Usually, I just order takeout faggot

HAD DINNER ON MONDAY with some college friends at The Spotted Pig here in New York, and when I saw this on the specials menu, I had to order it.














It was pork cheek wrapped in pork liver with fried slivers of pig ear on top. Still not entirely sure how that translates into the name, but perhaps the pig was really into Miley Cyrus?

You gotta be bad/bold

THE GENTLEMEN WHO GRACE my stoop (who apparently never need to sleep) decided to celebrate the coming dawn this morning by blasting some reggaeton track from their hoopdie at 5:30 AM.

These fairly regular impromptu parties usually come and go without incident (with the notable exception of a few weeks ago when someone leaned out the window and screamed "It's two-fucking-thirty in the morning" to no avail). This morning, however, was different. Apparently tired of having the party forced on them, a neighbor across the street decided to fight back. This brave soul mustered all of their courage and decided to return fire with their most effective weapon: "Strong Enough" by Cher.

Really? Cher? That is the most feeble shit, and yet totally brilliant. There's nothing that would make those guys want to go party someplace else. And you know what? It worked.

I think the next time it happens, I'm putting my speakers in the window and blasting Des'ree.

Let's take back the night.


Fear this.

No country for old men/risen Lords

IT'S GANG INITIATION TIME, so there's been a spike in violence in the hood as the Crips and whatever Dominican gang happens to currently rule my street fight it out for territory and members. A guy from my building was killed last week and there's been a shrine to him outside the stoop ever since. The drug deals are still going down around the clock, though, so no one seems to be deterred. No cause for alarm!

By and large the violence ignores non-gang members, and if it does touch the uninitiated it's mostly muggings. Unfortunately, the muggings often specifically target white people, so I've been taking off my iPod before walking back from the subway station at night. This has severely constrained my happiness, of course, as I no longer get that last spin of whatever shamefully titillating pop song I currently have on repeat.

Just when I think I've had enough and that I really do need to move, along comes a reminder that crime, truly heinous crime, can strike anywhere. Even in the heart of Kent County. Surely it's some perversion of our national character that there hasn't been Runaway Bride-style, 24/7 news coverage of this tragedy.

I'll be starting a Facebook issue group about it, and I hope you'll all support the cause when I shoot off the invites.

Jesus Held Hostage in Kent County

"Clean up all the wiener poopie if you want to see Jesus unharmed."

[via The New Gay]

A little less Yenta, a little more chalupa.

I TURNED THE CORNER onto Broadway, headed towards the closest grocers to grab a few things for dinner, and ran into my neighbor's son standing with his little cousin. He's about eleven-years-old and pudgy, and she was bundled up and had her nails polished. A couple months ago, Oscar escaped from my apartment by knocking aside a screen, and wound up walking through the kid's window from outside. Oscar eventually came back, but the kid didn't mind giving me a lecture when he saw me.

"You need to keep a better eye on that cat."

"I know," I said.

"He came right into my room," he said sternly, but then he brightened. "He's so nice though and he let me pet him. I gave him milk."

"It's a wonder he came back," I said.


SINCE THEN, THE KID brings up my cat whenever we see each other, and tonight was no different. Tonight, though, he ventured into new waters.

"Your cat? Is he a girl?" he asked, apparently hedging the issue.

"No," I said. "He's a boy."

"Shoot," he said.

"Why? Did you have a bet?"

"Not yet," he said and looked over at his cousin. They both looked up at me intently.

"Do you play guitar?" he asked.

"No, but I really want to learn," I said.

"You play piano?" she asked.

"Nope."

"Drums?" As I shook my head they grew increasingly incredulous. "Do you sing? Dance?"

"Only in my apartment when I'm alone," I said smiling, but they just looked up at me blankly.

"Shoot!" he said. "What do you do?"

Now it was my turn to look at them blankly. I couldn't very well tell two preteens that I spent what little free time I have drinking beer, talking on the phone, reading the New Yorker, and wandering aimlessly around Facebook.com. "I ... um... go to school." This seemed both an honest and a responsible answer. They seemed confused, but willing to take my word for it.

"You got a girlfriend?" his cousin asked shyly.

"Yeah, you got a girlfriend?" he asked. "A guy like you needs to have a girlfriend. How old are you?"

"25," I said.

"Yeah, you need a girlfriend. A guy your age needs to have a baby." He'd apparently forgotten that I can't even keep an animal to his exacting standards. You know, the standards by which you somehow manage not to lose your pet out a sixth story window.

They were in clear agreement on this baby point, however. His cousin had perked up, and looked at me like she finally understood the mystery standing before her. "My sister is 20 and she is almost done with school. She already has a baby, too!"

The kid's eyes lit up and he stepped forward, grabbing my arm and motioning for me to lean in close. I bent down. "I can hook you up with a girl," he said, and then let go of my arm. He nodded meaningfully with a very serious look on his face.

Advertising just to reinforce the brand image.

BEHOLD THE DOPE MITTENS I purchased for $0.79 at one of the many dollar stores in the hood, Viva La Vida. I'm fairly certain that the people who made these had no idea what these words meant, but thought they were pretty in the way that Japenese teenagers will write English words on their textbooks (or, for that matter, the way Americans get vaguely Asian "characters" tattooed on their lower backs and shoulders that read "Cuddle Cookie").

"Yeah, you blend."

I WAS WALKING DOWN my street, wheeling my blue grandma cart behind me. I had laundry with me, and was on my way to Up All Night Laundry.

Up ahead I saw this little firecracker guy who I’ve sometimes seen around the building. A month or so ago we’d ridden in the elevator together, and he’d struck up a conversation. At the time I thought he might have been on some upper, but since then, I’ve realized that’s just how he is. He was standing with two other guys I didn’t recognize.

“Hey, what’s up dude?” he asked as I walked past.

“What’s up,” I said, stopping and grabbing his hand with my left hand, still holding my cart with my right.

“What you up to?”

I gestured to my cart. “Going to do laundry.”

“Again? You went last week.”

“Yeah, but I do it every week,” I smiled and started to walk up the street.

“So how long you live in the hood, dude?” he asked, putting his hands in the pockets of his enormous jacket and walking with me.

“Since August.”

“Alright, alright.”

“How about you?”

“I always been here. I used to lived in the Polo Grounds over there,” he said, pointing off towards Bronx, which didn’t seem like the neighborhood, but I let it go. “It used to be the home of the great New York Giants, but they turned it into projects.”

I nodded, not sure of what to say about that. We stepped off the curb to cross the street. “How long have you lived in the building?”

“Eighteen or nineteen years. I got friends there.” He paused and looked up at me from under his black hat. “You’re cool with me, dude.”

“Thanks.”

“You know how we do around here. You know how it is. You gotta do what you gotta do to make it.”

I realized he was talking about selling, and again, wasn’t exactly sure how to respond. Things they don’t teach you around the pool in Connecticut. I let out a short little laugh, and just said, “Yeah.”

“What’s your name, dude?”

“Ben. What’s yours?”

“TK. I’ll call you TB for Tall Ben. Big tall Ben. I like that.”

I smiled. Usually I make some sarcastic comment when someone references my height, but TK was, you know, a drug dealer, so I let it slide. “BTB, right?”

We’d reached the laundromat. It was crowded. People were sitting around watching the flatscreens mounted high on the walls. It looked like there was a home improvement show on, which I thought was weird given we were in the middle of a city and I doubted any of my neighbors had a country house.

TK looked in, then at me, extending his hand. “I’ll see you around, TB. Be cool.”

Jay-Z - "Roc Boys (And The Winner Is)

The hood is distinctly less glamorous.

Doctor, Lawyer, Accountant, Lover

I STEPPED INTO THE ELEVATOR behind a young woman in her late 20s. I was listening to my iPod, which generally means "Do not talk to me, this is my Britney time," but because she'd held the door for me while I checked my mailbox, I nodded and said, "Thanks."

"You a lawyer? You look like a lawyer," she said, looking at the tie I was wearing.

I laughed. "Nope, sorry. I'm a student."

"Yeah? For what?"

"Business."

"That's nice," she said, approvingly. "You can be my accountant when I'm a millionaire. I'ma make a record. I know you won't cheat me 'cause you from the hood."

I smiled and promised I never would. The doors opened on her floor and she stepped into the hallway.

She turned around. "You got a girlfriend?"

I laughed. "No."

"You need one? It's Chermelli. I'm a model too," she said, running her hand down her hair and bouncing her ass out a bit.

"Nice to meet you," I said, sticking my hand out.

"Nice to meet you too, baby!" she said, taking it.

Chris Recites Britney Spears

Representing the Sizzler

IN THE LAST TWO years, new styles of hip-hop dance have popped up all over the country and have spread through YouTube. Last year in New York it was the Chicken Noodle Soup, and this year it's the Aunt Jackie.

Check it out.

Jason Fox - Aunt Jackie

"New rap music with the old school flow."

And because it's so obvious they're having such a good time, here's a couple of guys doing the Aunt Jackie around the house.


Startlingly similar to a trip to the Wizzle home.

New habit, same as the old habit

THERE'S NOT MUCH I can say about La Lohan's recent run in with The Laws, aka Sweet Sweet Justice, so I'm not even going to try. I'll let the picture below say it all.

But before I do, how has my blog become a source for celebrity arrest jokes and mildly raunchy (slash, totally sweet) makeout stories? What has become of my life? Let's all hop in the wayback machine to a time ("Professor, send us to 1999!") when I worked hard and envisioned making something of my life. Now I can't even manage finding someplace to store my shit (not to mention myself) in the NYSizzle, despite the fact that I'm moving in about two weeks.

Let's hop forward a few years to college. Remember when I was a religion major? A poet? That's interesting right? "Oh! What an unusual combination, religion and creative writing," you'd say, secretly worried I'd end up on the street (which I still might yet if NYC has anything to say about it).

"Not that unusual," I would say, "Just think of the Bible as a long, surprisingly popular piece of creative writing, heavy on the voodoo and the smiting." And then me and the religious fundamentalists would laugh and laugh...

And now business school? That's where unusual uniqueness goes to die. It's a slippery slope to a Bloomberg and coke habit to call my own.

So bring on the Lohan. Say what you will about her, but she's always there, making me feel better about my minor concerns in life. Thank you, Lindsay. Thank you.


[via lolhan]

Don't worry, it's actually getting less vibrant

I'VE BEEN SPENDING THE weekend looking for places to live in New York, and most of the places I've been looking have been in Upper Manhattan, in the Harlem/Morningside Heights area. The neighborhoods up here are fantastic, a bit quieter, and the rents are cheap(er), which is a plus. I'm really glad I decided to go to school uptown instead of downtown.

Upper Manhattan has a bad reputation among some people for being unsafe, which - as far as I can tell, and from friends who live in the area - is no longer warranted. Still, when I went online to look up descriptions of neighborhoods, everything I read talked about how Harlem is a neighborhood in transition, an up and coming address, and all about how "vibrant" it is.

Let's add vibrant to the list of words we don't use. Here is the deal: vibrant = black. It's a code word that white people use to tell other white people where the black people live, while still trying to sound like they value "diversity." It's like the word "articulate," which white people use to describe black people like Barak Obama, who they are inexplicably surprised to hear can throw a few nice sentences together - a skill they apparently believed was reserved for them. Vibrant is to black as cozy is to cramped windowless hovel.

Furthermore, how absurd is it for people to say that a neighborhood like Harlem is "getting better," and that you can "actually live there now"? Hello! There are people who live here already who may like it just fine, vibrancy and all!

What the neighborhood description was really saying is, "Harlem is still distressingly 'ethnic,' but fear not: in eight years, college interns, Jersey trash, and East Village hipsters will be stumbling all over Frederick Douglas Boulevard, and you'll be able to get a low-foam latte whenever you like. Move in while rents are still cheap! Manifest Destiny, honkies!"

Catherine Tate - Tempura

"Chinese, basically."

West Side walk it out

THIS WEEKEND I'M HEADED up to New York City to look for an apartment. I'm sure it's going to be a treat and am fully planning to traipse all over the West Side of Manhattan. If that woman from my school's off-campus housing office is correct, my goal of finding a place to live is sad, absurd and laughable, so you all need to cross your fingers for me.

What is it about an impending move to New York that makes everyone feel like they need to tell you horror stories about apartments and moves? Over the past few weeks I've heard more stories about moving back in with your parents, the untold pleasures of living in converted closets, and weeks of couch surfing. I've gotten advice on how to deal with corrupt brokers and the best places to store your belongings in the inevitable occurrence that you wind up homeless for a few weeks. All of the conversations inevitable end with a chipper, "I'm sure you'll find a place, though!"

If I do wind up finding an apartment, I'll flat out dance for joy. I'll bust a joyful Gwen Verdon.

[Thanks O for suggesting this brilliant YouTube video mashup.]

Gwen Verdon - Walk It Out

Fosse also invented crypt walking.

If I said it stinks, would it be a putdown?

MY HOMETOWN IN CONNECTICUT is one of those cities where local artists are commissioned by local businesses and the local government to create sculptures for the street (local streets), which then are auctioned off for charity after some number of months. This is a great idea. Everyone benefits: the artist, the charities, the politician, the business, the people. Sure, sometimes the art winds up being kind of terrible, like the year that the downtown was overrun by smaller-than-life, garish giraffes, but still, great concept.

The current exhibition is called Tossed and Found and is a bunch of sculptures made from trash and found objects. One piece, a huge rhino made from wood panels, is, I hear, already going for $20K. The whole exhibition is a big step up from the painted ceramic animal thing. Go CT!

I couldn't find any pictures of the Tossed and Found stuff (I didn't look that hard - hey, I'm on vacation), but check this stuff out instead! Artists created piles of trash that, once you project light onto them, become something else entirely.

Shigeo Fukuda, Lunch with a Helmet On, 1987


Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Dirty White Trash [With Gulls], 1998


Tim Noble and Sue Webster, HE/SHE, 2003


Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Real Life is Rubbish, 2002


[via The New Shelton Wet/Dry]

But are you calling my mom a pikey?

I'M STARTING BUSINESS SCHOOL in New York next year. I was thrilled with the school early on in the application process (hence my decision to apply early), and was, for obvious reasons, quite happy with the school when they decided to accept me.

Since then, it's been downhill. A meager financial aid package. A confusing website. Different ID names and passwords for everything. Systems and departments that don't speak to each other. Surprise charges. Through all of this, though, the saving grace has been all of the unhelpful and unpleasant people, people who treat me as if my confusion, my very existence, was a chafe on their soul.

Today was the latest in a growing list of indignities. I called the Off Campus Housing Office (because I have no chance of getting university housing), and asked a simple question: What paperwork should I bring with me on my apartment search?

From the beginning, the woman was a terror. She all but made fun of me for thinking I could find an apartment in New York with an August 1 move in date in early July. When I asked her the best time to start looking, she suggested three or four weeks from now. When I pointed out that four weeks from now was, in fact, August 1st, she told me tersely that the rental market was tight (really? in New York?), and suggested that I give myself two or three weeks to find a place. Ignoring the fact that two or three weeks from three or four weeks from now would be the middle of August, I told her that I had a full time job in another city, and that I would need to find something with a tad more alacrity.

I could almost hear her disinterested shrug.

"You may not find a place then."

I was flabbergasted. This woman's job was to help students find off campus housing, and here she was telling me that I would begin classes without a place to live. In effect, she was saying that she couldn't give two shits about the underlying purpose of her job, her sole reason for coming to work every day, the very reason her position, her entire department, existed. She was suggesting that I begin at her school (the honor for which I am paying upwards of $140K) living on the streets.

She must have taken my silence as some sort of grudging acquiesce to her flawless job performance.

"I need to go," she said. "The office closes at five o'clock."

It was 5:02.

It was then that I began to imagine having a Lauren Cooper conversation.

"I ain't bovvered," I would say.

"Excuse me?"

"Do I look bovvered?"

"Sir, the office is closed."

"But I ain't even bovvered though."

"What do you..."

"Are you calling me fat?"

Instead I said, in my fake happiest voice, "Well, gosh, thanks so much! You've been such a big help. I'll be in touch from my lean-to shantytown!"

Catherine Tate - Lauren Cooper Gets Murried

"I ain't even bovvered tho."

Brian Boitano takes it to the streets

ON MY WAY to take my GMATs this morning, I saw a man on rollerblades weaving in and out of lanes on a very busy thoroughfare in Washington. He wasn't wearing a helmet. This sort of blantant disregard for personal safety brings out mixed emotions in me. One part of me wants to grab the person and shake them and tell them to be careful before something terrible happens. Another part of me secretly wants it to.

As I watched, expecting/fearing/wishing for him to be mauled by a car before my very eyes, I realized in horror that he was doing a full ice capades routine, right down Connecticut Avenue. He zoomed up ahead with powerful strokes, and then crouched down and pooched his butt out, spreading his arms wide and waving from side to side with one of those faux euphoric smile plastered on his face.

When I first noticed him (and, really, how could you not?), he had the road all to himself and he was making use of three full lanes. Moments later, however, the cars came up behind him and began honking, which he misinterpreted as encouragement. He smiled more broadly, and – I shit you not – lifted one leg off the ground while waving at an imagined crowd. 30,000 invisible elderly women swooned.

Do you know what I have to say to that?

Gay.

Like a Flower, Opening

ONE OF THE BEST THINGS about living in a city is that you get to know your neighborhood a little more every day. I happen to live in Washington, DC, but for the purposes of this post I could live anywhere. Each new facet makes the neighborhood feel more like home: the Italian barber holding a haircut fundraiser for a mayoral candidate, the to-die-for chicken salad at the deli around the corner, the long-awaited sighting of the middle-aged douchebag who drives that obnoxious orange sports car. The little things reveal themselves and I'm charmed.

My most recent revelation took place this morning. I was out of my apartment early for a Saturday, and was apparently hitting the streets at a prime dog-walking hour. I swear, it was like a 3:1 dog to human ratio on the sidewalk. I've always been perplexed by those people who have one huge dog and one small dog -- was one a surprise? A mistake? Did it appear with a pacifier and a hastily scribbled note in a basket at the doorstep? I mean, don't most people have a preference about these things?

Regardless, I digress. The revelation. I'm walking up the street on the way to the bank and I see not one, not two, but three dogs piss on the exact same spot on the curb, one right after the other. And on my way back, there's another dog pissing on the same spot! And then it's like the scales have fallen from my eyes and I realize that there are dark, dry stains all over the sidewalk -- on a curb, next to a tree, next to a (how cliche is this?) fire hydrant. A veritable epidemic of canine piss stains, baking and calcifying in the sun until the next rain. Check it out for yourself in your neighborhood. I swear, once you know where those stains are coming from, it'll change everything.

Also, I saw a man wiping his dog's asshole with a paper napkin. Seriously? Get a life.