MADISON AVENUE FANCY OLD PEOPLE

I work uptown so my friend called me up and invited me to a cocktail party at a boutique on madison avenue last night for the annual "Where Fashion Meets Art" opening night block party. The one we went to first was particularily glitzy and packed with society types. This dude was telling us who's who from the balcony, "she's famous for being the former wife of a rich guy, he's the artist (Who's that guy? He looks fancy and important) I don't know he's just european..." I had been up since 5am doing a long experiment at work and hadn't showered or shaved. I think I smelled bad too but people thought I was making a fashion statement or maybe noticed. he he. Then we headed down to DKNY where there were far more young people and really fucking hot people. I wish I had showered. We tried to hit the party at Barney's but it was over. I've never been up to their restaurant, but yuck it looks boring. Calvin Klein has some cute paintings so I would recommend checking that out. I can't really remember anything else that was too fun to look at. I mostly gawked at people and chatted like everyone else and ignored the artwork altogether. Gotta love society events, "why are we here again anyway..."

OSX TIGER

Ha ha I'm such a dork. Apple's new operating system comes out tomorrow. I've been running it for a few weeks and it's actually pretty good. The mail program is much more stable and dashboard is cool. On fast computers it has an "ooh, ahhh" ripple effect that will impress your coworkers. Apple changed a bunch of calls for graphics etc. in this version so two unix gui's I use for work are busted so I had to go back to command line versions but that won't bother most people. Anyway, I recommend it. Stabilty's good and will only get better. Lots of schools or businesses may offer the upgrade for free.

KOOLMAN

Ari and I had brunch in brooklyn on Sunday which is becoming a regular biweekly thing with us. He used to be depressed and getting him out of it was slow going for a long time. But now everything's fast. Last time we had brunch he was coming off a pretty mediocure saturday night. No complaints though and he was asking advice to try and make a better go of things next time. It was amazing. The old ari would be talking about giving up. Never leaving his house again. His only real complaint was a good joke. When the waitress asked if he wanted curly fries, he said no, he wanted the fries strait. He's had had it with curly. This week he was back to curly. "The things is spicier..."

I've been having a renaissance of sorts too. On sunday I finally got convinced to check out the morrissey party and went with Berrin. It was really fun. Everyone dancing, models, hippies, science dorks like me, all walks of life. It felt a lot like the old new york. Except I spent the whole time talking to guys. I'm not much of a party kid anymore, when a really pretty girl took an interest in me (I think she was very drunk), I had no energy to do anything about it. So anyway, my point is, a lessening of my interest in girls (really only down to 50% of my waking and non-waking thoughts instead of 98.5%) has had a George Costanza effect on me. Instead of wasting my free time at work on the phone or whatever, I've been teaching myself spanish, hebrew and Ari's helping me to expand my portuguese beyond telling him to lick my big tasty lollypop post-haste. Probably won't be so useful when I go to Rio this spring...or will it...no it really won't.

Anyway, even on the subway the other day I was taking it all in more. I talked to a mom and her ridiculously cute and precocious kids like a person might in the south, friendly-like with someone you don't know, and then watched a lady carrying tons of flowers home from work. Maybe it was her birthday. She sat quietly and you could tell, even though her shoulders drooped forward from a long day, that she was happy.

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POOL

Had a leisurely evening of pool and drinks Tuesday. We called Berrin who just got back from vacation all tanned...really paki-tanned cause she has beautiful tan skin to begin with. We were chatting that I have my high school reunion coming up and she decided that she should be my date. I said what are we going to tell people. "That we're engaged of course," she says.

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"NO, RAIN IS GOOD, IT CLEANS THE SKY"

I'll write something later. If I feel like it...god. Until then here's some bad photos.

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NORWEGIANS AND SUN MADE ME STAY UP TOO LATE

I had an exhausting long weekend. Mari was visiting from SF so I was showing her around and the city was so sunny I ended up meeting up with nearly everyone I know. It was like a giant socializing orgy. Ben and I are normally pretty anti-social. It was kind of too much for us. Apparently Norwegian girls are the shit because when boys texted to see what I was up to and I said, "hanging out with girls from norway," I got the exact same response back..."hello!" Mari's like, I'm tired of being exotic, I'm going home. he he. In my experience, scandinavian girls or at least swedes seem a little cold or tough if they're different at all. I'm not sure the reputation is justified. I'll stick with emotional and romantic types around here who are just as hot. I like emotional and romantic. Plenty of blonde swedish americans from the midwest are all over the place anyway.

We met up with her awesome musician and artist friends Sondre and Kai who were here from Norway to mix an album with some famous guy I'd never heard of. Silphan or something. Everyone had weird names this weekend. They wanted to eat at a generic diner cause Kai wanted typical american food. He asked the pakistani waiter what cole slaw was and the guy said, "it's cole slaw...comes in package," and didn't know either. NYC was too loud and busy with all the good weather so they wanted to go somewhere cheap and quiet. I took them to bars with gardens. Kai looks exactly like Vincent Gallo which, whether you believe it's him or not, has about the same effect as Vincent being in the room...freaking everyone out. Anyway, I'm tempted to go to Oslo now; I liked those guys. We ended up at a bar near my house that plays crappy techno but has a great garden. It's always full of eurotypes. Sondre's like, "cool but lets go to the back, too much techno shrinks my testicles." Norwegians seem more american than european. Minus the bush part of course.

In music news my friend who at times dates meg's old man heard the new white stripes album and told me it was "fucking great." Michelle Gondre and others are supposedly doing a remix of the first single which is weird.

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ARI'S MAGIC MORMON UNDIES

Ever since Ari won our final four office pool two years ago and gloated like crazy (even though he couldn't name the teams playing in the final or the sport they were playing) I've been entering the pool under assumed names that annoy him. "Ari's Magic Mormon Undies" came in second this year so he wore them to our finals party monday. Ari says we can't show them on the internet to be respectful but they're pretty wild in person. Really smooth material with little scary holes in places where clothing doesn't usually have holes. I asked Ari what they were for but he said he was daydreaming when they told him and can't remember. He was a mormon for 30 years running all over the world dedicating his life to the church but didn't pay attention to anything they said. He's hard of hearing and used that as an excuse. Ari's so funny. Over the years Ari has been a catholic, a mormon, a scientologist and a snake handler.

LIZ FRIDAY

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LCD SOUNDSYSTEM STILL ROCKS...
HASN'T CHANGED MUCH IN TWO YEARS

I was there and all, at the first LCD show at bowery a few years ago. They sounded just as good but, really, it feels over now. The song list was almost exactly the same two years later. The DJ manning things between bands seemed more relevant. James Murphy sort of said the same thing from the stage. The music is still good but clearly his energy and the energy on the street is elsewhere. One look at the shit crowd of spring douches and ingenue yentas said it all. Two meathead guys in the audience got all rowdily offended and flicked him off. And that brings up another point...which I removed.

I love nyc. I love the blue collar dudes who crack the best jokes, the af-am dudes who live in the shittiest shitholes of the city and yet set the tone for cutting edge style in everything all over the world, the carribean dudes with the cool accents where I can't understand a word they're saying, the african dudes with the kooftie hats or whatever the fuck that is, the puerto rican dudes who don't use their baseball fields for 25 years and then get mad when the mexican dudes move in and want to play soccer there, the dominicans who gave me really good bacalao when I worked at 168th, the chinese dudes in chinatown who are 2rd gen and still don't speak english because they don't have to and know it's just a matter of time before we have to learn mandarin too, the south-am dudes from countries I barely ever think about but now wanna visit, and of course, midwesterners who are the weirdest, freakiest, best people on earth. But I hate dicks. Jerkoff guys who come to concerts to yell dumbass shit and make their girlfriends cry (that happened right in front of me at LCD too) spare us your public persona. If I want that I'll tune into Real World vs. Road Rules #18: The Effervescent Shitstorm.

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GIANT ARI

I printed out a giant poster of Ari and put it in the lunch room. All the janitors heard and came to our lab like tourists visiting the great pyramids. (Ari says "Thank you for comparing me to great pyramid. I'm not that old you bitch.")

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