It's New Year's Eve... so guess where I'm going?
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Absolutely nowhere. I'm in my house, building my rocket. Tis a lonely existence, that of the rocket hobbyist.
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December 2003 Archives
Ahem...
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Google must have put a lot of private investigators out of business.
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I did an internet search on my fourth grade teacher. This is nothing new. I've done this many a time. But what was new, was a result!
I wrote her a ridiculously long email.
But you must understand, fourth grade was the glory year! That one good year of schooling I had.
And also, this teacher was on my case about reading more... and we all know how that turned out.*
*Does the 1998 Most Well Read Youth trophy ring a bell?
But seriously, I owe at least some sort of percentage of my writing aspirations to her. Along with Jeremy, Stephen King, and Chuck Palahniuk.
But she was first, so fuck those other three. Being first is like winning.
It's seven in the morning folks. This post should not even exist. This post should simply be a rising line of Z's, ever increasing in size... as I'm under the covers, dreaming about not spending tomorrow playing Zelda all day like I did today.
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Commercials for the Food Network special have begun... We've seen two in the last hour or so... My guess is that they're playing once an hour.
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The commercial is 100 percent us, even though the show originally started out as a show about low carb in general, not any one person. (But, sadly, I'm only in it for a split second.)
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There's a group of people (www.nomoreaolcds.com) that are collecting one million AOL cds to prove that AOL is filling up our planet's landfills with their unwanted discs. As of now they have just over a quarter million... but when they reach the million mark, they're going to truck them all to AOL's headquarters and "give them back." And an idea of how funny that spectacle will be... if you stacked a million cds on top of each other (just the cds, no cases)... it would be three times as tall as the Empire State Building.
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This Mars lander, Beagle 2 that they can't get a call signal from... it's broadcasting a nine note composition by the band Blur. There are scientist's all over the world aiming equipment at Mars, waiting... waiting.... to hear a song by those guys who did that "Woo! Hoo!" song from the Starship Troopers preview.
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Dat's a pretty tree!
And would you get a load of that beautiful shanty!
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That New Blog Flavor
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As you can see... I've overhauled the blog. I was no longer in the mood for orange.
Also... overhauling the blog... not very easy. Was working from a template... but felt the need to tweak the shit out of it. Font sizes, borders, colors and what not. It's all done in pure HTML... so it's just a step up from figuring out how to do all that shit in binary code.
HTML is a world where the color black is represented by the code #000000 and the color white is obviously #ffffff. So with those in mind that would make this beautiful shade of blue you see behind everything #C3CFE5. But I didn't have to tell you that! Please realize that, though this paragraph is chock-full-o-sarcasm, it is one hundred percent factual and not an exaggeration.
You'll also notice the Blogspot banner at the top of the page disappeared... WHOOPS... darn! How in the world did I goof that one up? Ahh man... I'll miss that annoying ad banner! God, I must have accidentally left it behind a thick border of the color #C3CFE5 or something.
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Got a camera.
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In yo face!
The quality is actually quite amazing... here, I'll take a photo and crapify it down to internet quality...
It's shrunk down to 20 percent of the original size and then compressed to 90 percent of the original quality.
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Also, how weird is it that all my relatives like the band Guster? I mean... my aunts and uncles... shooting the shit... talkin' bout Guster.
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Christmas was not a white one. In fact, I would think that it was warmer than last year's Christmas... in Florida. The weather is playing tricks on me up here... it's pretending like everything is going to be all right. It's whispering, "Don't worry baby, I'll never be cold again. I swear. I'll make it spring for you baby!" And part of me wants to believe him. But then I glance at a calendar and realize that winter only started 4 fucking days ago.
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How was your Christmas?
Mine was nice. Another big gathering with relatives.
It's an absolute fucking miracle with Thanksgiving, Anthony's birthday party and it's monstrous leftovers, this Christmas party... the 1 pound pastrami sandwiches in the city and all the other food horrors, combined with an absolute lack of activity, that I weigh the exact 143 I did when I got here. Not to mention the lots more muscle I've attained. Now, to get past the gathering of relatives at my uncle's house this weekend, the party at my aunt's on New Year's day and the small scale festivities that will surely go on on my birthday. (To celebrate the FN special of course.)
I have a lot of relatives up here.... and they like to throw parties. And they like to bake delicious meat pies. Mmm... meat pies.
Well, back to the super-cycle workout / puffed wheat and fat free chili diet until that next party!
On non-money gifts for a moment.
My uncle gave me ridiculously nice snow boots for winter 2.0. And my grandmother gave me snow-proof gloves. So then, I no longer have a reason to fear snow.
My other uncle freaked my shit out and busted forth an American Eagle gift card. He should not know of such a place or my fondness for it, yet he did. I used it on their site to purchase a new beanie and some sleeping pants. And so my lost beanie tragedy has a happy ending. (Besides of course the Playboy beanie Chris got me for Christmas... which I wear around the house and in the car and what not, but have not found the courage to wear in the general public.)
That was all on the gift front... but I believe I'm going to go use my accumulated cash to buy a digital camera tomorrow. The digital camera will bring a new era to this dusty old blog. There shall be pictures! Pictures everywhere!
And of course, a full PicRiffic diary of LAUNCH 2004. Yes folks.
LAUNCH 2004.
I will launch that bastard rocket. We're praying for clear conditions on January first of the new year, because amidst my aunt's celebration, there will be a liftoff. And although my cousin lost an arrow to his Christmas bow and arrow set in the woods of that very backyard this morning, we're going ahead with the launch anyway... the chances of recovery are slim, yes... but I hear there's a Chinese kid in China looking to get one of these rockets up before me and I just won't stand for that.
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I can finally type in colors. Finally.
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My nice new Gap beanie... I'm pretty sure it fell out of the car somewhere.
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Let's all take the time to realize how truly sad that is.
Also, Merry Christmas everyone.
Visiting relatives tomorrow.
I know what my father got for Christmas... contractual disputes!
You know what that means I get for Christmas? Nothing until it's resolved!
Warm holiday wishes from the Food Network to me. Wait no... those aren't holiday wishes... that's the Food Network pissing in my mouth!
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Right now, the Food Network has the special listed as airing four times from Jan. 4th to the 11th. So there will be no excuses for missing it, mister.
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I should maybe get into that party, but it's not much to get into. That is, it's story would be of little entertainment value.
Everyone played with the dog.
Regan was a model dog for once. It was my hypothesis that with such a large group of people, she would not know who to bark at and jump on, as she normally does to visitors. And this was exactly the case. The dog was cross-eyed with dumb confusion all day long and wandered from person to person as they called her.
One of the women there had borrowed my DVD of Robert Cake... it's now her son's favorite movie, she said.
That's it with that.
Today, I turned one of my really short stories into a poem instead. I then entered it into a poetry contest. (A legitimate poetry contest.)
So I'm not a total loafing bastard, huh?
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There was a party... and it was a party.
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I'm sorry. We just spent all night playing Risk and getting drunk off of wine.
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To further update the masses on me...
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I just cleaned my room for the bigass party we're having tomorrow afternoon. An Antony's birthday / Christmas party of doom. We're talking, over twenty relatives on my father's side and eight on my mother's.
These relatives on my father's side. I had never met any of them before I moved up here. So you can imagine how acquainted I am with them.
I've been baking cookies. For the party, of course. I made a test batch yesterday. They came out horrible. I'm not sure what I expected from my fat free, sugar free oatmeal cookie recipe... but I didn't expect the thick, hunks of oaty-bread that came out of that oven. You should never want to slap some ham in between two cookies and have a sandwich. That's a true sign of cookie failure. But my second try, tonight... they came out quite better. Actually, good. Good in a you-must-understand-there's-no-oil-or-butter-or-sugar-in-these-cookies kind of way. They're made with applesauce instead of the butter by the way. Applesauce folks.
I did some Christmas shopping until I ran out of money. Didn't have much money really. I really wanted to make a compilation of short stories for everyone for Christmas... but don't have enough written. I'll be doing that sometime soon though, just for the heck of it. For now I got some small gifts for a few people... it's completely un-extravagant and the best I could do.
Finally, I'm growing a goatee. This is fact. Even if only to see how it would look.
Goodnight.
Tomorrow should prove interesting.
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I hear stories that people read this. This is through my various information channels of course. Plus there's the two hundred page threat matrix that I go over every morning. In there, it clearly, always, states the state of Christian's blog chatter.
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And the chatter is now at an all time low. And that's not good. Lord knows I love attention. Gimme attention! Gimme attention! Film me! Put me on TV again! Bring on the fan mail!
Now then, to recap the last week in a way that is slightly similar, but hopefully even more entertaining than the first blog post that was four billion words and lost to a power outage. (So you see, my blogcrastination stems not from disinterest, but from pure pissedoffedness. The rage that builds as I slog out these words for the second time, it's quite unpleasant.)
As I recall, The View was looming. I'm going to attack this subject from all corners... so prepare yourself.
Did you catch it? Did you watch that shit? Do you love me enough (gimme attention!) to have remembered to tune into that shit?
Ryan did. Ryan called work... asked to come an hour later to stay home watching it. Ryan loves me. But did you? Did you love me?
No honestly, did you love me? Wasn't I great up there on stage, joshing around with those crazy women of The View? Didn't my new haircut look nice? What about the new sweater? Yeah, you're right, it does fit well. Well, yeah... I found an extra small. Wait...
I wasn't on The View?
Whatever do you say?
You must be talking about Charlie Sheen. Because I know he wasn't on.
No? You're talking about me? Well shit.
It goes like this folks... no time. No time for Anthony and I. And Anthony flew all the way here! (On an airplane, smartass.) Tis all cool though. They put Barbara Walters on the segment. So all was great. You don't argue with a producer that is putting Barbara Walters on to your segment.
In the commercial break, Barbara asked my father to send her a list of good and bad foods to eat on low carb. She's going on it.
And now... people that we were in the greenroom with over Monday and Tuesday. (Rehearsal and filming.)
Ben Affleck
Uma Thurman
Sarah Machlachlan
Liz Phair
Joan Rivers
Uma Thurman is mega-tall.
Sarah Machlachlan is right over there on that couch. And you had no clue it was her for the past ten minutes, aint that funny?
I feel it's time to get into the gift thing. They like to give expensive things to everyone in the audience during Christmastime on any daytime show. So, when we arrived, we saw lines of people exiting the building with what I dubbed "PicNoculars." These are of course, picture taking binoculars.
And when my parents were on the show... they gave away the exact model of digital camera that I was thinking about buying the day I had money, but could not give one to us. They had demoted us from guests on the show to something less than an audience member. I mean, at least them audience members get cameras.
Of course, audience members don't get the pleasure of Elisabeth squeezing up beside them to talk to whoever. Because yeah, she did that to me. She entered my personal space to talk to someone next to me and it was like God finally showed himself.
Elisabeth is so much better looking in person. Anthony will verify this for you, if you don't trust my swayed judgement.
She was... shockingly attractive folks. Smoking is a word that could be lit in neon for her... yessir.
So after The View we were off to the Food Network for a meeting with the network's vice president. Apparently she's lost 60 pounds on low carb since she met my parents. She says we've saved her life. The vice president of the whole network!
Also, the programming director says I turned the heads of the women in the Food Network office when they watched the upcoming special. (Gimme attention!)
Also, they're sending a box of swag to the house. Shirts, jackets, hats... all kinds of Food Networky stuff.
Also, they'll have a section on their website for my father this week... and they'll begin advertising the special.
Also, they gave Anthony and I some books. I got a signed copy of Anthony Bourdain's new book.
Anyway, it was then off to a meeting with my father's series producer. Apparently he's done episodes of Trauma: Life in the ER and also, Anthony Bourdain's Cook's Tour on the Food Network. It's strange, I watch Cook's Tour every week. And it's damn great. And now the same people are making my father's show. They start filming the first of February by the way.
I think I'll start a new post to get things up to the now... I will simply never get into this a third time if I were to lose everything... It is far too exhausting to take myself back to that Elisabethian moment, you know.
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Whoa, went a little overboard on the cereal/oatmeal tonight. Feel I need to upchuck. Won't happen again, because I ate it all.
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Tis all right though... Been watching what I eat for The View... and ain't no cereal fucking with the metabolism that I have created.
For someone that spends ninety percent of his days lounging around... goes outside maybe once every few days... I've miraculously kept myself up. Still weigh less than 145...
It's my super-cycle workout system. Copywritten by ME. It involves alternating muscle excercises with jumping jacks and ab-ball torture without stopping for more than a minute in between. This way you really freak out your body! Freak it into building muscle and burning fat that is! I'll write a book... you'll buy it. Then you'll know how it all goes.
Chapter 7: Eat two bowls of cereal and a bowl of oatmeal for dinner. Feel the fiber roar! Upchuck.
Anthony and Kelly will be here in a few hours. Tomorrow morning it's off to the city for Food Network food prep and View rehearsal. Then I'm going to see Big Fish. The View put us up in a hotel tomorrow night, and have a limo taking us to the studio Tuesday morning.
Don't forget to watch Tuesday morning, 11 am... ABC. The other guests are Donald Sutherland and Liz Phair.
Goodnight.
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Suddam Hussein was just captured.
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But the big news ran in this morning's Norwalk paper... it seems a Target store will be opening in nearby Stamford! Sweet relief! Now I can go back to my normal way of life, without so much terror. Without the fear.
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I feel I need to get into hot beverages here for a minute.
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They're delicious.
I take back anything I've ever said about coffee. Coffee can be awesome.
This is the biggest change in my life. From Florida to Connecticut... I now love to sip some tasty hot beverage.
Hot tea... just as awesome. All the flavors in the rainbow. All yummy. Even Green Tea... with it's antioxidents that have not been proven to affect anything but claim to cure death and bestow everlasting life. Even Green tea can make me happy.
Sugar Free Cocoa... tastylicious... but most importantly... a hot beverage. They warm you heart and soul, like Campbells but without meat and without veggies.
This has become a 6 times a day habit... these coffee, tea, cocoa breaks. These warming moments.
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Ahh the blog knows my true thoughts.
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I believe the words were... "I'm under no obligations at the moment... so I can decide not to come back after tomorrow and they won't be mad... but if I'm going to work... I want it to be steady... so unless it's absolutely horrible... or not enough money... I'll be asking for a permanent position."
So then why was it so HARD for me to quit today? I mean, god! I was supposed to be under NO obligations. The deal is this...
I was HELPING them today because they were so shorthanded... on account of those picketers who yelled at me as I walked in this morning. And they couldn't guarantee a position... but just come in and work for some quick cash right now. The guy, Joe, said he bussed the night before because of how short staffed they were and the waiters tried handing him his tipout in "hundreds"
So I came to the decision this morning... that I'm not going to be happy bussing tables... but I should do it the next three days to make some money to buy Christmas gifts for everyone back in FL. Three days of this and then there's The View filming and all of that. And heck, if I made $150 a day... that'd be plenty of money to cover the commuting costs, the Christmas shopping and money to sustain me until I find a local job after Christmas.
So once inside Oyster, I am immediately handed W2 forms. But all right, all right... even though I'm only working on a day to day basis, it still has to be legal. I fill them out.
And then there's the training. There were at least four other bussers working today. All Tibetan. Between the four, they know two english words. What these two words are, I do not know, because they never spoke them. So the two words are just theoretical.
To understand a busser's duties at Oyster, you must understand that the place is huge. Really, really monolithic folks. They have ten walk-in freezers in the kitchen. Ten. Market Street had one I believe. Now then...
Bussing here consists of being the waiter's bitch. You're in charge of getting everyone water, refilling water, fetching bread and butter, removing plates from each course as soon as the customer is done with them and then eventually clearing the table (balancing everything in your hands until you walk it to the nearest bus pan... no bus pans to the table) and then finally re-setting the table.
Resetting the table goes like this. You take all the salt and pepper and what not off the table. Remove the table cloth. Throw a clean table cloth over it. Replace the salt and pepper. And then, each corner of the table gets a bread plate. In front of each chair you stand a fancy-ass folded napkin (that we spent all morning folding) upright. To the right of the napkin, the butter knife... blade facing in. To the right of the knife the soup spoon. To the left of the napkin the salad fork. Behind the napkin a water glass face down. And then it's ready to be sat! And ready for you to pour the water! And then run into the back and create the bread basket using a very scientific bread to person ratio.
This ratio involves
X (number of people at table)
Y (number of buscuits to add to basket)
n (number of flatbreads to add)
Q (number of sourdough rolls)
P (number of oyster cracker pouches)
M (number of pads of butter)
Now Y and P are equal to X and n is 1 and 1/2 X. Q is 1/2 X and M is who gives a donkey dick.
But then... miscommunication arises. These bread formulas are all wrong.
But how can that be?
It seems I'm being trained by someone who is still in training himself. In fact, after extensive surveys... I come to the realization that sixty percent of the employees are on their first, second or third day. This is entirely due to those people outside, wearing sandwich boards and saying, "Don't work there!" as I walked in.
The absolutely unorganized atmosphere this newbie-laden floor had created was enough to make me wish I was drinking bleach.
Five bussers... and yet we all share the entire floor and all of the tasks. Nobody in management could think of splitting us into sections or keeping us to certain tasks? Without our own sections to survey... I found myself concocting bread formulas for tables that suddenly had bread by the time I got to them. I found that as soon as I had compiled the supplies to reset a table... One of them damn Tibetans was all ready on the job. This is just an awful and confusing way of working. And I told the manager that too... when I was formally quitting.
On to it then...
I come to find that I am full on in the hiring process and would be on training pay for the next three days. My three days of helping out for quick cash are three days of working twelve hours for one quarter the normal tips. And then... what are the normal tips? $40-$80 ... So let's see... a quarter of $80 is $20 and then we'll minus the $25 in round trip train travel and I'm making negative five dollars a day! But then... if I kept the position I could end up making as much as $55 after travel costs! $55 in 12 hours! Less than minimum wage! All right!
So you see... it had to be done. I had to quit. And I did it on my lunchbreak so as to not even bother with dinner. And I went home with nothing. Negative twenty five dollars. Not to mention all the clothes I had to buy.
A complete waste of my time.
On the way out, as the strike members yelled at me for working there I laughed and said, "Don't worry, I just quit."
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I am a scab.
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And a liar apparently.
And also, I really hate seafood.
What am I getting at, you say? Well........
I'll be bussing tables tomorrow at Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station in NYC. I completely and totally and utterly promised myself I would never work in a restaurant again. And now I'm bussing tables... and in a seafoody environment no less.
Now the upside is... Oyster is one of the most famous restaurants in NY... this is a primo job here. There's no reason I should be able to attain this job... but I'll get to WHY I attained it in a second. The money will be damn good. At least a hundred a day... and it better be, considering the train fare could cost as much as 25 dollars a day. And you know how much I love money...
But how did I get such a job? Well my dad worked it out with his restaurant friend from Gallagher's Steakhouse. So I'll be treated right by management, but then there's this tiny hitch... ALL OF THE RESTAURANT'S REGULAR EMPLOYEES ARE ON STRIKE. I'm tallking signs and everything... they are PICKETING. And thus, I am a scab. Being a scab is not cool. I will be yelled at by the employees on my way into work, for thwarting THEIR strike efforts. And also, if and when the strike is resolved, and all the normal employee base is back to work... they'll all always hate me!
YAY!
So I work tomorrow morning! Should be interesting! And I'm under no obligations at the moment... so I can decide not to come back after tomorrow and they won't be mad... but if I'm going to work... I want it to be steady... so unless it's absolutely horrible... or not enough money... I'll be asking for a permanent position.
What the hell else am I going to do with the black slacks, dress shoes and fancy white shirt I had to go out and purchase for the job? Yes, yes... this is a fancy place... I have to wear one of their coats as I bus as well. Cleaning oyster shells and crab parts off a table in a suit, can you think of any better line of work? I think not.
On the up side, I get to be some important looking commuter... taking the train into the city every day.
And on the flip side, I get to smell like a salmon's butthole for the ride back... thus scaring away any girlies attracted to important looking commuters.
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The icicles.
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Woke up this afternoon to find 2 foot icicles hanging down in my living room window. Also found a blizzard, but I've already mentioned that whole thing.
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Regan completely disappears in the snow now. She's not the biggest fan of this.
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Today, we're going to do a little vocabulary building exercise.
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We're going to learn a new word...
Nor'easter.
It's a strange looking word, for sure. But did you know that it means, HUGE NORTH EASTERN SNOWSTORM OF MASSIVE BIGGITUDE? Well it does, Sally Joe.
Now I know what you're thinking. Why in Heaven's Gate would I ever need to pass said word out of my lips?
Well if you would so happen to live here in good old Norwalk, you might want to turn to the mailman and say, "Hiya mailman! Can you believe the amount of snow this NOR'EASTER is attacking us with?"
And then that mailman, also privy to the word, would say "I simply cannot! This NOR'EASTER is positively dumping and dumping down snow!"
Another time that you may have to unleash your new found vocab word, is if you had any plans whatsoever for the weekend. You'd find yourself turning to your significant other halfway out the door and saying, "Well honey, I was going to go buy dinner, but that goddam NOR'EASTER's snow has swallowed the family vehicle. And besides, the only thing traversing these frozen roads are sleighs!"
Then Mary would say, "And look... the NOR'EASTER's wrath has caused the mailman to wrap the mailtruck around a tree and die."
So there it is folks! So much snow already, and it's barely begun! Now I have an excuse to stay home and be unsocial! Because I have no choice!
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So I should probably, and never did, mention that my father got the first draft of his Food Network contract. It is, as we all expected not a "complete" buttload of money, but not too shabby either. Should be plenty to sustain us. Of course... now it's on to the book deals, product endorsements and other things that are the "real" money.
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And for me... it's on to them hordes of pretty girlies.
You know the hordes I'm talkin bout... you've seen em.
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Went for a haircut today at a professional salon. The same salon the Food Network sends my parents to. So yeah... she never once picked up scissors. The woman cut all of my hair with a straight razor. It was crazy, and I'm still having nightmares of the horrible scraping sound it made. The whole razor blade haircut thing was for the benefit of a more layered hairdo... and it worked... so she knew her shit.
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Now I really, really, really look like I'm in a band.
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Completely snowed this morning. The ground is still covered.
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I brought out the crappy digital camera and took some pictures...
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Of note:
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This morning I opened a new box of this delicious, delicious sugar free raisin bran... it's full of spiderwebs. I'm talking, bran flakes webbed to other bran flakes which hang from other webbed bran flakes. Kinda like you're cleaning out a pumpkin on Halloween and you're pulling out strings of pumpkin meat with seeds caught up in that. Totally not cool. The spidery raisin bran, not that whole pumpkin seed thing... finding pumpkin seeds is all good by me. Anyway... I wanted to dump the box out on a sheet pan and sift through the pile on a spider search. I wanted to see these spiders.
Also... with the 17 degree weather approaching, my mother insisted I buy a bigass winter coat. So of course, it was off to American Eagle. It was there that I found a bigass, furry-hooded winter coat to satisfy the masses. It is at home that I realize the damn ink-exploding security tag is still attached. I fucking hate stupid shit. Now I have to fucking freeze on my way back to the fucking far-ass mall.
More girls on emode... this time they live in PA and MA... one of them loves road trips... and she better, living 200 miles away and all. Twits, I tell you. Twits.
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There's no sky here. Haven't seen sky in weeks. It's...
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I'm sorry... It just started snowing. Just a few flurries floating around in rain. It's not cold enough for anything more.
But tomorrow it's going down to 17 degrees.
Anyway, yeah... there's no blue to the sky here whatsoever. No discernable clouds either... it's 100 pecent hazy white at all times.
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