Happiness is a Warm Pen

We all have our personal shortcomings. Even the most noble of humans are inherently flawed, and we all fail to live up the expectations of others, or even our own. For some it’s arrogance, for others it’s greed. And every once in a while it’s a mixture of poor judgment, bothersome neighbors, and a an unusually large collection of bear traps. For me, it’s spite.

Mind you, when I say that I don’t mean open hostility. When I use the word spite, I mean a much more passive-aggressive sort of disdain. For me, spite isn’t fueled by the kind of anger that will manifest itself in screaming matches or fist fights. Instead, it’s a quiet, brooding contempt that involves going to extraneous lengths to prove someone wrong, or at least avoid proving them right.

On the surface, I’m just about the nicest and most helpful person you’re likely to come across. But under the surface lurks a bitterness of Loch Ness proportions and runner-up vindictiveness. If you cross me, I’d never dream of setting fire to your house, much less telling you how I feel.  Rather, I’m more likely to smile and nod while mentally cataloging the imaginary possibilities presented by carbolic acid and a turkey baster until I’m far enough away to stop taking your phone calls and wear my hat in a way you wouldn’t like.

While I like to think that that my passivity is at least in part due to a sense of kindness and respect for others, it’s probably equally the result of another shortcoming: laziness. Ordinarily, laziness is a vice that I will readily embrace, not just as a means to avoid confrontation, but also as a way to avoid such tedious, mundane tasks as doing the dishes, mowing the lawn, or putting on pants. But I do tend to rue my laziness when I let it stand in the way of activities that I actually care about, like buying cupcakes, seeing films with breasts in them, or, most importantly, writing.

I fell into a very bad funk a few years ago which left me unable to write for a very long time. And as someone who has never wanted to do anything with his life other than write silliness with which to bother others, this felt like a rather significant loss.

While the personal melodrama has long since come to a close, its lingering impacts still haunt me, and I keep finding it difficult to muster the mental energy for creativity or self-discipline. It would seem that writing is the same as riding a bike, in that once you’ve stopped doing it for long enough you forget how the baseball cards are supposed to fit in the spokes and until that’s sorted you can’t be bothered with the rest. Occasionally I come up with schemes to force discipline and spark creativity, with bouts of occasional success. I’ve written a few screenplays, even if none of them are quite developed enough to try to produce or even show to anyone without prefacing by saying “I had been drinking very heavily at the time.” I started to workshop a grammar textbook recently, and while I haven’t gotten all that far yet, I at least know enough rules of comma placement to realize just how few of them I observe. And, of course, I started this blog. But as my regular followers would have noted if not for the significant handicap of being imaginary, I update this page just often enough to keep it from developing World Wide cobWebs.

But all that is about to change, for today I learned that someone far less talented than me is about to become far more successful. This this discovery has ignited a fire under my creative cauldron in much the same way that learning your ex has married someone more attractive than you might result in a sharp increase in the number of informational pamphlets on the benefits of plastic surgery “accidentally” left in your wife’s car.

And my assessment of our relative talent isn’t meant to suggest that I possess any. I’m far too self-deprecating to ever dream of suggesting that I am good at something. If I by some odd chance I ever found myself scoring the winning touchdown in a football match, I would probably respond to the wild cheering of the crowd by finding Jesus rather quickly just so that I could have someone I could give all the credit to.  (Either that or by running for the exit before stadium security realizes that the real quarterback has been bound with duct tape and doesn’t usually come out onto the field looking like he’s missed every practice since Thundercats came on.)

Rather, I mean that the hack in question produces work so frightfully atrocious that I wouldn’t even dignify it with the same status as my own self-loathing. There are people whose talent makes you jealous of their success, and then there are people whose staggering lack of it makes you ashamed of your own failure. And the knowledge that this work will soon be unleashed upon the world fills me with enough shame to keep an entire continent from taking its shirt off in the high school locker room.

I once read a very good line in a not very good book to the effect that the human spirit is a marvelous thing, and there is little that it can’t accomplish if it’s out of spite. I’m hoping this proves to be true, because today I let my sense of bitterness and (extremely relative) superiority prompt me to make a pledge to myself: I decided that I’m going to write for at least a half an hour every single day, no matter what. (More when possible, of course.) This will be no mean feat, as lately I’ve gone weeks or even months without working that much (as the quality of this blog will verify). While I’ve made similar vows in the past and consistently interpreted them with the same sort of leniency as New Year’s resolutions about exercise and personal hygiene, my aggravation at the state of the universe is great enough at this moment that I feel like I could actually deliver for once.

Ultimately, that isn’t going to be enough.  It is of course crucial to develop technical skills, and it’s generally quite difficult to be successful in comedy unless you’re genuinely funny or at least capable of working the word “fart” into sentences that no one previously dreamed of.  But equally important is the business of selling yourself to others.  I’ve never been particularly skilled at hustling, networking, or completing the sentence “I’m quite good at ______” with a straight face.  And if there is one thing that my recent encounter with someone else’s success has taught me it’s that knowing how to market your work is what gets you success rather than producing work that deserves it.  But, like everything else in life, self-improvement needs to be taken one step at a time, so I plan to start furiously pounding away at the keyboard until I figure out how to start developing professional contacts or social skills.  Baby steps.

Of course, there are better things to write about than how I should or plan to be writing more.  Assuming I deliver on my promises, at least some of my attention will be focused on updating this blog with a little more regularity. That is, assuming anything happens during the rest of my day that is interesting enough to write about. Or interesting enough to write about on the internet, anyway.

-TC

Maple Soda

I was in Vermont a couple weeks ago, and I made plans to meet some friends at the Blueberry Haus, an ice cream stand in Guilford.  While frozen treats were every bit as delicious as you’d expect from small-town Vermont, I was more intrigued by a bottle of Maple Soda.  After all, we are no strangers to delicious ice cream in Vermont, home of Ben & Jerry’s.  But things unnecessarily flavored with maple, welll…okay, that’s not particularly novel either.  But having never encounetred a maple beverage before, and having served my time as a slave to Big Maple, I couldn’t help my curiosity.

Had I read the label, I might have been taken a moment to reflect on my impulse.  There were two ingredients in the drink: seltzer water and maple.  While I was reeled in by the promise of maple, I expected to find it used in a bit more moderation, perhaps in a soda sweetened with maple instead of high fructose corn syrup.  But instead of tasting something akin to Maple Coke, I was subjected to a bottle of frothy, watered-down, reduced-sugar maple syrup.  Which, I might add, is considerably less appealing than it sounds.  It was as though someone said, “I really enjoy seltzer water, but wouldn’t it be better if it was infused with the dark, bitter aroma of a tire fire?”

I hope I don’t run into Molasses Soda next time I’m in the farmlands.  Because deep down I know that my sense of adventure greatly outweighs my common sense.

-TC

Everybody Loves a Clown

My birthday present this year was a pair of tickets to see Cirque du Soleil at Radio City Music Hall.  While the various acrobatics seemed to be tied together with some vague, overarching plot, I couldn’t tell you for the life of me what it was.  As best as I could tell, the non-tumbling man in the cape was in love with a buxom space flower, so he decided to shoot clowns at her from a cannon until she got the hint. And, as she’s a bit slow on the uptake, he chose to occupy himself in the meantime by putting together a floor show that would make Ricky Ricardo hang up his bongos and weep.

I might have missed some of the nuances, but the show was fairly enjoyable nonetheless.  Juggling, tumbling, and spandex-wearing were found in plentiful supply, as were comic relieving clowns.  Though if there’s one thing more terrifying than a clown, it’s a French-Canadian clown.  As I’m sure they teach on the first day at Harvard Business School, never trust a man whose mustache matches his necktie.

-TC

Philadelphia

I recently returned from a short weekend in Philadelphia.  While the more devious parts of me are inclined to say that the highlight of the trip was making a vegetarian watch me eat a cheesesteak on her birthday, that wasn’t focus of the trip. Rather, I was brought to Philadelphia because the ever lovely Rachel G. had acquired a couple of tickets to see most of The Cars.  Benjamin Orr, their bass player and occasional lead singer, passed away a few years ago from pancreatic cancer, so it was probably for the best that they didn’t goad him into attendance.  It’s always difficult to focus on music when a ghost is trying to steal the show.

The concert itself was pretty amazing, if you like that sort of thing.  As it happens, I do, and as such, it was.  As the band took the stage with no introduction and the least bravado I’ve seen outside a funeral, the room went wild.  What The Cars lacked in antics (or, for that matter, dialogue of any sort), they more than made up for with spirited performances of some great classics, and a healthy mix of new material sprinkled in for those in the crowd that are unfortunate enough to not remember the 80s.  There were moments where Ric Ocasek literally dropped his guitar behind his back, slumped his shoulders, and stood motionless while the rest of the band rocked out.  If not for some awkward hipster robot dancing from synthmaster Greg Hawkes, you might have mistaken the show for a sound check.  But personally, I felt the lack of theatrics did only added to the charm of the night.  And even if the band had failed to deliver even the most mechanical reproductions of their work, it still would have been worth it just to stand in the same room as Ocasek, one of the best pop songwriters and producers in recent history.  Fortunately, The Cars delivered nicely, so I didn’t have to keep telling myself that on the way home.

In place of the departed bassist, the band largely made due with a pre-recorded bass track.  But on a few numbers, Greg Hawkes assumed responsibilities with Ben’s old bass.  As the set list went, they did shy away from songs that Ben sang lead on, with Just What I Needed and Lets Go as the only notable exceptions.  Some other personal highlights included Let The Good Times Roll, You Might Think, You’re All I’ve Got Tonight, Since You’re Gone, and the delightful new Sad Song.  A great show enjoyed in great company made for a great evening.

From there, Rachel and I crashed the tail end of her sister’s barbecue, and the three of us spent the next day together wandering around the city.  We took a leisurely walk around the old Waterworks and the park by the river, eventually breaking so that I could make the vegetarian duo watch me eat the most unhealthy meat product I could possibly find.  Then after a brief furlough at Johnny Rocket’s for milkshakes, we met up with another local friend (who was also in the middle of a birthday) and went to Buffalo Billiards for a few quick rounds of shuffle board.  Good times and a few drinks were had by all.

A short bus ride later, we were back in the New York, ready to resume our normal lives of avoiding eye contact with people who want money.

-TC

Hat

A friend and I met for dinner this evening at DERA, our favorite Pakistani restaurant in Jackson Heights.  Everything was going more or less according to plan.  The night was cool, the food was excellent, there was consistently no aloo palak despite it being consistently on the menu.  Then about halfway through our meal, I suddenly became aware of a dirty old man hovering over my shoulder.

When I looked up, he started mumbling and making vague broad gestures at our table.  After a moment, my friend asked, “What do you want?” Our guest responded by taking our water jug and a nearby Pepsi can, and trying to pour the contents of the one into the other.

The man soon came to the realization that this operation was more logistically difficult than he had originally imagined, and set the items down, giving them a dismissive wave and vague yet unmistakable mumble of derision.  He gave another quick survey, then started reaching for my friend’s water glass. Despite my friend’s repeatedly saying “no” with increasing firmness, the man took his water glass and went about his pouring maneuver with greater success.

At this point, my friend decided that action should be taken before any of our food met the same fate.  After failing to signal to the waitress, he tracked her down and started explaining the situation. While I could not hear the interchange, it seemed that her less than precise grasp of English was leading to some confusion about why he wanted me thrown out after we had ordered together.  However, she eventually got the gist of his wild hand gestures, and came over to ineffectively ask our personal vagrant to leave.  Finally, the man behind the counter caught wind of what was going on, and ran over tour table, grabbing the shabby man and forcibly escorting him outside.

We dismissed the establishment’s apologies with “it’s okay, it’s New York” and returned to our meal.  But a moment later, the man wandered back in.  This time, however, the guy manning the counter caught sight of him almost immediately.  Pausing briefly to wrap up some food, he leapt into action once more, this time with a bag in his hand.  By all appearances, he was trying to bribe the man not to come back by offering him food. But, this self-serving altruism was to no avail, and we spent the rest of the meal watching random waitstaff members throwing him out every few minutes.  On the plus side, we were given two free DERA hats for our trouble, along with the check.  We tipped graciously for the food, the hats, the story, and the personal body guard service, which does not come standard with most meals.

There is a simple lesson in all this: like Malcolm X who would not sit with his back to the door for fear of his enemies, we will no longer take the closest table to the door for the fear of thirsty hobos.

-TC

Ray's

I was on my way uptown to attend an evening event at a gallery, when I suddenly found myself a bit peckish.  So decided to stop off for a slice at Ray’s.  I wasn’t sure if it was a branch of the reputedly good Ray’s, or just one of the many knockoff establishments that had figured out how to mix the words “Ray’s,” “Original,” and “Famous” into a healthy profit.  But at the moment, I was hungry enough that it didn’t matter.

I wandered inside and decided to take the obnoxiously long line as a good sign.  As I was waiting patiently, a man walked up behind me and said, “quality of life, huh?”  I turned around and found a man who didn’t look exactly homeless, but didn’t look exactly un-homeless.  After a brief staring match, he pointed at my bag, which was a free gift from an AIDS media company I once worked for, and I realized that he thought I had AIDS.  I didn’t feel like explaining that I don’t have AIDS, I just have a bag that says AIDS on the side, so instead, I said “Yeah,” and shrugged.

After I got back to pretending to decide what kind of slice I wanted, a few moments of silence passed.  Then the guy, still engrossed in my bag, said “Media!  You work in the media?”  I confirmed his suspicions, and he added “I read today that, uh, Apple can track you with, like, iPods.”  Accepting that this conversation wasn’t going away any time soon, I said “Yeah, I heard that, too.  It’s crazy.”  My new friend just stared at me for a minute, then very loudly exclaimed, “Whaddya think of that?”  But before I could give any insight, he immediately turned around and walked outside.

I really need a new bag.

-TC

Beard Wars

For those of you who have been instilled with a burning curiosity about the state of my facial hair, I thought I would offer a quick update.

Not only have I consistently avoided any upkeep on my facial real estate, but I have also decided to start wearing my long, luxurious woman hair in a ponytail.  While I am generally of the opinion that guys in ponytails tend to look like douche bags, I can’t avoid the conclusion that it is the easiest way to keep hair out of my mouth without breaking down and visiting a barber.  Besides, one of the nice things about New York is no matter where you go or what you do to yourself, you will not be the strangest looking person on the train.

This theory was borne out very quickly when I found myself on the Manhattan bound 7.  A couple stops in, a bespectacled older man got on, looking very respectable in a nice suit and overcoat, sipping a small Starbucks coffee.  Ordinarily, he was not the sort of man who would have attracted any undue attention, had he not been bleeding from the head.  Which, as it happened, he was.

Suddenly, my grooming habits didn’t seem all that suspect.

-TC

Beard

I’ve long maintained the stance that the reason I never grow facial hair is that I’m incapable of doing so.  Or at least that I’m incapable of growing the sort of facial hair that anyone might want to look at.  However, after a year long silent, one-man boycott of The National Barbers Association, I’ve developed quite the mane of long, luxurious woman hair, which gives a kind of a “loner in the woods” look that I’m growing rather fond of.  And I figured that the addition of a patchy hobo beard would add a little something special to the effect.  Armed with a strong penchant for any goal that requires absolutely no effort on my part, I set about growing my very first beard.

A little over a week into the experiment, I went into a bakery in my neighborhood.  As I waited in line, I decided to peruse the contents of the pastry counter, which required me to bend down next to a child in a stroller.  After a moment, it’s mother looked at me and a concerned expression crossed her face.  She then began to slowly, discreetly pull the stroller in the opposite direction.

It was that moment when I decided that I’m keeping the beard.

-TC

Jazz

As a busy New Yorker, I know the value of keeping on the move.  And as a life-long devotee to the art of anti-socialism, I know the value of not talking to anyone who can possibly be avoided.  So of course I spend a good deal of my walking around time wearing headphones so as to give casual observers the impression that my mind is in places far too lofty and complex to be bothered with such petty, mundane tasks as eye contact.  It’s no secret that if anyone ever willingly speaks to you in the streets of New York, they’ll either want a dollar or a monthly contribution.  Or at very least they’ll want directions that you’ll be embarrassed by your inability to provide despite having walked past their destination every day for the last three years.

Thanks to a rather interesting definition of the words “intellectual property,” I’ve recently come into a sizable jazz collection, which is currently providing the majority of my life’s soundtrack.  As I work my way through it, I’m finding that the city really does look different when you have a constant stream jazz pumping into your brain.  It’s like putting on Woody Allen goggles.  Suddenly, the architecture seems majestically industrial rather than cold and indifferent.  The garbage-filled streets somehow magically transform into streets lined with garbage.  And instead of an endless parade of self-centered elitists who think they’re too good to give you the time of day, you see an endless parade of self-centered elitists who are too good to give you the time of day.  The city just becomes so alive and vibrant, I’d swear I even saw a homeless man delivering an improvised soliloquy about the beauty of the sun setting over the distant horizon and the tender breeze left in its wake.

But I couldn’t really hear him over the music, so he might have just wanted a dollar.

-TC

Black Swan

In the interest of having some pretense of a connection to popular culture, I recently decided to watch all the movies from 2010 that have been nominated for the best picture Oscar.  I figured that if nothing else, this would provide me with slightly more concrete grounds on which to say that the award means nothing when it is ultimately doled out to some hackneyed piece of tripe that can make no greater claim to artistic merit than the failure to cast any former Saturday Night Live alumni.

So it was that I decided to watch Black Swan the other night, and I must say that as excuses to watch chicks make out go, it was a pretty good one.  While the heavy-handed discussion of white swan/black swan dichotomy could get a bit repetitive, the characters and performances were enough to make some clumsy attempts at poignancy more palatable.

For me, though, the most indelible impression of the movie originated from one such discussion.  There is a scene where Natalie Portman, the newly ordained Swan Queen, is being lectured by her director on the nature of The Black Swan, which he is still unconvinced she can channel.  As a homework assignment, he instructs her to go home and touch herself, an act which she repeatedly attempts throughout the next hour.  However, despite some valiant effort, she consistently fails to see her assignment through to completion.  As I watched Portman’s masturbatory fervor interrupted time and time again, it was hard not to think that the struggle to find oneself has never been taken quite so literally.

-TC

Office

My company moved our office today.  While I would ordinarily prefer the task of cleaning a cage for incontinent ferrets to moving (a choice that I am rarely presented with in life), the process proved relatively painless.  This was primarily due to the fact that my bosses chose to forgo an exhaustive search for office suites in the city, and instead just move within the same building from the fifth to the fourth floor.  I can only assume that they wanted to enjoy all the fun of moving without suffering the indignity of van rental.

Whatever their reasoning, I can’t say that I feel good about this development.  After all, when you walk up to an elevator and press the down button, it’s difficult to argue that you’re moving up in the world.

-TC

Back to the Land of Dreams

Several years ago, people started suggesting that I write a blog. As I distrust any form of communication more advanced than the Dixie Cup telephone, I chose to ignore these people and occasionally give them dirty looks. However, when I moved to New York and found myself isolated in a crowd of millions, I grew weary of my anti-social tendencies, and in a momentary lapse of judgment, I decided to try nominally interacting with the world for a change.

Unfortunately, I quickly sensed a problem: I had nothing interesting to say, and unlike most people on the Internet, I was fully aware of that fact. So my blog quickly began to languish, with a bi-monthly, monosyllabic update seeming like a deluge of personal revelation. While I would like to blame the absence of readers for my lack of content, the real explanation is simply that the mixture of boring and lazy represents a toxic combination to the blank page, and I couldn’t be bothered to update the faceless masses on the inanity of my day.

Since almost everyone I know in the blogosphere tends to skulk around the virtual walls of tumblr, I thought I would start a new blog here in the hopes that doing so might somehow result in my being inundated with spontaneous ninja battles, depraved sexual escapades, or at very least the videos of kittens in paper bags that seem to pass for noteworthy events in the virtual world.

While I can’t claim that my life has become any more fascinating in recent months, nor that I have developed an unprecedented dedication to digital life, I can at least say that I am sufficiently bored to make a concerted effort to entertain those unfortunate enough to have stumbled across this page. I’ll also post the archives from my old blog, partly for the convenience of anyone interested, but mostly in the interest of mimicking the appearance of productivity. It’s the American way.

-TC

Mice

A few months ago, my household was blessed with the arrival of a new baby. I am of course using the word “blessed” in the loosest possible sense. In any event, my roommate’s “sister who isn’t his sister” (I have no idea) recently gave birth, and apparently decided that this event merited moving into my apartment four days a week. This then resulted in her “mother who isn’t really her mother” (still don’t know) telling her that if she was going to be gone so much, she could just stay gone, which she then promptly did. Or at least, from a certain perspective she did. From the vantage point of an irritable tall man, it would seem that she was instead staying put. After spending a further month helping my living room live up to its’ name, she and the baby finally managed to acquire lodging somewhere that wasn’t my apartment. Fortunately for all, her new home is fairly near my apartment, so she and the baby still come by every day to hang out, watch TV, and generally bathe in my sink.

I like to think of myself as a rather kind-hearted person, one who is generous enough in spirit to boldly declare that a single mother living on the street is a bad thing. I’d even go so far as to say I’m firmly in favor of offering someone assistance in their hour of need. However, I’m also a terrible human being, and firmly against babies being within shrieking distance of me. Lately I’ve been having some difficulty trying to reconcile these dual tendencies towards altruism and misanthropy. And when you come home every day to be freshly reminded of the fact that constant jet traffic from LaGuardia is not the single most bothersome sound you could have in your home, it’s easy for misanthropy to gain favor.

On a more positive note, the arrival of the baby came with the arrival of an unaffiliated transient cat. Unfortunately, this cat has also brought an as yet undetermined quantity of freeloading mice to our attention. He has caught two so far, and his continued infatuation with the scurrying sounds from the radiator suggests that there are more to come.

So I’ve decided to do what any reasonable person would do: I’m going to buy the baby a pair of Mickey ears and give it Pavlovian cookie every time it squeaks. Hopefully we’ll get at least one problem solved.
-TC

Diastema

I have a rather sizable gap between my front teeth. This gap is in fact so sizable that it is not unheard of for me to occasionally whistle as I speak. Growing up, I was mortified by the prospect of having to recite the tongue twister “Sally Sells Sea Shells by the Sea Shore.” This was not a result of the common concern that I would be unable to perform the lingual acrobatics involved in correct pronunciation, but rather out of a fear that listeners might mistakenly think that I had adapted the work into a musical performance piece for piccolo and voice.

Thanks to my recently kindled love affair with This American Life, I discovered today that my dental shortcoming has an official medical name: diastema. It is very reassuring to know that if anyone brings up the subject of my front teeth, I will now be able to say that I am a diastematic. Telling them that I suffer from Rescue Ranger Dale’s Syndrome is getting a bit embarrassing.
-TC

Dull, Dull, Dull...

When I first started this blog, I had intended to use it as an impetus to write on a regular basis. I figured that I might not have something interesting to say every single day, but that I should be able to come up with a pithy observation about life in big city (or how much I hate my own life in the big city) at least once a week. However, in making this assumption, I hadn’t accounted for one tiny detail: I’m an extremely dull person who thrives on a healthy mixture of monotony and tedium.

The other day, I called my grandfather to wish him a happy 90th Birthday. After the conversation had drifted to a lengthy analysis of which foods taste good with salt on them, it struck me that this was probably the most interesting discussion I’d had all week. The stage set, we upped the ante by moving on to naming states we’d driven through but not stopped in, and fans of witty banter everywhere rejoiced as the art form was was taken to a whole new level when my grandmother chimed in with an annotated oral history on how much more expensive onions are than they used to be. The riveting revelations just would not end.

I live in one of the busiest and most exciting cities in the world. I’m constantly surrounded by all forms of culture, debauchery, and insanity that the mind can conjure. You’d really think I’d have more to show for my day to day existence than the ability to avoid eye contact with performance artists. Perhaps I need to get out more. Or talk to strangers more. Or talk to people I know more.
-TC

Woodside Story

Something unusual happened the other night while I was enjoying a leisurely stroll home with some Pakistani take-out that I hoped to get very well acquainted with. As I neared my house, I saw a group of young, macho looking alpha male types moving rather boisterously in my direction. Ordinarily, I would think nothing of this. I’ve lived in the city long enough that such sights aren’t uncommon, my neighborhood isn’t a particular hotbed of violent crime, and I’m large enough to fool most strangers into thinking that I might not be the single biggest coward in the history of time. Plus, having been raised by hippies, I’ve had the importance of not judging people based on appearances drilled into me since birth, so I know better than to assume that someone is violent just because I can smell their testosterone-soaked energy wafting down the street.

However, in spite of all this, I suddenly found myself overwhelmed with the feeling that I was about to be mugged. I don’t know what made me so certain of the inevitability of my fate. It may have been nothing more than simple paranoia. In any case, in that moment, there was no doubt in my mind that things were about to get ugly. I didn’t know what to do, but I was relatively certain that dropping my dinner and running away as I shrieked like a schoolgirl with a frog in her dress would be at very least undignified, if not actually counter productive. So instead I decided to proceed to my front door as though nothing was wrong.

What felt like a very long, very tense moment passed as I walked on and tried to remember the exact series of muscle movements involved in looking cool. I was about to turn and walk up the front steps of my building when suddenly and without warning the gang linked arms and began Wizard of Oz-style skipping down the street.

At that moment in my life, I was emotionally prepared to be mugged, and I was logically prepared to not be mugged. But I was definitely not prepared to walk into an impromptu reenactment of West Side Story.

-TC

The Continuing Adventures of Oatmeal Girl

I woke up the other day and found my house infested with young people. I wasn’t especially thrilled about this development, as I dislike youth on principle, what with their vitality and hope for the future and all. But I assumed they belonged to my roommate somehow and thought nothing of it. After a quick shower, I wandered into the kitchen to get some water and found myself confronted with a young girl, maybe 16 or 17, who as best as I could tell was wearing nothing more than a blanket. I think she was my roommate’s sister, who I’d only met once in passing when it was very dark out, but I didn’t have time to confirm this suspicion. As I entered the room, she held out a bowl and asked, “Is…is this what you use to make oatmeal?” Extrapolating from the packets of oatmeal on the counter and the almost boiling pot of water, I read the intent of this question as “is this what I should eat oatmeal out of?” Horrified by the prospect that I was in the same room as a half naked and potentially underage girl who hadn’t mastered such complex concepts as how a bowl works, I said “it could be,” and left.

That was my first encounter with Oatmeal Girl. The next day, I was getting out of the shower when I heard the bathroom door creak open slightly. Again, I thought nothing of it, as the door hasn’t closed enough to latch since I moved in, so I figured a draft must have nudged it a bit. But when it creaked further still, I decided to have a peek outside to make sure nothing was out there preparing to murder me or sell me encyclopedias or anything. Peering around the edge of the door, I found myself face to face with Oatmeal Girl, who appeared to have been spying on me as I was toweling off. She apologized and asked for a bar of soap, which I awkwardly handed her while hiding my shame behind the door.

When you realize that the only person to have seen you naked in the last few years is quite possibly the dumbest, unskilled, underage voyeur alive, it’s difficult to argue that life is going according to plan.

-TC

Hockey

Last night I joined some friends in watching the Olympic gold medal hockey match between The United States and Canada, and I must say I found myself astounded. Just when I thought sports couldn’t get any more boring, I was amazed at how incredibly little I could manage to care on the highest of international stages. It took many years of hard work and dedication, but I think I have finally reached the apex of human achievement in putting on such an unparalleled display of herculean disinterest. If only there was a medal for that.

-TC

Snow Storm

I lived in Phoenix for about eight months, and it was probably the most consistently awful eight months of my life. I had no friends. The ceiling in my cockroach infested apartment leaked rusty algae from time to time. My job involved destroying people’s lives by looking at pictures of backed up toilets and decapitated horses all day long. I went on a single blind date with a woman who turned out to only have a single leg. In short, I came away with absolutely nothing positive to say about the American Southwest.

And yet somehow on days like this when I never see the sun, can’t control the heat in my apartment, and am plagued by an ever increasing number of wet socks, I can’t help asking myself, why did I leave the desert again?

-TC

Valentine's Day 3: Day Harder

When I was a boy, Valentine’s Day was a day for friendship as much as for love. We’d tape brown paper bags to our desks, and walk around giving Ninja Turtle themed cards to anyone we could stand. I’d always open the package of cards, pick out the second best card for my best friend, keep the best one for myself, and divvy up the rest amongst my classmates, less as an exercise in appreciation for the people I gave them to than an exercise in spite for the people who weren’t even worthy of false sentiment.

But oh, how times have changed. As adults, Valentine’s Day is exclusively for the purpose of showering appreciation on people who have low enough standards to take their clothes off for us in hopes that they will continue to do so. If you’re in a relationship, it’s a day of love, sex, and rapidly depleting cash reserves. For me, it’s usually a day of twiddling my thumbs while I have no one to talk to because no one else in the world seems to be single. But this year, I don’t want to be left out of the festivities, so I’ve been trying to come up with a series of activities for one that will be both productive and romantic so that I may make the best use of my alone time without feeling like I’m the only person in the world who isn’t in love.

Thankfully, another flash of inspiration struck when I woke up this morning. I live in New York City, where the opportunities for romantic activities are endless. But one of the time honored traditions for young couples in this city is the good old fashioned horse drawn carriage ride through Central Park. So, as a token of appreciation for myself, I’m going to get gussied up, head on over to Central Park, rent all the horse drawn carriages in the city, and pay them to run over anyone they see holding hands.

And then, if I’m in an especially jaunty mood, I might steal their chocolates.

-TC