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I was biking down Water Street yesterday morning, straight down the double yellows, when I spied a rather strange surprise sitting in the middle of the road.  A sledgehammer all by itself, just hanging out in the street.  And all I could think as I breezed past it was “Free Sledgehammer!!”  Seriously, no thought as to how it got there, why it was in the street, nothing, just that it was a sledgehammer, and it was free.

Unfortunately, by time I got back out on the road after parking my bike a block away, the sledgehammer was gone.  Oh well…

(For a panoramic view, click here.)

I took a nice little jaunt back up to my homeland last weekend. Greg and I (along with a few others) went up to the house in Chatham and enjoyed a few nice nights in peace and quiet. Well, except for Saturday night, the Night of Speed! Sadly, we were not blessed with the same magic we experienced last time we went, though Greg has a lead on some boxed seats, which I’ll be forcing him to follow up on some time this summer. Updates promised.

Greg and I took off Saturday evening and jetted over to Lebanon Valley Speedway to take in the sights. (Ladies, check out the contest on the homepage.) Not only were we treated to feats of motoring, power-sliding, and false-starting. Not only did we get to see a number of wrecks as well as one flaming car come careening down the front stretch (the driver was okay), but we also got to bask in the glory that is Columbia County in its natural setting.

You see, a dirt track race is a place that the typical weekender population will not go. Now, the visiting weekenders have made many improvements to the county over the years. They were instrumental in reversing the fortunes of many of the towns in the area, and they spearheaded the movement to keep the SLC cement plant out of Hudson (honestly, how anyone could have been for that plant, I have no idea), but as a local, I often find myself biting my tongue when someone remarks that it’s so nice to be “out in the middle of nowhere,” or when someone asks for a copy of the Sunday Times at the local gas station, or anyone that says “It gets so dark up here!” Not that I don’t like these people, most of them are actually people I come up with, I love these people, these are my people now that I’m a Brooklyn resident. I just always feel a little defensive about where I came from, especially when I’m constantly returning to it with a new group of people with new groups of comments. So despite the fact that I actually nurse more of a grudge against the voting population that regularly attends dirt track events in the Valley of Speed, it still makes me feel like I’m home when I hang out on the bleachers on race night (despite the fact that the only common trait I share with the other attendees is that I too am a Racefan).

I’ve already started a countdown to the next big Columbia County social event. Only two more months until the Chatham Fair!!

This shot was actually one of the luckiest shots I’ve ever taken. Perfectly framed right between the two posts. The car must have been going about a mile a minute!

When not at the races we lounged around the house and threw frisbees. Billy (the dog) got a little overzealous with his frisbee horde and had to be hosed down by his manservant, Brian, after he was discovered wallowing in a puddle/mud hole at the end of the driveway.

Awww…..

I was out getting coffee for my boss and myself this morning (which meant Starbucks, not the Mud Truck) and as I regurgitated my boss’ order, I spied an interesting item on the menu, the Orange Mocha. Apparently, they’ve been advertising the heck out of it, but the beauty of being an oblivious idiot with no television is that usually you’re spared the brunt of major ad campaigns, hence my child-like fascination with the Orange Mocha drink.

“And for you, sir?” said the guy behind the counter.

I was curious. Usually I would order a simple cup of joe, or at most a latte, but I kept eying the sign. “Orange Mocha?” I said to the guy. “What the hell is that?”

He informed me that it was just like a regular mocha, only it had orange syrup (or an orange wedge, I wasn’t really paying attention) in it. Whatever it was, it sounded disgusting. I was sold.

Now, this is not the first time I’ve knowingly, and willingly taken a stroll down the long and torturous road of culinary misadventure. When I was in high school I developed a fondness for Chocolate Banana Yoohoo. The fondness turned into an obsession and when the drink was discontinued I drove around to every local convenience store and bought up the remaining supply. I even found an errant 24 pack at a Costco (and managed to talk the cashier into letting me buy it without a membership card).

And then there was the Caramel Apple Cheesecake episode at the Applebee’s I used to work at. They were these horrid desserts that no one could seem to sell. Before every dinner rush the manager would tell us how many whole cakes were still in the freezer. The number stayed at 8 for weeks. After a while he put them on special, a 2 for 1 deal. Since I had my meals half price anyway, I decided to try two and it was love at first sight. The way the caramel was drizzled over the apple chucks embedded in the cheesecake was a treat that I had not prepared myself for. And I could get 4 for the price of one full slice!! My love affair with the Caramel Apple Cheesecake lasted until I left for winter break. I came back a few weeks later and found that the manager had thrown them all out. “Meh, I dunno,” he said to me, “they seemed to be moving for a while, but then a few weeks ago they just stopped selling.” Curses!!

But my saddest story to date still has to be the Orange Cupcake Saga. This is a tale of woe, of sadness, of heartache, and you might want to sit down (it’s pretty long too). It tops the Guacamole Dorito Debacle, the Rainbow Jell-o Incident, Mallomar Appreciation Day, and then some. Like the Chocolate Banana Yoohoo conundrum, this one started in high school. Orange Cupcakes were a rare commodity in upstate New York. There were never more than ten or twelve boxes delivered to any store at any time, and by the end of the week, most were usually gone, but they arrived consistently, so even though I loved them very much, I could say no to them since there was an inexhaustable supply.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. One day, I walked into the Grand Union and saw an empty space on the shelf where my beloved Orange Cupcakes once were. This wasn’t a complete surprise, but over my next five or six visits, the cupcakes did not return. Eventually I grew frantic and made a point to check other supermarkets in the area. Nothing. They were gone. I walked around in a state of confusion and denial for weeks afterwards. Offers of Zebra Cakes and honey buns were a meager consolation (though I took them) for my profound sense of loss.

Eventually, I learned to live my life without the cupcakes. I became fond of Milano Cookies again and all seemed right with the world. But then, at a moment when I least expected, the Orange Cupcake came strolling back into my life.

I was at the Pathmark in Portchester, shopping for essentials during the first week of my senior year of college when I saw them: An entire stack of Orange Cupcakes in an endcap of one of the aisles. Before I knew it, I was heaping the entire stack into my cart, twelve boxes in all!! I returned home that day and had to restrain myself from gorging on an entire box. I was passing them out to friends, strangers, anyone who walked by my apartment. Life was good again.

And the next week, when I went grocery shopping again, there was another stack waiting for me, and the process repeated itself, the buying, the gorging, the merriment. And the next week, and the next, until finally, on the fifth successful trip to the grocery store in as many weeks, I thought to myself that maybe this was a regular item. I only bought 5 boxes that time.

The sudden dose of reality was further reinforced when I came back to my apartment and actually took stock of how many boxes I had in that giant pile in the closet of my room.

33. I had somehow purchased 33 boxes of Orange Cupcakes. More than that if you counted the many, many boxes I’d consumed over the last five weeks.

I stopped buying Orange Cupcakes but continued eating them for the rest of the semester. Now, most of you probably don’t know this (because you’ve never had a reason to), but Hostess snack products do have an expiration date. And that expiration date is actually pretty close to accurate. I know what you’re thinking, the twinkie is supposed to be able to withstand a nuclear blast, how can it have an expiration date? Well, that’s the twinkie, the Orange Cupcake is a little more involved, a little more delicate. So around December, when I still had 20 boxes of cupcakes left over, they were starting to feel a little extra spongy when I bit into them. But still I soldiered on, I choked them down after a big meal, passed them out at parties, even tossed them at people in place of snowballs. But they were getting worse and worse to eat. It was becoming an ordeal not just to take a bite, but to willingly condemn others to my fate as well. Finally, I just took the remaining cakes, found a huge tub, and put them in the dining hall on campus with a big sign that said “Free.” It was finals time, people were scavenging anyway, they went rather quickly…

Some people collect records, or stamps, or used wrappers from vending machine food, or rusted engine parts, or whatever. But I, I collect painful digestive experiences. Sad in a way, my collection consists of a number of stories with a more than predictible ending…

But where was I? Oh yes, the Orange Mocha…

I ended up purchasing an Orange Mocha and sucking it down in the course of three meetings I had afterwards. And I must say, drinking that thing can be likened to drenching an ashtray with Febreeze, then siphoning the contents right down your own throat. Honestly, this was the most awful drink I’d ever tasted, but I couldn’t put it down, not like an acidental mishap at a coffee shop where someone adds sugar to my coffee (I can deal with milk, but sugar? Blech!), no I had to finish this. There was no throwing away, no turning back.

With hurculean resolve, I managed to gag down the entire thing before it got too tepid to stomach. Thankfully, there is not another awful Starbucks flavor I know of until the Eggnog Latte later this year. Mmm… Stomach cramps…

Wednesday, June 20, 2007 marks the end of 22 years of van ownership in the Kennedy family. I know, I know, it feels strange simply looking at the words I just typed, but they are true. This Wednesday, my father, the man who guided me, who provided the moral blueprint for my entire life, the man who I look up to most in the world (Hulk Hogan is a very close second, and still has his Astrovan, hint hint), the man I admire most, has turned on the family, turned on himself, and sold the poor van up river for a couple of bucks off a new Toyota.

As I write this, I can only imagine the van, sitting peacefully in the driveway (not leaking, by the way), patiently awaiting a set of much needed new tires. My father will get in the van Wednesday morning and the van will be so pleased, because at its ripe old age, being driven is a rare honor, bestowed upon it at odd, but glorious intervals. And the van will pull into a strange parking lot full of strange new cars, all from a far off land, all speaking a strange un-American language. But the van will react as it always has, with poise and respect, and it will attempt to strike up a conversation with these strange vehicles using the universal language of engine ticks, but they will just twitter amongst themselves and point their highbeams and laugh. But the van will just shrug it off, thinking, “Maybe this is where I’ll get some new tires!” And why not so? The van has served for many years, through many trials. Who cares about the twittering cars? Not the van. Because its job is the proudest of all, its job is to protect and transport the Kennedy family, speaking of that, where is the man in the yellow Gore-tex? And that’s when the van will see my father, driving by in a brand new Sandpaper-pearl 4Runner, driving out of its life forever. Only then will the van know sadness…

The way I see it, there are two options, over the next few days I need to float the cash to buy the van outright. I think I can do it if I can leverage some of my eggnog futures and funnel them through a dummy corporation I cooked up the last time I was in Hong Kong.

Or, I can go Brady Bunch-style and convince the Toyota dealership that the van is haunted, thereby making it ineligible as a trade-in.

As we speak, I’m cutting eye holes in an old sheet and digging out the silly-string. I think you know which option I’m leaning toward.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with hordes of Purchase grads at the Fire Flies CD release party last night I felt like I was the only guy who didn’t know what was in store for us. As I spoke to friends of mine I hadn’t seen in months it became evident that I was correct, I seemed to be the only one there, with the exception of the bartenders, who wasn’t a rabid Fire Flies fan. I felt like the asshole who shows up to the surprise party ten minutes after the guest of honor walked in the door.

But that feeling was short lived, because the as the opening chords of “Mechanical Love” reverberated around the room, and as the entire crowd suddenly surged three feet toward the stage, I felt like part of the family. Needless to say, by time the final chord faded into the gentle buzz of the amplifiers, I was already on my way back to the merch table to pick up their new CD, Two New Sciences.

Two New Sciences is a love story. That in itself isn’t a difficult assumption to make if you read the liner notes. It’s your typical extraterrestrial savior/anti-savior meets technologically empowered apocalyptic prophet, extraterrestrial savior/anti-savior falls in love with technologically empowered apocalyptic prophet situation. And like any love affair, it begins magically. The energy and hope infused into “Mechanical Love,” the promise and devotion shown in “Call Me Your Darkness,” it’s obvious that this is love at first sight, and the party is just getting started for these two lovers. Indeed, the frantic “It’s a Party!” jitters with energy and not only served as the band’s encore performance material at the release party, but also whipped the crowd into the kind of frothing tempest that I haven’t seen since my last metal show.

The initial euphoria of the first few tracks fades, but the feeling is replaced with a familiarity, a complexity, a humanity (which is strange considering the characters involved) that produces “Worst Man I Can Be” and “We’re Alive,” two tracks that are melodically hopeful, but lyrically tragic. Much like a developing relationship, these two tracks illustrate the importance of recognizing the imperfections in us all, and persevering, trancending to a level where that little stuff doesn’t even matter any more. Ah, romance never sounded so good.

Which proves to foreshadow the future too closely, as the tragic lyrics slowly infiltrate the melody over the remaining tracks. “Rapid Eye Radar” is moody and dark, and “STOP THE CAR!!!!” begins an emotional downward spiral that takes over the tone of the rest of the album, which ultimately leaves us on the last track, “Give Me Time,” a fitting conclusion to an album that seems to have touched on the very best and the very worst of any adventure worth trading one’s life to complete.

What I got when I bought Two New Sciences was an authentic interterpretation of love and loss, happiness and sorrow, agony and ecstasy, as seen through the eyes of a group of artists that not only know how to convey that interpretation, but how to make people keep coming back for more.

For more tour dates, or to listen to their music/purchase a CD, check out their website.

(Score yourself one quart of eggnog if you read that title and had an unfortunate flashback to the last time you heard me say that)

So, apparently, my neighborhood has a case of the runs. I checked out Curbed this morning and post number two, titled Mad Crapper(s) on the Loose in Boerum Hill? said it all. I, for one, think that if anyone has a chance of getting to the bottom of this mystery, it’s me. You see, if you want to catch a phantom pooper, you have to think like a phantom pooper, and even if I have to stay up all night eating cheese and corn and Doritos, I’m willing to do that if helps the police get any insight into the mind of this lavatory-challenged menace.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to hit the streets for some, ahem, reconnaissance.

The other day, I was joking around with some friends about the eccentricities of the residents of Rochester when we realized that we have no idea what to call them. Rochesterians? Rochesterites? Rochesterers? Now, that in itself was a boring conversation, but it got slightly less boring when my friend brought up his stay in Michigan. Apparently Michigan residents refer to themselves as Michiganders.

Michiganders? Not Michigonians? Mishuganers?

Unfortunately, once I got that into my system, I had to look up the rest of the states. (A full list can be found here.) My favorites are Nutmeggers (Connecticut), Delawareans, and Utahns. Of course, there’s Idadoans (you’d think they’d apply that to the old “Idaho, no, youdaho” joke?), and New Hampshirites (I like New Hampshirean better), but Massachusetts seemed to have a completely incorrect label for its people, Bay Stater. Bay Staters? I’ve never heard of Bay Stater, ever. Masshole maybe, but Bay Stater?

I was down at South Street Seaport last week, sampling the delicious cuisine of the second biggest tourist attraction in Lower Manhattan when I came upon a strange sight. At first, I heard it, a gear-grinding, steel twisting, machine noise which seemed to be emanating from the middle of a crowd of people. When I got closer I saw a man, dressed in a combination of rags, rust colored body paint, and computer parts, standing up on a platform doing an evil version of the robot.

Now, this whole scene really, really freaked me out. You see, I’ve seen way too many Sci-Fi/Futuristic Distopian/Leather and Feathers movies and I know what guys like that do to the rest of the cast. Yeah, they may seem nice at first, or inquistive, or in pieces in a lab somewhere, but eventually they launch into a murderous rampage that usually only leaves two people (normally male and female, who can’t stand each other at the start but grow together by the end) alive and in a mildly humorous situation usually involving swimming to shore, being stuck in an escape pod, or on their way out of a still smouldering DMZ.

The day got worse, cause later that night I ended up at Rice To Riches. No, if you’ve never been there, if you don’t like rice pudding, don’t go, but if you do, it’s heaven. I had cheesecake and caramel, and it was fantastic.

You might be wondering why I said the day got worse, well, Rice to Riches has a very distinctive look to it.

Now, a place with a gigantic oval-shaped opening, futuristic plastic white on white styling, and happy goop-serving employees is not the most comfortable place to be for a sci-fi nerd like me, because the first thing I thought of was, of course, Soylent Green.

But after I ordered, I didn’t care. The pudding was so delicious…

This morning I biked to work for the first time since the transit strike. My new job (unlike my old one) has both bike storage and a place for me to clean up afterwards, so biking to work is now a completely feasible option. Hell, I spend exactly the same amount of time commuting, and it’s better for my legs to pump their way over the Brooklyn Bridge rather than remain sedentary on the train for twenty minutes.

When I arrived at the employee parking garage I asked the guy at the door what I should do. I explained that I was a new employee and was told that there was free bike storage there. He told me to talk to the guy next to him, which I did, and told the same story to him. He, in turn, waved me to the guy minding the gate, so I walked the bike around the gate and told that guy the same story too. He told me to see the man in the office in the center of the garage, so I walked to the exact middle of the structure and knocked on the office window. A white haired man answered me.

“Hi,” I said, “I’m a new employee here and I was informed that there is free bike storage. Can you tell me where it is?”

“Did you show your ID?”

“No one asked me,” I said. “I have it though, I can show you.”

“You can’t come in without showing your ID to the guard over there,” he said, gesturing to the first guy I talked to.

“But I’m already in the buliding. Can’t I just show you my ID?”

“No, gotta be him, procedure. Otherwise you’re not allowed in.”

I paused and looked around. I was in the exact middle of the building. If I moved in any direction, I’d actually be on my way back out. I was literally as far in the building as I could get. Sensing an Abbot and Costello moment about to start, I decided to forgo common sense (the enemy of so many people’s jobs nowadays) and go back to the first guy so he could let me in the garage.

I often wonder what goes through a person’s mind when you try to appeal to their sense of reason like that. Seems a lot of jobs (and I’ve had a few) try their best to beat the common sense right out of you, and if you stay in one job too long, it usually succeeds.

My favorite part is the realization. This usually happens in retail or when I’m on the phone with a customer service person. I argue my point over and over and over again and usually after forcing the rep to tell me exactly what is happening, why it’s happening, and why it can’t happen my way when they suddenly realize the rediculousness of the situation (read: I’m in the right, but there is some arbitrary reason why I can’t do what I need to). Arbitrary rules are the only ones that ever provoke a realization. Problem is, I only get my money back/situation rectified about half the time, even with a hefty dose of realization induced common sense.

Today I shunned you

For chain grease and handlebars

Can we still be friends