XLII

Most of you who know me well probably know that I normally do not care much for professional football. No, I do not find it to be a coarse and barbaric contact sport; I just usually find to to be boring. However, a fact I am certain most of you do not know is that I am also a New York Giants fan. And when my team makes it to the Superbowl and starts playing an amazing game of football, televised football happens to keep my attention rapt. Coming into the game as certain underdogs, their performance tonight was stunning. Instead of buckling under the predictions of a Patriot win and perfect season, they gave one of, if not the, most amazing Giant wins I have ever seen. Add in a performance by Tom Petty, and a Coke commercial featuring a Charlie Brown parade balloon, and you make for one spectacular evening.

Okay. I've gotten that out of my system.

Live from... Pennsylvania ?!?!!

I realize that I have been quite absent from posting lately. To be honest, I am not in New York at the moment. This semester, I am on medical leave and am living at home. Continuing to update this as if it was really live, from New York, would not be the most honest way to go about this. Instead, I plan on writing some more editorial posts, along with some memories from the past semester at Fordham. I'll use this font so that none of you gets confused and starts to think that the complaining about the new Turkey Hill down the road, and the proposed Target expansion are actually happening in New York. So, there you go.

A decent proposal

The other night, en route to food after visiting MoMA, my friends and I stopped by to see the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. (The fad for Christmas decorations this year in New York is "environmentally friendly", so the lights on the tree are LEDs. Way to be, Mayor Bloomberg. There is usually a small crowd of tourists around the area, watching the people who paid way too much to skate on the rink. However, tonight there were a few hundred people cramming around the edges, looking down into the rink, and our curiosity was thoroughly piqued. Perhaps some celebrity was performing? As it would turn out, there were no celebrities, only a man with enough money to clear the rink so he could skate with his girlfriend, and with a dramatic flourish, propose to her at center ice. The tourists loved it. My friend yelled, "Say no!" Perhaps Sarah wasn't able to make her voice heard among the cheers of hundreds of onlookers; the girl said yes.

Aliens and Rats and Girls

I have heard a lot of different speeches from various panhandlers, musicians, and other displaced, subway-riding bums, but what I heard yesterday as my friend Mike and I made our way to Union Square was the most bizarre yet. No one really talks on the subway, so whenever one begins a tirade asking for handouts, it's not hard to hear exactly what he, or she is saying. This particular gentleman began as most do, yelling some crazy jargon about God, the government, and the Apocalypse. I had my back toward his end of the train, and having heard similar things before, did not turn around. However, this man carried things a bit further, shouting that "he was an alien!" and that he brought a message from his home planet. He then proceeded to pull out a saxophone, and make a fast-paced series of squeaks and blips, what he called the "language of his planet." There was also a brief, yet terribly painful interlude of the Twilight Zone and Outer Limits theme songs.Thinking that this was a performance worthy of payment, he then made a plea to his fellow "travelers" that he needed earthly currency in order to return home safely. There was also some quip about taking Bush and Cheney with him when he left. A nice gesture, but it was still not winsome enough to overcome the annoyance of the pervious five minutes. As he left though the door near me, I saw that he was wearing antenna made out of wire. Yeah.

Later that evening, as Mike and I were enjoying some organic chocolate chip banana bread from the Union Square Green Market, a rat crawled right under our feet, as if neither one of us were sitting there. I said, rather nonchalantly, "Um, Mike, there's a rat under your foot," something I though I'd never say. But, in New York, one never knows. Eating organic banana bread in Union Square Park, after dark is not the best idea, that is if unless one wants to see the local "wildlife."

In other subway news, the ride home brought with it a very cinematic moment.
The scene: a crowded subway car.
A beautiful girl was stares pensively into empty space. Our eyes met briefly. We smile, if only slightly. I pretend not to steal glances out of the corner of my eye. The train arrives at my stop. It is hers too. She gets out first. I watch as she is swallowed by the undulating masses in the Times Square station.
If this were really a movie, we would randomly meet while browsing through books at the library, where we both make small talk about out mutual love for the short stories of Kleist- either that, or at a dog park.

Did You Know?

Did you know that in 1981, Honeytree released a holiday album entitled "Merry Christmas, Love Honeytree?"

I thought you might not.