Random Thoughts

I was Pong for Halloween this year. I cut a big hole in a square piece of foam and shoved my face through it. I looked really ridiculous. Then I would hold up two long thin pieces of styrofoam on either side of my head and bounce my head between them by only moving my neck. I went to an underground party called “Brass Tax” that started at 4:20am. Imagine seeing a guy walking around with his face poking through a square piece of foam while holding pieces of styrofoam in his hands. People looked at me with an expression like they had just smelled sour milk or something. They had no idea what the hell I was. Then they’d come up to me and say “What are you?”. I wouldn’t say anything. I would just hold up the styrofoam paddles and bounce my head between them. The response: “At first I thought you were a total idiot. Now I think you’re a genius.” Apparently the line between idiot and genius is a thin one. People would grab me and ask me to do the bouncing head-ball thing for their friends. As I was walking around, people started shouting “PONG!”. I felt like one of those one-name celebrities like Prince or Cher or something. I really loved being called Pong. I was at an earlier house party and the same thing happened. I was playing some tunes from my iPod for the dance floor. When I’d put on a song, the dancing people would cheer “PONG!”. Maybe I should always walk around with that foam thing on my face and change my name to Pong.

I went to CompUSA to get some electronic thing. Ladies, I know you’re dying to read stories about CompUSA and personal electronics. I’m sorry to say this story is not about that. It’s also not about the horrible changes Dole has made to their Pineapple Orange Banana juice. However, as long as we’re talking about it, you should know that Dole has ruined the once delicious beverage by using copious amounts of pineapple juice in the mix.

But I digress. Back to CompUSA…

I was on my way out, about to step on to their incredibly narrow escalator, when the guy who stepped on ahead of me dropped his umbrella. I reached over to grab it for him, but he turned around and reached for it too. The umbrella was stopped at the bottom of the escalator, but this guy was rapidly going up, up, up the escalator. He inexplicably left his feet planted on stairs that are moving away while leaning forward and bending down to grab his stranded umbrella. Naturally he fell over. This is when things got really weird. As the escalator relentlessly churned on, he kept flailing about like a turtle on its back. Somehow he couldn’t right himself. I was staring in disbelief as he went feet first up the escalator and began tumbling like clothes in a dryer. Someone yelled “Help that guy!”. I snapped out it and stepped on to the escalator and grabbed him. Then someone stopped the escalator. The guy grabbed his stuff that was now scattered over the escalator stairs and high-tailed it out of there in a hurry.

The moral of the story is, don’t risk life and limb for some cheap-ass umbrella. And stay away from Dole’s reformulated pineapple-orange-banana juice.

Have you ever tried pineapple-orange-banana juice? It’s delicious. It’s the best juice in the world. Or rather, it WAS the best juice in the world. It seems the bright minds at Dole have decided that it needed a “great NEW taste” as was boldly proclaimed on the newly re-designed carton.

As I drank the first sip of this re-designed juice, my taste buds recoiled in horror. It’s gone from delicious to undrinkable. My face crinkled in disgust, I imagined the following scene in the bowels of Dole’s corporate offices:

“Johnson, we need to increase profits to an even more obscene level this year.”

“Yes sir. I’ve got an idea. We get our pineapples dirt cheap, right? This IS Dole after all. My desk is made of pineapples. We write on pineapple papaer. The problem is that dang pineapple-orange-banana juice that Smithers came up with. We have to buy all those oranges from Tropicana. It’s cutting into our margins. Let’s put more pineapple and less orange in the juice. We’ll make more money on each carton.”

“Excellent, Johnson! It does say PINEAPPLE-orange-banana juice but I barely taste the pineapple part.”

Arrgh. Why did you do that!? New flash for the pineapple crazed folks at Dole. Pineapple juice is analagous to salt. A little bit makes things taste better. Too much, and it becomes unpalatable. Maybe you folks should rename your juice “orange-banana-pineapple juice” so that more orange juice drinking people will check it out. Maybe people stay away from it because they think it’s going to taste mostly like pineapple juice.

Did you ever think of THAT, Johnson!?

If you’re a guy and you’ve been to Union Square, chances are you’ve run into Barry. He’s the too tan guy with spiked up hair and those sunglasses that all the people who want you to think they have lots of money wear. You know — the sunglasses that have the silvery tinted lenses that don’t really block the sun and a frame that’s barely there.

Barry stands on the sidewalk and tries to convince you to go around the corner to some place that sells $300 shirts. If I pay $300 for a shirt, that shirt better be able to do a song and dance for me. Or it should be a magic shirt that will let me fly. I’d pay $300 for a magic flying shirt.

I’ve been approached by Barry so many times, we’re now on a first name basis. I think his name is Barry. It might be Brad. Suddenly Brad or Barry was revealing his deepest secrets to me. He told me he’s in recovery and he blew a $25K inheritance shopping. But he got his teeth fixed. Well, his eye teeth got fixed. The thing is, I didn’t ask him anything. I just told him that he approaches me all the time and I’m just never going to pay $300 for a shirt. Then he told me his name and started telling me all this stuff. He also told me the guy who runs the store he works for went and choked the owner of some other store warning the guy never to try and get Barry to promote his store.

There’s some CRAZY stuff going on out there if you take a minute to scratch a little below the surface. I didn’t even scratch below the surface. The stuff below the surface came out and grabbed me.

It was Yom Kippur recently. Do you know what that means? Neither do I. Maybe someone will give me a trophy that says “Worst Jew Ever” one of these days.

My mom invited me to spend Yom Kippur with this branch of the family she rediscovered recently. She hasn’t hasn’t had a chance to get upset and disown them yet. Sure would be nice if we didn’t disown these folks.

So I turned up for dinner. Let me tell you, it’s very weird to see a bunch of family you haven’t seen in about 30 years. They’re family, so we should be close. But really I have no idea who the hell these people are. What do you say to someone you haven’t seen in decades? “So…what have you been up to?”. It’s very awkward.

Kind of like the ending to this blog posting.

A little while back I wrote about my new jacuzzi. It was really about how my toilet was bubbling. Turns out I really should have done something about that IMMEDIATELY. Turns out that water is INSANELY EXPENSIVE. My landlord just gave me the water bill. Ouch. What a waste of money. I think if my toilet had been filling with wine, the bill would have been cheaper.

I’ve finally put together little online photo albums with pictures from my trip:

New York City

Barcelona

Mallorca

Enjoy!

While roaming the streets of NYC with my brother we stumbled across this fellow. When was the last time you saw an Indian guy hanging out in the bed of a customized El Camino? He has these weird chair things installed in the bed along with a table that he set up with a nice vase and flower. When I saw him, he was just reading the paper. Apartments in NYC are notoriously small. My theory is that his apartment is so small he only goes there to sleep. He has turned the bed of his El Camino into a living room and he hangs out where friends can come and join him. I think he should add some curtains, a lamp, and some family photos.

For my recent travels, I flew Iberia airlines to Barcelona. I noticed something very different when the in-flight meal arrived. When I grabbed the little plastic pack that holds dining utensils and a napkin, I found it was unusually heavy. That’s because there was a REAL METAL fork, knife, and spoon in there clanking around. Apparently the Spanish would rather get flown into large buildings than eat their food with plastic utensils. Or they realize the image of terrorists armed with table knives isn’t terribly terrifying. The Europeans love their dining experience the way we love big fuel guzzling road hogs with more horespower than anyone would ever possibly need. I’d rather have a nice meal than a Hummer H2. Maybe I need to move.