Hey, hey! Here they are: all the pics from the 2nd half of July that
were swell but didn't merit their own entire entry!
Wednesday, July 20th
Wednesday morning, Grant and I got up early and decided to head out to
the beach. McDonald's breakfast sandwich? Check. Frisbee? Check.
At first when you get off the subway, you're like "Uh-oh. I've accidentally
traveled into the apocalyptic, trash-strewn future." But then you
walk a few blocks and you're like...
..."Oh, here's the beach."
Check out Grant's face. I think I surprised him by busting out my
cam all quick and managed to catch him in the always-awkward mid-flex.
Let's hear it for beach hair.
Grant and I pretty much argue about everything. Since we frequently end
up arguing at places where there's no internets to look stuff up and help
settle the debate (like the beach!) we're oft reduced to doing
stuff like scrawling reminders in the sand and taking photos of it so that
we'll remember to use the interweb later and check out who was right. In
this case, the debate was clearly over what year Metallica's seminal album
...And Justice for All was released. Was it 1988 or 1989?
It's
funny that I remember what the argument was about, but I don't remember
who picked '88 and who picked '89! I just checked...whoever
said 1988 was correct). Now that I think about it, Grant was probably the
one who was betting on '88...if I had been the one that had been right,
I would've remembered because I'd still be berating him about how he was
wrong (er, if we even spoke anymore).
Grant showing off his sweet, sweet forearm tan line (more commonly known
as a sunburn).
After getting off in Tribecca, I managed to convince Grant to forego Mandarin
Court (which had been our dim sum place for years) in order to try an all-veggie
dim sum place.
My selling pitch? "It's exactly like Mandarin Court dim sum except
you have a much lesser chance of contracting hepatitis B and/or ebola!"
Thursday, July 21st
Niki and I hadn't found an apartment we liked yet, so on Thursday morning
I ran all over town looking at different places. This building was awesome.
Right on the corner of Canal and Essex it looked out over...
...the lovely, but not well-known, Seward Park.
Living Room.
Kitchen.
Two bedrooms.
Later that afternoon back at Sarah's apartment (my temporary home for the
summer) I had the pleasure of meeting one of Sarah's friends that had recently
moved to NYC from California. His name was Baron and right when I met him
he was like "I like your web site. What do I have to do to get on
it?" I
was like "Uh, nothing. Just hang out. I'm sure you'll end up in some
pics."
He was like, "Nah, I don't want to be in the background. I want some
prime time pics. What if I do some crazy shit? Will you take pics of it?"
Me: "Suuuuuure!" Without a moment's hesitation, Baron stripped
down to his undies. I was like "Yeah, so you're in your undies. Now what?"
So Baron grabbed a nearby hula hoop and started doing some sort of
crazy, gyrating exotic I'm-in-my-undies hula dance in front of Sarah who
was laughing so hard she started crying.
Hahahahahaha.
Check out that hula-man go!
Then Baron decided to up the ante and make his steep I Keep a Diary debut
even steeper - that's right, the undies came off. So, um, yeah. Here's
Baron, at 12:08pm in the afternoon on a Tuesday, buck-naked in Sarah's
living room cracking open a fresh brewski, while I'm snapping photos,
Sarah's hysterically laughing, and Greg the Boyfriend (remember him!?)
is trying to hide from my camera (not wanting to be seen in the room) and
trying to not make accidental eye contact with Baron's wang.
Hahahahaha. So here you go everyone, please welcome Baron! Drinking a frosty
brew, foot through a hula hoop and a trucker-hat on his penis. (PS - I
love the way the lens is flaring off of the mirror in the background making
it look like Tinkerbell is sitting on his beer-swilling, penis-hat-holding
shoulder!)
If you're looking for a little bonus material, here's a video of Baron
hulahooping naked. I wish my camera had sound so you could hear Sarah cackling
while Greg the Boyfriend moans "Oh, Jesus! He's hulahooping naked!
Oh, Jesus!"
(By the way, I had this up on YouTube but it kept being deleted! I actually
had to sign up for something called Yuvutu, which is like the amateur porno
version of YouTube, in order to bring you Baron's floppy-penis hijinx in
all their full-motion glory! Enjoy!)
Friday, July 22nd
On Friday morning I went to look at more apartments. The first place I
saw was on 2nd St and was in the building that Timothy
Greenfield-Sanders owns. I didn't know who he was at the time,
but I was carrying my camera and when he was showing me the apartment (you
can see him standing there in to doorway in this photo), he asked "Oh,
are you a photographer?" I was like, "Yeah, but I'm more of a hobbyist."
He was like "Well, I'm a photographer. Timothy Greenfield-Sanders,
maybe you've heard of me?" Somehow I managed to keep a straight face and
I was like "Actually, no I'm sorry, I haven't. Should I have?" He then
went on to tell me about all the portraits he's shot of famous people and
actually said the very unintentionally Will Ferrelesque "I'm kind of a really
famous photographer." I was like "Oooooo-kay, doh-kay! So how about
you show me the apartment?"
And so he did. Here's the kitchen and dining room.
And one of the 3 bedrooms. Meh.
After my run-in with GREATNESS, I went to check out a different apartment
building a few blocks away over on 3rd & C which ended up being the
place Niki and I eventually moved into.
Here's my future bedroom.
And here's our future kitchen.
Remember how I talked about all the spay
painted murals in my neighborhood that
typically honor fallen locals? Well, my new block has a mural of Vanilla Ice
(???) giving props to the Clash! NOICE!
Later that night I went over to Tribeca Cinemas for the Visionfest Film
Festival to watch the NYC premiere of...
...the film Firecracker. Which I wanted to see because it was Mike Patton's
(of Faith No More & Mr. Bungle) acting debut. (Mike was awesome, the film
was not really my cup of tea. Sort of like budget David Lynch movie).
Saturday, July 23rd
I woke up early on Saturday morning and went over to Meredith's to wake
her up to go to the beach...but not before I snapped a few pics of her
sleeping with her one leg up in the air. Hahaha. Then we met up with the
Fatty and hopped the subway on out to...
Yay!
Check out that pristine white sand beach! Pretty sweet, eh? A lot of people
I know scoff at the thought of New York City beaches, but those people
are idiots! How sweet is it that I can hope on the subway, and for $2 be
at a place that looks like this in 30 minutes?
Squinty Fatty and Meredith.
Fatty taking a picture of me taking a picture of him.
What's better than a day at the beach?
A day at the beach followed by some motherfucking softserve! Here's Fatty
making friends with Mister Softee.
While waiting for the subway back to Manhattan, I documented everyone's
sweet, beach hair. Here's my ratty beach hair.
Fatty's poooofy beach hair.
And Meredith's totally normal non-beach hair. (How the hell did you not
get beach-hair you little sneak??)
Later that night I went to Misshapes to wish little Miss Leigh Lezark a
very happy 21st birthday!
Kiss that fake ID goodbye! Hahaha.
How in the world did this ever fool anyone? Hahaha.
Then it was time for cake! Peanut Butter Bomb!
Sarah does the cake-feeding honors.
And here's a little bit on your nose for good luck!
Oh, and a quick birthday titty squeeze, also, er, for good luck. Hahaha.
Afterwards, we all hit the dance floor and Sarah kicked out the birthday jams!
Awwww! Who's a lil' birthday princess?
Sunday, July 24th
Sunday Vin and I sat around in the park and Vin made phone calls and looked
tough.
Sweet shirt, btw. (Afterwards, we went back to my room at Sarah's apartment
and started plotting our evil plan to paint
a mural out on Fatty's back deck).
Later on that afternoon, a whole bunch of us went to go see March of the
Penguins.
Robbie, who was in town visiting from Oakland, fell asleep hardcore and
was ever-so-faintly snoring in the movie. Hahaha.
Monday, July 25th
Sarah, working on her new website: WonkyEye.com
Yep, this photo pretty much sums up the table in Sarah's room at any given
point that summer.
Later that night I went over to Karaoke Killed the Cat at Pianos in order
to sing some 'roke and...
...celebrate Amanda's birthday!
Happy Birthday, Amanda! (PS - are you wearing a birthday pantsuit???)
Tuesday, July 26th
Hey, Vin: Nakatomi Plaza! (Best name for a band ever. Do you get the
reference?)
Tuesday night we went to VP2 for a Tinny bday dinner celebration!
Wednesday, July 27th
On Wednesday, Niki and I went and did some more apartment hunting. We had
put in an application for an apt that we really liked, but we wanted to
keep looking in case it fell through. This one place we saw was a two bedroom
with a backyard and a finished basement that was 3,000 sq. ft! It was INSANE...but
also crazy overpriced.
Tinny, over at our house eating olives. Then later that night...
...a whole buncha us went over to Greg and Geordan's apartment to have...
...ANOTHER lil' bday party for Leigh.
Hahaha.
Candles on soy ice cream! Make a wish!
Apparently, Leigh wished that she and Andrew could share mouthfuls of Ultrajugggz. (By
the way, speaking of Ultracannnz, did anybody see the cover
of this week's Village Voice? Jeeeesus, Sar! Hahahah).
Karen and Josh.
You know you're at the apartment inhabited by two of the Misshapes when
you go into the bathroom and notice that there's a hair-straightening iron that
always plugged in...
...and powered up. You know, just in case anybody needs an emergency hair-straightening.
I mean, how else are you going to keep your mullet looking so tight? Hahah.
Thursday, July 28th
One night we were all sitting around drunk very late at night when a one
of those, super low-budge commercials came on advertising something called
Table-Mate
II™! A full five minutes after we'd finished giggling
about it, Sarah was like "Actually, I could use one of those!" She
opened her laptop and did a bunch of typing and then we all went back to
watching TV and forgot about it. That
is, until our doorbell rang a few weeks later and the UPS guy was delivering
a mysterious package...that turned out to be, that's right, you guessed
it: TABLE-MATE II!!! Hahahah. Check out how psyched Ryan is! Now he can
eat and watch TV without
even having to lean forward!
Check out TableMate's patented "tuck under" curved-leg technology!
The July roundup gets cut short here because later on in the evening, I
got a random call out of the blue from Mike Doyle and ended up going to
Korea to teach English at a summer camp less than two days later. Read
all about that...
