So I took my little brother to Great Adventure theme park this weekend. (He is going to sleepaway camp for the first time this weekend; so wild!) I have a few hazy memories of Great Adventure from my teens that all blend together into one or two visits. One is finding out that the record for the log flume in one day according to my friends (who had, I guess, heard from the operator) was something like 20 times. That can't be true, but anyone who pays $40 to do the log flume 20 times is an idiot! I mean, it's a theme park staple, and a decent ride to boot, but 20 times--why? It's much better to stand on the bridge and get rocked by a charged wave anyway.
Another memory that stands out is waiting on line behind this Mexican dude puffing the worst smelling thing I'd ever smelled. The odor was burned into my senses for days, and I was not a sensitive-to-smoke kid, really. A few years later I would find out that this was the burn of a Black and Mild--although, I swear, that one time the odor was for whatever reason majorly amplified--and spent many a summer night before college with my co-counselors passing one around the staff porch like a blunt. Anyway, Great Adventure has now banned cigs inside the park, which as a surrogate parent for the afternoon is a major relief. Although funnily enough I did smell some ganj while waiting in line for one ride. At one point in my life I thought it would be fun to get really baked in the car on the ride over and ride the Great American Scream Machine, but that dream has yet to be realized.
Another thing: there is a serious paucity of hot twenty-something to ogle at walking around Great Adventure. Lots of girls dressed all skimpy, for sure, but most of them are just ugly in an indistinct way. It really made waiting on line that much harder.
Finally, starting V. over for the fourth time in about as many years. Will I finish? Forecast is not optimistic, but I am holding out hope. I haven't read a book yet this summer, it's getting quite pathetic, but I am up on the political news and celebrity gossip like never before. It's not that my interest in that stuff is on the rise, but I am imbibing that stuff on the regular via extended Gawker breaks at work.
I think it's funny when little kids cry on the subway, trying to cope with the claustrophobia and the heat. Everyone around them is struggling with the same discomfort, but kids just experience the feeling completely raw, and all they can do is bawl. They are the realest.
Subway tensions are riding high these days. I was thrown some mean eyes this morning on the way to the office. My car was kind of crowded and I was pressed against the door with my headphones on, half-awake and somewhat oblivious to the world around (specifically, behind) me, and I guess I really pissed this woman a few years older than me off. First I accidentally put my hand where her hand was on the support. No biggie. Then when she was trying to get off the train I guess I was right in her way. Maybe she said something, I don't know -- I was tuned into the Morrissey -- but it lead to a tap on the shoulder and an exasperated glare that spoke volumes. Never feel good about stuff like that, but no need to frrreak out at me as long as you get off the train on time. Luckily it was not as bad of an omen as I thought and the workday was more or less uneventful.
Curtis and I are seeing the Mets tomorrow. Was supposed to be Lincecum-Santana but the Gints shortened their rotation for the All Star break so Lincecum pitched tonight. Am I not a good Met fan if I didn't completely enjoy it when Carlos Beltran rocked Lincecum for a three-run shot in the first inning? Unless the BoSox are the club in question, I always like pulling for young aces. And Pelfrey? Go Big Pelf. Dude's looking more and more like he'll be the good two pitcher he was supposed to be. Wouldn't have guessed that last September. And the Mets are now, what, 1 1/2 games behind? You have to love the NL East. And if the Mets start sucking again, I am pulling for a Rays-Marlins Series.
I've been wondering lately: what is this the summer of? All good summers should have personal themes attached to them, and even those that start without a certain theme -- camp years, trips, whatever -- eventually fall into a groove that thematically define them. Last year it was Working My Ass Off to Scrape up the Money That I Eventually Blew in Just Over a Month in Europe. Year before that it was Goofing Off in New York While Rocking a Good-paying, Relatively Low Commitment Internship. (Yeah, I guess those look more like one-sentence summations of what I did than strict themes, but whatever -- quasi-themes, dude. We're flexible over here.) In a way this summer's looking like a mix of the two, working five days a week but not hating it, and giving myself ample time to have fun around the city, but if it's taken on any overriding theme it's Summer of Reflection.
So, to be a kid about it for a moment, this idea that I have to pick something that I want to do, and do for potentially a very long time, kind of sucks. I could see myself being happy doing a lot of things, but figuring out which of these options is the right one for me to pursue gives me knots on the inside. It's a complex formula I must deal with here. All of the vague ideas that I've constantly thought about with regard to a career -- happiness, money, location, social impact, etc. -- are finally becoming tangible, as I think about where I rank them and how to reconcile wanting to do something that I love with the practicalities of standard of living. It's something the liberal arts education really puts on the backburner, when all you need to think about is which courses sound most interesting to you and whether or not the beer fridge is stocked.
So I guess this is in a way the final summer of a particular brand of fun. The kind of fun that comes with having a designated college break, when even though I have real obligations I'm still essentially free to goof off and not think too hard about much of anything. You know, staying up late reading about useless shit on the web and coming to work hungover whenever I want. Wait, are those really the first things that come to my mind when I think about uninhibited freedom? FUCK.
The Undertones - "Here Comes the Summer"
P.S. I'm at my grandparents' apartment at the moment, and without my laptop. Hence the lack of MP3 updates. But if someone is really clamoring for Black Sabbath's Black Sabbath or the Coachwhips' Bangers vs. Fuckers, I could theoretically put something up, since I guess I ripped those albums to their computer two summers ago. Somehow I will rectify this barren MP3 situation in the coming few days. Maybe I'll also just post pictures of good-looking girls from Flickr to make up for this meandering drivel.
I am a huge fan of bathroom stall graffiti of all sorts. I love how it invariably maintains all the same dumb rhymes, penis/boobs/vagina memes, etc. no matter where you are. Even in Iraq, apparently.
A few weeks ago I came home to find some friends watching TV Party, a documentary about the TV show of the same name. TV Party was a kind of weird, freeform talk show on Manhattan public access television hosted by Glenn O'Brien, a former High Times and Interview magazine columnist who is nowGQ's very own Style Guy, and featuring a bunch of other members of the Lower East Side art scene, like Chris Stein and Debbie Harry from Blondie, Jean-Michel Basquiat (the SAMO graffiti artist), Amos Poe... For a reference point, think of a hipper, more stoned Letterman if he also had a penchant for politics. In the doc, dude is the embodiment New York punk/New Wave cool, but time's certainly been kind to Glenn, and he's still holding himself together quite nicely.
Proof that getting old doesn't have to mean going square.
Since I only caught the second half of the documentary the first time I saw it, I ordered it through Netflix last weekend. I thought it was really well-made; you got a definite feel for what the show was like without having to sit through an entire episode, which can apparently be like sailing rough waters at times. It certainly told a familiar story about Manhattan, and it writes a loving epitaph just like all the others, but TV Party's a cool and mostly unknown proxy to tell the story through. And at the very least, you get to see some cool footage of a bunch of semi-famous to famous people going dumb and making even dumber TV. And, of course, there's Blondie.
Anyway, I've had the song that plays during the credits stuck in my head since I first saw it, and even after watching the trailer for the doc on YouTube, a Google search for the lyrics yielded no results. When I watched it a second time I found out it was by Walter Steding, a frequent guest on the show. Steding actually has it and a few other songs posted for free on his website.
I was walking my dog tonight at the beginning of a thunderstorm, that moment when there's streaks of lightning and ample thunder-rolls but no rain. Cody (said dog) can't take loud noises, so I was having a tough time dragging him down the block trying to get him to do his doggie-business. No such luck, but my neighbor Alexandria's dog ran out the front door as we were passing by her house and started charging towards Cody. And what did Cody do? Pawed it in the face. YOWCH. It's name was Guido. Am I the only one that thinks that's a mean name to call a dog?
Here's a picture of Cody from two summers ago, the summer after we got him. I know he looks harmless, but he's a killer. That's what terriers are meant to do.
