it sounds like that commercial, but it's true

I'm sure you noticed the extended blog break that I unfortunately had to take last week. However, unlike a unionized construction worker, there's a good reason for an absence of work on my end. I just got back from a business trip to DC last week. Wow... I feel so corporate when I say that... except my trip didn't end with me putting a cheap prostitute or some hotel porn on my expense account because my bitch of a wife won't give me a good lay since she's always complaining about those damn kids. I wish that condom hadn't broken. However, I'm back in action, drinking a Dixie brew from New Orleans that tastes, and looks, like it was brewed in some mud splattered shack in the middle of the bayou. The bottle's a little grimy, the label is dirty and totally on crooked, and the beer is kind of flat. But, the sweet alligator overtones mix with a cajun aroma that finishes clean with a hearty dose of hurricane and a hint displaced minority to give this beer its true N'awlins flavor. Delicious.

Like those denizens of the Mystery Machine on Scooby-Doo, I find myself working on a bit of a mystery these days. When I arrived home Saturday afternoon after a now routine Friday drinking the night away in Jersey, I find on my door, affixed like a copy of Martin Luther's 95 Theses, a note welcoming my new roommate, an ESL student, to New York City. Since, to my limited knowledge, no one is living in my room right now, I tear the note off my door and throw it away. I make the unsubstantiated assumption that it was either put on the wrong door or, in one of those blanket statements of effort that is designed to maximize laziness and minimize work, ironically resulting in the expenditure of more resources, someone put this note on all the doors in the building in an attempt to efficiently welcome these ESL students without actually checking to see who lives here and already speaks English. I decline think any more of this for the rest of my day and go about my regular Saturday activities of hangover maintenance and general re-hydration.

At 9 o'clock Sunday morning, while I am sleeping peacefully, as I tend to do at 9am on Sunday mornings, I hear someone a-tap-tap-tapping at my door. I answer the door half naked, because clearly anyone who is a-rapping at my door at 9am on a Sunday is going to have to accept the consequences of my half nude body as punishment. The woman who has been making all that noise at my doorstep tells me that there is a new ESL student moving in today, explaining Saturday's note, and hands me a new pillow for him. I guess it makes sense, because I've run into a few people in the building who are studying English, and there is this growing consortium of Asian kids (Japanese or Korean I think) that all hang out together and totally don't speak any English. (Note: here's the part where you should insert your own racist joke because there are way too many and I can't decide which one I want to use. But back to the story.)

So after I hear that I might not be living alone for the rest of the summer, I am quite disheartened and realize things will never be the same now, like when I found Ginger Spice was leaving. Obviously, my first reaction is "crap... I can't walk around naked and take shits with the door open anymore." Naturally, I ask her when she expects him to move in, cuz I'm totally going to need to drop one more open-doored duce and, more importantly, an era ending dump like this deserves a small ceremony that I'm clearly going to have to plan the rest of the day around. Her response: "Well, it might take him a while to get through customs, so I don't really know. Have a nice day!" This was the last time I ever saw her or heard anything about my phantom roommate. No one has moved in since this happened over a week ago and at this point I'm pretty sure that I actually went out, bought myself a pillow and then, like Edward Norton in Fight Club, invented an entire back story to explain it all. If I didn't still have that note, I'd probably be on my way to Arkham Asylum right now to get myself checked out for the crazies, because this is a little weird (10 bonus points to anyone who gets that reference).

On my way to MOMA that same Sunday, shortly after The Case of the Mysterious Roommate began, I once again discovered indisputable evidence for why everyone needs to live in New York at some point in their life. First of all, as I left for my activities, down the road from my building a block long Bengali street festival was just beginning. Unfortunately, since it was still early, none of the food vendors were open for business, I left soon after arriving, but not before contemplating the relative ridiculous, yet alluringly attractive, notion of a skinny white man rocking out with one of those full-length Muslim dashiki things. After getting off the subway at Rockefeller Center and making my way several blocks North towards the museum, I found myself stumbling upon what appeared to be a gay pride parade, complete with shirtless men in Speedos and hot pants flaunting their well sculpted muscles on top of purple floats while drag queens strutted around looking like they were straight out of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. It was a beautifully poetic situation where a set of circumstances, already amusing in its own right, is augmented simply due to the unexpectedness of it all, like when Britney Spears shaved her head or you watch a good ole nut-shot video on YouTube. It's so much funnier when no one sees it coming.

I'm sure you're well amused by now, so I'll cut the rest of my entry off here and, like a fine stew, put my stories from DC on the back burner to let them simmer for a while. I'm actually heading back out of town for work after the 4th, so hopefully I can empty the reserves before I have to skedaddle off again and be another productive member of the corporate community. I hate working for the man. Until then, keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars.

union thug...