readjust your shit to day one, year one of the Podkolzinean Calendar. game has been switched. also, at some point yesterday i found myself politely yelling about how much i like toni morrison. which is weird. before i get to the emotional steak and shrimp, let’s check out the salad:
how the fuck did the astros get carlos beltran? why did the a’s give up good prospects in exchange for octavio dotel, aka the afro-hispanic arturs rhodes?
why was anyone surprised that a 5′11″ point guard lasted 20 picks in the NBA draft? he’s not even TJ Ford, right? who knows these things. at least he’s not brevin knight. anybody remember brevin knight’s brother? is he still in college or something? doesn’t he have a weird name like Brontor or Brandrew or something.
also, i can’t decide if i am more excited about pavel podkolzine or RETIEF GOOSEN. look the fuck out.
things i have done wrong in the past 5 days:
1. ate cafeteria food
2. not gotten north of 115th or south of 100th st. this sucks i want to go someplace else so fucking much.
3. peanut butter fro yo.
4. watching sex and the city, even in passing. do girls actually watch this shit?
done right in the past five days:
that’s not important. i would linger with you all but i have been given my assignments: “I think the only moral reponse would be to fail (construe broadly).”
everybody in new york dresses like a hooker. more on this as it develops.
some thoughts on hours 36-50 spent in NYC:
1. there are too many stores here. there are at least 029832 places to eat within spitting distance of the shit. my shit. i like it, i suppose. i also feel sort of stand-offish, like somebody’s trying to make me feel bad.
2. Central Park has large rocks in it. at least at 100th st. i also saw a guy making extended eye contact with his dachshund who looked at me askance (the dog did) and i went on my way. there was an unrelated three legged dog who was feeling good about shit at approx 107th street. on a final animal-related note, there are cats that just sort of sit outside shit and silently pass judgment on people on broadway, which is both great and totally stupid. put your cat inside.
3. i should get a thing for playing music out loud.
4. i had a pork chop for lunch.
5. i am having a hard time taking things seriously.
i will provide further insights, if you want to call them that, at a later point, now that i found the computer lab and such things.
i saw a kid climb on paul revere’s grave yesterday. his mom didn’t really care. i also saw the graves of john hancock, james otis, gilbert stuart, samuel adams, crispus attucks and ben franklin’s parents. and the bunker hill monument. not its grave. never mind. and the uss constitution. and i ate a weird clam.
updates might be scarce for a while. then again, they might not. who gives a ben sheets. our hero does know one thing: i own one more cc sabathia-themed t-shirt than i did yesterday. i wanted roro belliard but was denied tayshaun prince-stylee by the indians team store fashion travel security administration.
THIS DOG CAN TALK.
“Bloom calls for further experiments to answer several questions: Can Rico learn a word for something other than a small object to be fetched? Can he display knowledge of a word in some way other than fetching? Can he follow an instruction not to fetch something?”
some thoughts on recent peregrinations:
1. i can’t remember if i posted about how last week i finally got a joke from the movie Mrs Doubtfire which i saw in 1994. well, i finally got the joke about the drive by fruiting.
2. do you have to go through some kind of screening process to be one of the crazy motherfuckers on CTA transportation? do you go to some warehouse at 95/Dan Ryan where a guy assesses your ability to talk to yourself and have a really fucked up haircut and no shoelaces? i’d like to find that place.
3. i put 0.13 dollars in the fountain at the harold washington library today.
i think i’m having some kind of flashback to 1996: i’ve been listening to techno music (yeah i listened to roni size in high school.say something and i’ll fucking kill you), watching playoff hockey and playing video games. i’ve also been reading a lotabout kenyans getting treated terribly by other kenyans. i did not do that in 1994, as far as i recall. i need to rest now and the cat is sitting on me. here’s the plan: we stack the bodies in the cellar and leave, one by one. wait a minute. that’s the plan from the mrs peacock ending of clue. i might need a new plan.
i bought these today. i dont know why. i think i was having an undetectable seizure or something. nothing exciting happens to me anymore. i haven’t seen one member of the clinton cabinet this week and i have only seen two professional baseball players in person in the past two days. that’s what happens when you spend your morning doing fucking homework. also, i went to the thrift store and got 3 shirts for $4.25. shirt analysts predict all of these shirts could theoretically be worn to work, if i so chose and if i had work the day in question. i dont mean to bore everyone with extensive examination of my shirts but i am really excited about the fact that i might have enough shirts to wear a different shirt for two business weeks. those same analysts also predict an appearance by the bernie kosar jersey in the next two weeks to prove to one of the people at work that i do in fact have a bernie kosar jersey. also, the indians sucked then were awesome and are now busying themselves with sucking again. i apologize for this blog being nothing more than a catalog of weird shit that happened to me on the street and color commentary on my shirts but i would also remind you that you knew what you were getting yourself into when you signed on to this project. at least i stopped systematically rating crazy street people.
also:
[ben's] going-away festivities are going to take place at The Gingerman Tavern (3740 N. Clark St.) a week from tomorrow, so Friday, June 11th. This would also sort of be a going-away party for Pete Beatty [me], who is leaving town at the same time and for the same reason as me, but who will not be able to get the The Gingerman Tavern until at least 10 or 11 that night. [ben's] plan is to get there early, like 6 or 7, and stake out a corner …
i realize this is in fact the night before graduation from the u of c. in fact, i’d expect that if you are graduating from college, you have much better things to be doing, such as the MSI night or doing whippets with your grandparents or something. what i mean is that this is by no means the canonical you-will-never-see-pete-again moment or certainly not the last time i’ll be drinking in a zip code starting with 6 (saturday, sunday, monday morning) so dont feel left out. but if you didnt get bens e-mail and arent precluded by other shit, come out on and meet the mets next friday. does anybody even read this shit?
finally
1. i bought grown-up shoes. as i said just now, i think this is the first time i have worn leather shoes since high school graduation.
accomplished recently:
1. emptied litterbox.
2. realized there was very little replacement litter for litterbox.
3. had sitdown with the cat about how she was going to have to only go to the bathroom a couple times over the next day or so.
4. listened to “She’s Gone” by Hall and Oates approx 5x. (i burned a cd of what i was listening to this morning and by a sort of terrible concidence, “She’s Gone” is followed immediately by “Fire” by Arthur Brown which means the smooth sounds of white soul are followed by a crazy motherfucker screaming about “I AM THE BURNING GOD OF FIRE” which scared the shit out of me all five times it happened today especially when it happened on the escalator coming out of the subway because i thought the guy next to me was screaming at me.)
5. made plans to get out of the house.
6. played vice city for a while (i bought the strip club and the boatyard and assassinated that guy at the airport and stole his briefcase)
7. remained in house until legally required to leave
going all the way back to fridayish,
The Day After Tomorrow: Worst movie i have seen in a theater since either 54 or the Mario Brothers Movie? some lowlights: there is a new ice age because the gulf stream is chilled by melting polar ice caps. before this is even explained in the movie universe, Los Angeles is destroyed by tornados. apparently the tornados attacked LA in a sympathy strike to show solidarity with the giant ICE HURRICANES that freeze the northern hemisphere (and also have not even been introduced yet). i mean, what the fuck? and why would they leave the cute kid dying of cancer behind until the last possible ambulance?
Van Helsing, on the other hand, was a laugh and a half. the beginning and middle had a lot of boring talking about dracula that made me fall asleep but then the end was the funniest thing i have ever seen. it feels good to have to supress laughter because the people in front of you are trying to enjoy the emotional climax where kate beckinsale gets a special darth vader funeral on top of a cliff while Frankenstein (who has all his worldly goods bundled up like a cartoon hobo) poles his raft off into the ocean to find an island to live on (van helsing apparently let him go, but the vatican wanted frankenstein dead. also, van helsing has just recently stopped being a werewolf). a big issue in the second half of the movie is that van helsing adopts a humanitarian pro-Frankenstein stance (justified by team-first attitude from Frankenstein). so i guess it’s a small victory that they didn’t kill Frankenstein at the order of the Vatican. but couldn’t he have stayed for the funeral? did he have to leave right then?
also, i met the dog next door briefly when taking the bag of wiry cat’s doo doo butter outside. i thought he was friendly; however he may have just known i had a sack of cat dook that he wanted to eat. his name was sam.
