Join the Club

Last night, I was an enthusiastic player on Team Drunk, but today, I am taking a much more relaxed approach and renewing my membership with Club Hangover.

Care to join me? You are quite welcome.

I have always believed that the sheer manic energy, the single mindedness of purpose of intoxication is comparable to a sports team's devotion. You enter the bar TOGETHER. You order a pitcher as a GROUP. When it comes time to go to the next bar, NO ONE gets left behind. You engage in ridiculous missions: the hunt for burritos. The quest to find the nearest subway station. The feats of strength involved in hailing a cab for the group. Drinking is a very spirited experience. Team Drunk.

The hangover the following morning, however, is much more apathetic. Sure, you may want to be around other people who are hungover. But you really have nothing to say to them. You may want to do the same things as other hungover people - eat greasy food, drink several gallons of water, sit on the couch and watch TV, chatter quietly and avoid bright lights. But really, no one is particularly energetic when engaging in any of these activities. You admit to having something in common with other people, but they can come and go as they please. Club Hangover.

While attending club meetings, I have discovered that there is a recommended uniform for weekdays. It is by no means mandatory. Certainly, weekends are casual - sweats, t-shirts, jeans - whatever is most comfortable. However, when attending meetings on Mondays through Fridays, Club Hangover members wear suits.

I know it sounds crazy. But hear me out.

A suit makes you look fabulous. The suit requires no thought - no coordinating colors, matching tops and bottoms - it simply IS. A basic gray, black or blue suit is good year round. On men and women, the jacket covers a bloated stomach and it's also a delightful garment to wrap around yourself if you're cold or just feeling odd. No matter if the shirt is wrinkled - the jacket will cover it. Ties are discouraged. On women, high waisted pants stay up comfortably without any worry about good posture. Skirt suits are less desirable as they tend to require high heels and pantyhose.

Perhaps the best quality of the suit is that it makes your body look so put together that it draws attention away from your disheveled hair, blotchy skin and bloodshot eyes. No one notices what the rest of you looks like when they're admiring how professional you look in a suit.

And so, next time you find yourself attending a meeting of Club Hangover, remember - you look far less nauseous when you're wearing a suit.

Haiku, Featuring the Rude Mechanical Orchestra

Because if I stopped doing this feature, I would lose touch with reality.

Please note: This blog turns ONE YEAR OLD in less than one week. I'm terrified. A party may be in order. Stay tuned.

Gracious Hospitality

Tasty Friday night
Cheese wheel the size of my head
I can die happy.

Apparently, This Was a Benefit For a Guy Whose House Burned Down

Punk rock marching band
Architecture studio
Brooklyn - not so bad.

Museum-ing

Robert Moses' plan.
Build a Bridge! Save the City!
What a bad idea.

Just What You Need

Click goodreads.com
Everyone needs another
Social network site

But Are They Made With Real Girl Scouts?

Once upon a time in Bestchester, in the early '90s, I was a Girl Scout. Every year, I sold cookies in my father's office. As I am incapable of convincing people to exchange their money for goods and services, I was never a power seller. But I still did a brisk business in the IT department.

My favorite were always the Thin Mints - and they still are. I love their airy crisp and the minty chocolate coating. I like biting into one and then pulling away to see the grooves my front teeth have left in the thick fudge. I relish licking away the chocolate to reveal the wafer beneath it all, which has little holes like a Ritz cracker. But most of all, I love the circular shape of the cookie. They're like little minty chocolate Frisbees that I can toss into my mouth.

I dropped out of Girl Scouts in high school and went several years without experiencing a Thin Mint cookie. Sure, Keebler makes those Grasshopper things, but somehow they're not the same unless they are round and come in a bright green box.

Lo and behold, one fine spring afternoon during my freshman year of college in Boston, I saw Girl Scouts selling cookies in the T subway station. In the Bestchester, we always made people preorder, but these girls were handing out boxes in exchange for money. Hot. They were also charging $4 instead of the $3.50 that I remembered. Not so hot. I bought a box, tossed it into my messenger bag without much thought and dashed off to the library, most likely to take a nap.

Later that night, I unearthed the box of cookies from beneath whatever ominous history books I was carrying around at the time (collegiate paperbacks with ominous titles like War Without Mercy and The Making of the English Working Class). I opened it up and was shocked, shocked, to discover that these New English Thin Mints were not round but scalloped! The deceit! The lies! The deception!

I bit into one. The taste and texture rang true, but they somehow just weren't the same without the circular shape. Running my tongue along the curvy edge of the cookie was a vastly different experience than the smooth curve I remembered. Apparently, the cookies sold in New England come from a different cookie plant than the ones in New York, thus their alternate shape. I shared the cookies with my roommates and was rather disappointed about the whole thing.

Just last week, I was back in Boston visiting my sister. I happened to see another Girl Scout cookie table set up in the T. Without a second thought, I laid out $4 for a box of Thin Mints. Again, I put them in my purse and I didn't glance at the box again until I got back to New York.

Scallops again. I had completely forgotten my freshman year purchase.

So screw you, Boston.

Dinner Themes

My apartment contains five (5) residents and one (1) refrigerator. It's an all-female group and we don't share food. That translates to a fridge full of oddities like pumpkin butter, a gallon of diet iced green tea, 6 different kinds of tomato sauce, two (2) boxes of baking soda and a half dozen half empty bottles of Poland Spring.

It's a jungle in there.

One of my roommates travels often and thus isn't around to poke around the fridge, two of them don't particularly care about what's in there, and the other roommate and I obsess about it constantly. Once a week or so, one of us will end up down on our knees in front of the fridge, shuffling around take-out containers and tossing expired orange juice.

Last week, my other obsessed roommate sent out an email to all of us about the recent proliferation of containers in the fridge. I realized that many of them were mine; I'd been a little more "creative" than usual with my Trader Joe's adventures. Two types of bruschetta topping, salsa, pesto, a plastic container of leftover Korean food from when my brother visited and some goat cheese in a tub. Most of these items were nearly finished.

My mission was clear. I present to you my weekend menu:

Food in Jars

FRIDAY

Tomato and Olive Bruschetta on 7 Grain Bread
Container Corner: Half empty Trader Joe's tomato and olive bruschetta topping.
Bonus: Bread became the right size after I cut the moldy side off. The bread was a gift from a friend of a friend who works at the Union Square Farmer's market.

Rigatoni pasta with olive oil and vegetables: peppers, tomatoes, zucchini
Container Corner: Half empty Trader Joe's mixed vegetable bruschetta topping.
Bonus: Pasta is cheap.

SATURDAY

Spicy Korean Beef Stew over multi grain rice
Container Corner: Giant plastic take out tub of stew.
Bonus: I feel very maternal eating my brother's leftovers. The rice I made that evening.

SUNDAY

Tortilla Chips with Pesto
Container Corner: Nearly empty pesto jar.

Vegetable Tostada with peppers, onions and mushrooms, topped with Salsa and Goat Cheese.
Container Corner: I am that awesome. Mostly empty salsa jar and goat cheese tub.

I really need to go to the grocery.

Stolen Time

This season's early onset of Daylight Savings time is slowly making me lose my mind.

I present, to you, a few chronologically-inspired haiku:

Great Mystery

Aside from time changes,
One wonders, in Washington,
What they do all day

Backwards

Stolen internet
Knows the time changes better than
My office network

Cold And Light

Bright, blinding sun rays
And a side of icy air
Light up my...dinner?

Too many clocks

Sunday noon rising
Or is it one? Which clock knows?
The cell phone speaks truth.

Waste of Waste

I am on a crusade. Or perhaps a mission. It's not really a quest. Perhaps it's more of a campaign. As you can see, I am not quite sure how to describe it.

I am against the horrible waste of time, energy and talent that plagues our higher education system today. I am protesting coloring in bubbles, filling out forms, and generally fitting into small, uncomfortable boxes. I have two prime examples to support my claim.

Case Study 1: Envelopes in Envelopes

Impossible! I hear you cry. But it's true. When one asks a professor, a mentor, or a boss for a recommendation, it is considered standard practice to supply the person writing the letter with a stamped, addressed envelope so that they can easily send the document where it needs to go.

Unfortunately, when one no longer lives in the same city as the people one is asking for recommendations, one must mail them the envelopes.

And herein lies the challenge.

You're supposed to put an envelope inside of another envelope with the same dimensions. It's impossible. It doesn't fit! It's pure madness. I have often encountered this problem and then sat at my desk for unreasonable amounts of time, one envelope in each hand, looking from one to the other in disbelief.

After a solid fifteen minutes of staring at the envelopes, I'll usually muster up the courage to wrangle with them. You have to fold the envelope - but you have to fold it twice, because it's the same length and width. Now, the folded envelope fits, but it's bumpy and it prevents the outside envelope from closing properly. The only solution is to tape the outside envelope. And now the entire thing looks like a preschooler assembled it.

I can only imagine that it must be some sort of twisted IQ test for college and graduate school - the fitting of the same sized envelope inside another. I have heard *crazy* things about buying large brown envelopes that don't require you to fold the smaller envelope - but those are (1) expensive (2) require more postage (3) silly. I do not think their use constitutes passing the IQ test.

Case Study 2: Register to Register

This example comes to me via a friend of Patel's. Apparently, to take the bar exam in the state of California, a law student is required to register to register. What's more, that student needs to register to register for the exam 90 days after beginning law school - or pay a "late" fee of $50. Bear in mind that the bar exam is taken after completion of the *third* year of school.

I suppose the reasoning for this sort of nonsense is clear - money. The law firms that employ these young bar-takers/future lawyers usually pay all of the fees, so the testing board feels no guilt about piling them on. But honestly, registering to register?

I can't quite wrap my mind around that one either.

Next week - more confusion! Featuring "I'm calling you to invite you to a party that's canceled," and other fine fables!

I Do Not Understand

I live vaguely near NYU. My apartment is a few blocks away from one of its outlying dormitories and thus I frequently find myself in its sphere of influence. I often wander around University Place, Greene Street, West 3rd, 4th, 5th and all of those other numbered streets north of Houston that are east of 5th Avenue, but below 14th Street and west of Broadway and therefore carry the "west" designation. (I hate this, by the way.)

The stores in that area are kind of odd. There's the usual smattering of bars, lunch places, and chain stores. Chiptole? The Gap? Sure, fine, whatever.

What I do not understand are the small, cheap, women's apparel and accessory stores. There's a store that *only* sells purses. I suppose at least the prices are probably high. But what about the jewelery stores? Or that weird Forever-21-but-not-esque store on University and 8th? I think?

I fail to understand how these stores stay in business. Sure, I went to college and lived in the collegiate neighborhood of a city that had many non-student residents. There were a few stupid stores, but the rents were lower (slightly) and many of them went out of business. How does Craptastic Jewelery manage to stay in business by NYU? Do the students simply have that poor taste? Or is the business just a front? And if it's a front for something "interesting," why don't I know about it?

I think that perhaps this spring, I will set up camp outside of one of these ridiculous stores and see what sort of person shops there. I also have half a mind to march in there and demand to see their balance books. If they're not making money, perhaps they could start selling something more interesting, like paint.

Multiple Haiku

Perhaps I'm a little woozy because spring is in the air (or was, briefly, this weekend), but lately, I've had double and triple vision. It's a little unsettling.

Let me tell you about it - in haiku, of course.

Too early

Morning commuters -
Two Members Only Jackets?!
I want to go home.

Nowhere to Nowhere

New England Highway
Eight Wal-marts, as many Kohls
Would you please kill me?

Three points to a Plane

Approaching night train
Two headlights shine - and one more
Burns like a third eye

Double Espresso

Surfacing downtown
Look right - look left in Astor
Starbucks haunts both sides.

Cheese History Night

Warning: This post may be not be appropriate for the lactose intolerant. You may suffer feelings of jealously, rage, and anxiety.

Last week, I was invited to attend one of the famed S&P parties. Though it is well known that there is neither spaghetti nor poker at these events, the invite promised food, drink, and general merriment. It asked that guests interested in bearing gifts bring wine or cheese.

Cheese is the magic word.

I adore cheese. The stinkier, the softer, the better. Raw milks, washed rinds, fresh, semi-soft, bloomy - yes. I do like firmer cheeses, but my heart is with the gooey, young Frenchies. (No, "cheese food" doesn't really count. No Cheez Wiz or American cheese individually-wrapped slices, please.)

In honor of the S&P party, I went to Murray's Cheese Shop* and asked for their rankest offering. I was presented with Epoisses, a cheese with such a stench that I could not even sample it as it was wrapped in plastic and sealed in its own wooden box. But a whiff of the rind through the wrapper proved its point: this was a cheese with presence. Epoisses was originally made by monks, beloved by Napoleon and Louis XIV, and apparently banned on French public transit for its stench. Hott.

It even claimed to be a "stinker" on the label:

"A little disc of soft, sticky thermalized cow's milk cheese with a penetrating, spicy, aroma kept at bay in a little wooden box. Hand ladled curds are moulded, washed in lightly salted water and ripened in humid cellars. After 4 weeks the rind is rinsed with Marc de Bourgogne, a French brandy. Napoleon I and Louis XIV were avid supporters of the strong, meaty taste of this great, little AOC stinker. Serve with a powerful, young Burgundy for full effect."

First of all, I want to be an avid supporter of something - particularly a cheese. But what is this AOC business? Clearly, it was time for some Wikipedia cheese research, as clearly, I have nothing else to do.

The AOC, or Appellation D'Origine Controllee, is a French certification granted to agricultural products to certify that a cheese or wine with the name of a region actually comes from that region. Apparently, the first cheese to fall under this regulation was Roquefort, in the 15th century. The modern versions of these laws were drawn up in 1919.

Fascinating. So my cheese is an OFFICIAL cheese. "The product will be produced consistently in the traditional manner. " Right on, France.

Anyhow, I realized that I needed to remove my epoisses from the refrigerator so that it could become a "succulent, gooey, ooze," as mentioned on Murray's website.

I placed it on my desk. "Hi, cheese." I said.

No response.

I pestered a couple of people on instant messenger instead. "Cheese!" I said to them.

No response.

Eventually, it was time to leave for the S&P party. I presented my epoisses stinker and it was received with much fanfare and many, many stupid questions.

"What were the favorite cheeses of other historical figures, if Napoleon and Louis XIV liked that one so much? What about Charlemagne?"

"Why does it smell so bad?"

"Can the dog try it?"

I am never showing up at a party cheeseless again.

In related dairy news, I almost ate Flying Kosher pizza on Tuesday (but at the last minute, plans were changed to John's and I ate regular, non flying, non kosher pizza instead.) Afterwards, I had pumpkin gelato at Cone's next door. And then I went home and passed out in a food coma.

_____________________________
*Apparently Murray's entered Caseus this year - the CHEESE OLYMPICS. The next one is in 2009. I'm so there.