddenly….. I was shirtless and really self-conscious about it in front of roughly 35 people. The midget leaned in and asked me, “Are you married?”

“Yeah, she’s right there!” I eagerly pointed at Moose. She went over and grabbed her and laid her down on a table in the middle of the bar, laid on top of her, spread her legs, and demanded I join them. Again, I obliged. One big happy family, we simulated a midget sandwich sexual encounter while the crowd roared. It’s pretty weird to look into your wife’s eyes while a midget’s writhing around between you. You'll likely have to take my word for it.

Suddenly, she whispered in my ear, “Pick me up!”

“Excuse me?”

She repeated herself. Yet again, I obliged. As I lifted her up she wrapped her legs around my waist and rode me like an upside down horse. This was happening. I was lightly buzzed enough to play along, though still painfully and self-consciously uncomfortable with the whole thing.

Then, suddenly, as quickly as it began, it was all over… And I was left to retrieve my clothes, and my dignity, which was strewn throughout the bar.

Happy Birthday, James.

Dispatch

Got here. Everything went fairly smoothly along the way... Just oh so tired - SO long.

Things got interesting pretty much immediately....

A) I get in line at customs- The "Foreign Passport" line. Some Indonesian cop comes up to me, grunts, points and gently guides me over to the Permanent Resident Line. I showed him my passport in protest. He just grunted and pointed to the spot in line where he wanted me to stand. What???? What is going on here? I waited until he walked away and moved back to the "I don't live here" line.

B) Jakarta is a sort of a terrifying place. Think movies of third world Asian cities. They're no joke. Traffic like you wouldn't believe. But not normal traffic: People driving crazy... motorcycles literally crammed in every inch of space left by cars.... And ME on the back of one of them!!! I'd never been on a motorcycle before, and I pretty much loved it. Except when I was 100% certain every 30 seconds or so that I was about to be crushed beyond recognition from both sides by insane chain smoking indonesian men in giant SUVs. BUT, like I said, being on the back of a motorcycle is really fun, and rather romantic. Wahyu and I literally rode off into the sunset on it.

C) Wahyu takes me to his house. (Wahyu is an Indonesian guy I know from my school...he'd been visiting the states for the last 2 months (he has done work for the school in Indonesia for the last few years). His mother has prepared a TON of food, and it is on display all over the house. No one speaks English except Wahyu, but I meet the fam. Everyone is incredibly friendly. I just wish I could talk to them without Way interpreting.


Two little nieces were asleep on the couch. When they wake up their grandma brings them over to me. They stare, wide-eyed and frightened, hiding behind grandma's burka. She leans down, telling them something I don't understand, while pointing at me. All I can make out is "Barrrrrrbie, Barrrrrrbie." Wahyu laughs and says "She's telling them not to be scared because you are just a real live Barbie...like the doll." Later they told the little girls I was a princess. That was weird. Now they just peak at me from other rooms and run away if I look at them.

D) I was served boiled testicles, I believe. And I ate them. I've seen enough of exotic foods to feel like I know a teste in my dish when I see one. Wayhu's mother knows about 5 words in english, and one is "EAT!" She follows me around the house screaming it.

E) I have to shower. Wahyu tells me, "our bathrooms are different than yours," and naturally I respond, "Yeah, I'll figure it out." I'm no dummy. I go into the bathroom. WTF??????????!!! There is a faucet sticking out of the wall about mid femur height. But just open to nothing... The bathroom floor. Then there's a sink, a big one, but it's filled to the brim with water. Then there is another sink-looking thing on the ground. But with a toilet-esque hole in it. But nothing to flush. A bucket on the edge of the giant sink. What the hell am I supposed to do??? There's no toilet paper or even a trash can in sight. Thank Christ I didn't have to do anything serious. Apparently you squat over the hole, do your thang, and then use the bucket thingy to splash water on your parts until they are clean. Then you use the same bucket to rinse the squatty potty until whatever you produced eventually sinks down the hole.

As for the shower.... I just crouched under the faucet and showered all over the bathroom floor. Who the hell knows if that was right. Princess Caitlin is here from America everyone!!!

Get a haircut

Trying to get the juices flowing again

This video is phenomenal. M.I.A is badass. Apparently so is this Romain Gavras guy. As if gingers didn't have enough to worry about already...

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

High Violet doesn't come out until May 11. Whether you caught the album when you could stream it from the NYT website or not, here's a taste of three tracks played live:

And, in case you're curious about their creative process:

My mind's still a little blown that Matt Berninger can't read music or play an instrument, something mentioned in that NYT article and in the clip above.

Anyone else's breath taken away by LOST last night? It's like I was all of the sudden thrown in my face that this show is well on its way to its end. Sayid's death felt so unceremonious, if necessary. I hadn't even decided yet whether I thought his goodness would prevail over the darkness that's been inside him ever since he was "saved" earlier in the season. Jin and Sun's demise, while it was given enough time to appropriately devastate me, felt so peripheral. Is Fake Locke now simply putting our heroes in situations where it is likely someone will perish in order for him to further distinguish pretenders from his new adversary? Or did he think the bomb in the sub would kill them all? And did the bomb only detonate because Widmore actually set the bomb up? Did Widmore set the bomb up?

You can download a new My Morning Jacket tune, "Friends Again", here. My visceral reaction: It's okay, but I wish they'd go back to the unbridled southern rock energy that preceded Evil Urges.

Also, I must say, I don't understand why all these musicians are dressing up in suits and ties lately. I actually have to dress for work, and almost find it insulting that someone would choose to dress that way without being forced. Irony perhaps? That's too much. I'm not really sure what sort of ensemble I'd be rocking if I were a musician, I definitely wouldn't be wearing a suit, vest, and tie that's for good goddamn sure.

I'm gonna go ahead and keep silent on wars, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, racial profiling, tea parties, oil slicks, and recessions for the time being. I could barely cope today in the wake of Sun and Jin's demise, I'm definitely too fragile to talk about things that are actually real.

Hilarious

NY Football Giants

Pretty compelling argument for drafting Pierre-Paul.

Available until April 27

Stream The National's new album here.

Moffitt

My cousin got married a couple weeks ago at the Shore. The wedding was great: short ceremony, open bar, and most of my cousins were there. There's not really much more one can hope for. Well perhaps besides that all my cousins would have been there. It was a jovial but sophisticated reception. People mingled, chatted, smiled and laughed in celebration of Mike and Sarah having made the whole thing official. As a backdrop a classically trained guitar player strummed and sang away in pitch perfect harmony. Eventually, during dinner, the best man took to the front of the room where he spoke for about 15 minutes. He wasn't funny, nor was he trying to be, but my brother for some reason laughed deliriously and continuously throughout his speech despite the fact that the bridegroom was standing right behind our table. We took turns kicking him under the table but these attempts at shutting him up fell on apparently indestructible shins. The rest of the room sat at their tables and listened intently.

But then it happened.....

Tarzan? Everyone in the room turned around in their chairs to find some guy standing at the bar doing a pitch perfect (a theme of this wedding apparently) Tarzan yell. Moose was so confused that she clapped and nodded, thinking this was somehow a choreographed addition to the speech portion of the evening. It was one of the funnier things I’ve ever heard or seen. Moments later the speech resumed as though nothing had happened. Only we couldn't stop laughing.

It'd become apparent to me that my dad was drunk when he told my Uncle Bob that my brother and I do impressions of him because we love him (immediately after I had finished doing an impression of him). Saying weird shit like that isn't his style under almost all circumstances. And by "weird shit" I mean 'love' isn't a word I knew he could spell let alone use in a sentence. Be that as it may, I still never could have predicted what was to follow.... Errrrrrr, maybe I should have. After the speeches had concluded, the guitar player strummed the opening chords of "Danny Boy". As soon as my dad stood up the five of us knew exactly what was about to happen. We all looked at each other, muttering things like "oooohhhhh nooooooooooo" and "what should we doooooo?????" Meanwhile, he took to the front of the room where he snatched the mic and began stumbling his way through the first verse. I looked around for some sort of verbal or postural feedback from the bride and her family. Was this okay? Did we have to forcibly escort my dad off the stage? A testament to the bride I suppose, she at least appeared to be pleased with the whole thing. This was officially happening.

The guitar player actually tried to cut him off after one verse. He stopped playing and readjusted the mic so that he could resume his duties as the paid musical entertainment... But my dad grabbed the mic back, blabbering, “No-no-no, second verse!” I don’t usually get embarrassed, but I was officially mortified during this brief scuffle over the mic. When it became apparent that my dad wasn't going to back down, the guitar player relented. It got worse before it got better, though, when he forgot some of the words in the second verse and had to look to matriarchal/geriatric table for the assistance that would allow him to find his way.

I'm sorry

But this is a huge fuckin' deal.

(This is not a link to a youtube clip of Biden's latest gaffe)

Jerry Effing Seinfeld

He's still got it.

Band of Horses Announce New Album

Band of Horses Announce New Album

Considering I've listened to their two previous albums so much that I actually can't listen to them anymore, I suppose I should be excited about this.

This never would have happened before

A friend of mine teaches at a prep school for the economically paired. When he was in town last week as a chaperone for Model U.N. he made some sartorial choices that you'd expect of a New England prep school teacher; button-down shirt, tie, sweater, blazer. Though it made me sweat just to look at him, he looked good. I can only assume he felt good as well.

Several of us went out to dinner in the Back Bay. Good food surrounded by at least modestly good people. As is customary, the several drinks we had with dinner left us unsated. We walked several blocks to another bar, carrying on as though our youths weren't about to make their first appearance in our rear-view mirrors.

As we pulled seats up to a table and waited for our drinks to arrive, I looked around, taking a little inventory of our surroundings. This certainly was a Back Bay bar on a Friday night. The bar was filled with people our age or older, dressed to the nines like d-bags and d-baguettes. I tried not to dwell on this, opting instead to focus on the various topics of conversation we were nimbly navigating amongst ourselves.

Worlds collided minutes later when a woman in her late 30's, perhaps early 40's, approached with a question for the educator extraordinaire among us. "Hey. I like your tie." She said this without averting her gaze from him. "Hey, your tie. I really like it. I'll trade yah my undies for your tie?"

We all guffawed (2 parts uncomfortable, 3 parts incredulous, 2.5 parts this-is-awesome[?]ness). Eventually, it became apparent to us all that this little exchange wouldn't really be an exchange without a response. I slowly turned my head in his direction. He had a look on his face not unlike that of a lamb unsuspectingly tossed into the cougar pen at the zoo. But also kinda like a lamb who was trying to play it cool. "No thanks," he smirked.

"That was relatively painless," I can remember thinking to myself.

Two minutes later this same woman emerged from the ladies' room and strutted across the room and back to our table where she dropped her underwear on the table right in front of the object of her affection.

A collective gasp. "Is that really your underwear?" Marty wondered aloud. "It looks kinda big," he added, twisting the dagger.

Presumably embarrassed, she snatched her undies off the table and scurried off into the darkness never to be heard from again.

Spam

This blog has been getting a lot of spam comments lately. As I reserve the right to either accept or reject them, the comments that are irrelevant to the [shitty] content presented here don't usually get posted. The most recent one was too good to ignore though. It actually made me laugh. Helps if you read it aloud with some kind of accent (because accents connote ignorance and stupidity, right?).

Anonymous said...
Hello, as you can see this is my first post here.
I will be glad to get any help at the beginning.
Thanks and good luck everyone! ;)

It's probably a virus. But whatever, I'm rolling on a Mac here.

What is....and what should be

How come all of my nicest clothes aren't waterproof? Not only are they just not waterproof, they're actually destroyed when they get wet. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't 'nice' clothes be durable? It might help you feel better when you're trudging through the rain to think about how overwhelmingly miserable I am when I'm in the rain. The truth is, rain doesn't even bother me. Unless I'm commuting to or from work in it. Then, I'm practically bursting at the seems to break something or kill someone. This morning I was so pissed I smashed my umbrella in half just outside the threshold of my office building. This is especially pathetic when you consider I purchased the umbrella a half hour prior, just before getting on the bus.

Two entries ago I drew your attention to a Broken Social Scene song, new single off of their new album, which I believe drops May 4. Get on it. I haven't been this floored by a new song on the first listen in as long as I can remember. Actually, you can probably find that very sentence on this blog several times over the last couple years if you were inclined to look. So is this hyperbole? Yeah, but let's not split hairs.

Spike Lee

This is one of my roommates from college, presumably at some rugby related shindig around Halloween time last year. Are you kidding me? Seriously, are you kidding me? This is the greatest picture that's ever been taken. Done. Case closed. Every picture you've ever been in or even seen sucks. This is it. This is the Sticky Fingers of pictures. It can't be improved upon.

Unbelievable....You can thank me later

Read This

We Were Promised Jetpacks

It's Thunder And It's Lightnin...

Neither here nor there, but I think what bothers me most about Facebook is the fact that it's a forum for insecure people to try to prove to everyone how happy and secure they are. I'll sign on while I poop at work and always end up angrily wiping my ass, shaking my head and cursing to myself about some stupid shit someone I know well, barely know, or knew once posted as their status.... Did I just say that out loud?

I went and saw We Were Promised Jetpacks at the Middle East last night. I wasn't floored, nor was I pleasantly surprised like my sister and wife both were. I actually got mixed signals from Mackin between his incessant chattering in my ear during songs and the way this was punctuated by a jubilant bouncing around. I got what I expected I suppose. For a $12 asking price, it was well worth it. WWPJ is pretty straightforward. Truth be told, I'm not sure how excitable I'd be if their music weren't couched in a thick Scottish brogue. Catchy, brooding, earnest, angst-y, and sometimes aggressive, if you were to catch me with headphones on at any point over the last several weeks, chances are I was listening to These Four Walls. "It's Thunder and It's Lightning", "Roll Up Your Sleeves" and "Quiet Little Voices" were personal highlights, as was their closer, Mackin's favorite, "Short Bursts". With only one album under their belt, their set was understandably short. I did find the fact that they declined to come back out for an encore a little disappointing.

For the record, I still heartily recommend These Four Walls.

Get LOST

I’m befuddled. I like to tell myself this show is ultimately about its individual characters and their moral/ethical quandaries, which is largely responsible for my loyal viewership, but I’m just as often scratching my head and wondering what the hell’s going on as the next guy. Through a certain light, however, it's almost like the time travel, the mystical island, and now the parallel realities are just unique backdrops for character driven story telling. At least this is what I tell myself when my confusion almost becomes frustration. What’s compelling now with this new flash sideways wrinkle is we're able to see what these characters may have done and become if the plane had never crashed.

• Fake Locke brandishes at least two knives when he's in the giant foot with Ben after kicking Jacob into the fire.... In the flash sideways Locke's knives never arrive at LAX in 2007!
• Not everything is the same in this alternate 2004 without the crash. Michael, Walt & Vincent weren't on the plane. Hurley’s happy and considers himself the luckiest man on earth instead of cursed, Desmond’s on board for some reason, during the turbulence Jack is reassured by Rose and not the other way around as it happened originally when the plane crashed. Boone couldn't convince Shannon to leave Australia.
• Where is Jack's father, Christian? Maybe on board the wrong plane that ends up crashing on the island with all those new others on it? I don’t know.
• I think Desmond knows more than he appeared to have let on in his brief interaction with Jack.
• The mirky water wasn’t clean, as they said. Sayid is now Jacob. The island's headed for war.
• Jacob and Fake Locke? No clue. One guy seems to espouse the idea that people make things bad while the other thinks they’re inherently good… but Jacob has blood all over his hands.
• One of the new 'others' was the stewardess on the plane that gave jack the vodka… the others we’ve only seen on the island. Presumably the timelines converge at some point and/or the new others arrive on the island between 2004 and 2007? Maybe another plane crashes? Where did those other people come from? They seem pretty settled.
• They showed the island under water when they fly over it in the “crash never happened” scenario. WTF?
• Weren’t there cars in trees on the island in past seasons? Or something that shouldn't have been in a tree? Or something that suggested the island had been under water?

Still here... barely

Check this out (sent my way by Ted Neldshmeim).

Then this (from Rycree).

From Pat.

EMBED-Drunk Guy Confuses Pants With His Shirt - Watch more free videos

Stopped Making Sense

A long time ago. But it's fantastic anyway.

"The better a singer's voice, the harder it is to believe what they're saying."




Good call, Cait.

Martin & Cathy

Went out to dinner with Martin and Cathy last night for Cathy’s birthday. I’m so banged up right now I shouldn’t be breathing, much less at work.

Just got off a conference call- 5 of us in an office with the door closed and I had CRIPPLING social anxiety the whole time due to this CRIPPLING hangover I'm blessed with. I couldn’t have been more awkward if I tried. Seriously. It was terrifying.

When the business development manager was going around the room introducing everyone in the room to the guy on the phone he got to me and realized he didn't know my name. He pointed at me and mouthed, “What’s your name?” But then I forgot it. I forgot my name. Or I didn’t understand the question. Or something like that. It was crazy. I just stood there with this confused look on my face trying to make sense of it all.

Haiti

Yesterday, a group of middle-aged men got off an elevator bay of my building as I stepped onto one to go back up to my floor… One of them said to the others, “Well, I guess I’ll have to cancel my vacation.”

“To Haiti?” another one questioned.

“Yup,” he answered, smiling as though he was very pleased with himself.

They were all sharing a hearty laugh as the door to my elevator closed. I wanted to punch them all in the face.

Though “slactivism”, as my buddy Kieran referred to it, I suppose it combats a prevailing feeling of helplessness to a certain degree… Check this out for ways to donate to the relief effort.

Yesterday, without thinking about it, I texted Wyclef's foundation and The American Red Cross before realizing my employer pays my phone bill.... Which I suppose makes what I've done slacktivism squared?

Knee Jerk

What do you think of Lane Kiffin? He was an assistant at USC -a successful one- then spent a brief but tumultuous stint in Oakland, rinse and repeat in Tennessee, and now he lands the USC job? Has this guy proven anything? Besides that he’s obnoxious and inflammatory? He's certainly not a proven head coach. I guess USC learned nothing from Notre Dame and the Charlie Weis experiment.

Also, and maybe I was just never paying attention until now, but is it depressing how much of a business coaching has become at the college level? I don’t know much about recruiting, but I assume most coaches don’t mention that they’ll leave their current programs if and when they’re offered more money for a gig with a more prestigious institution when they’re sitting on the couches of 17 year-old recruits and surrounded by their family? In fact, they’re probably touting other things: conferences, academics, the pretty girls at University of X, their offensive system or their defensive scheme, and the notion that they help kids become men.

Another P4k rip off with my 2 cents

I'm totally sold on these guys. All of these songs are well worth the listen, especially "California English". Whenever Contra comes out, if it hasn't already, I'll be all over it. These guys are TIGHT.

The intermittent interviews are pretty good too. On one hand I feel sorry for the interviewer who keeps lobbing them stupid questions. On the other hand I'm glad the band manages to make fun of him in a playful manner without making any of the banter confrontational. If I was good enough at anything to be interviewed about it constantly, I'd probably err on the side of confrontational dickishness.

Cousins



interview re: Phish


white sky


Molotov


Horchata


Vampire Craze

California English


Contra