Small Calamities

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May 2007 Archives

Noche Azul
May 28, 2007 | permalink

I was walking down the street Friday night after work in Soho. The streets were crowded with people and cars, and the congestion from people trying to get to the Holland Tunnel was about average (by which I mean awful, what with the honking and gridlock). I was crossing Broome at Broadway, and there were two things that struck me as odd.

The first was the large clock on the outside of the building that the Staples is in. It gave the time as 2:35. The time was in fact 7:10. Did I happen to walk by at the exact time that a broken clock was wrong in the exactly opposite way? Or is it somehow geared backwards, with the hour and minute hands reversed? Was this done on purpose, or is it some kind of awesome prank? We may never know the answer to these questions. Well, at least until I walk by again at another time of day.

The second thing that I thought was funny was a guy in a car. He wasn't too funny in and of himself- just a guy, about fifty, clean-shaven and with a short, almost conservative haircut. There was a sign stuck on the dash, visible through the windshield. It wasn't really funny by itself either. It read: 'Clergyman on Official Church Business,' and it had a very official looking seal underneath the text. Very serious stuff, to be sure.

What was funny was the car. The (presumed) clergyman, looking respectable, was driving a gold Trans Am convertible. With the top down. On Official Church Business.

I wonder if he called it the Priestmobile... because that is totally what I would call it.

Posted in Around New York & Random
(3) Comments

Something in the Air
May 22, 2007 | permalink

I'm back, Gentle Readers. And I cannot tell you how happy that makes me. I had a lot to say about my experience working on the West Coast, but after writing it all out and re-reading it, I realized that most of it was unflattering, at best, to the people I was working with, and out of context it came off as decidedly bitchy (especially, I think, to those of you not 'in the business'), so I decided to forget all that and not say anything at all. Instead, I have an embarrassing story to share with you.

I'm on the plane on the way back to the East Coast. It was getting to be around lunch time, but I refused to pay five dollars for the questionable food items the airline was selling (because you aren't paying enough to be crammed in with your fellow travelers already). But I was hungry, so as a compromise I got a bag of M&Ms to snack on. Not nutritious, and overpriced to be sure, but at least I was sure of what I would be getting.

So there I am, gingerly trying to open the bag so as not to tear it completely apart, when I misjudge. The packaging fails catastrophically, and M&Ms go flying everywhere. I see them arc, in slow motion, and come cascading back down all over me. Oh, and all over the guy next to me. And off of the head of the gentleman in front of me. Yes, Gentle Readers, I was That Guy.

Embarrassed, I try to apologize to them for having bombarded them with candy. The guy in front of me just sort of glares and goes back to his paper. The guy next to me is a lot nicer about it, and good natured-ly helps me pick up the M&Ms from the floor and from in between the seats and (without my help) out of his lap.

Then, still smiling and truly trying to be helpful, he reaches over and drops the candies he has just picked up from the floor and the seats and his lap and drops them in with the few pristine M&Ms that I have left in the remains of the bag. As if it didn't occur to him at all that I might not want to eat the candy he just fished out of his crotch. As if it were the most normal thing in the world.

*sigh*

Needless to say, I didn't eat my M&Ms after all.

Posted in Out of Town
(1) Comments

Honey for the Bears
May 12, 2007 | permalink

So, a couple of weeks ago, while perusing BoingBoing, I saw a post about Monsters by Mail. The idea was pretty simple- come up with a fictional monster movie title, and for the small sum of twenty dollars American, Len would make a drawing of your monster, and send it to you. I thought it was brilliant, and I just had to have one.

Gentle Readers, I give you The Were-Bear of New York: Savagery in the Subway, which is in the mail on it's way to me as we speak. Pretty cool, eh?

While the Movie Monster run is closed, a new theme is forthcoming, so if this is up your alley (and I suspect, if you keep coming back here, that it must be for some of you, at least) then you should keep an eye on the Monsters by Mail site.

Posted in Random
(4) Comments

Top of the World
May 9, 2007 | permalink

As promised, Gentle Readers, I report to you from beachier climes. It is gorgeous here!

I don't drive (and please let me clarify: I can drive, I just hate it and whole-heartedly believe that it will be my downfall, so I just don't do it), so I rented a bicycle to get back and forth to the venue and to tool around town with, and to generally be mostly self sufficient, because there is nothing that irks me more than not being self sufficient (I'm sure that is not a revelation to anyone who has read more than ten sentences here). But that's neither here nor there, really. This is about the bike.

I haven't been on a bicycle in over a decade. You see, I had this accident. With the crashing. Into a mail truck. Hard. I hit it square on, from behind, and launched myself over the handlebars, cutting up my thighs in the process, and gave myself a nice concussion (not the first or last, I am sad to say) when my head, with a resounding thump, smacked into the back doors of the truck. My bike was wrecked, of course, and I was a bit shaken up. (But there was some humor in the situation- the woman driving the truck jumped out, and upon seeing me and my mangled bike exclaimed, 'That was you?!? I thought a car hit me!' I guess that's one point for the thick skulled.)

Actually, it shook me up so much, and I waited so long to get back on a bike (mostly since mine was, as I said, wrecked), that I never really got my nerve back for bicycling in traffic. Until today. I had completely forgotten how much I enjoyed riding a bike.

I did about ten miles today. Five on the bike path by the beach, and five in a round-trip dry run to the venue so that I could time it out and not get lost in the morning when I have to go for real. My legs are tired and my ass is sore, but I am so excited it hardly matters.

Posted in Out of Town

California Stars
May 6, 2007 | permalink

Well Gentle Readers, I'm off.

Not right this moment; I leave on Tuesday, but between now and then I highly doubt that I will have any real free time. So I am taking this opportunity to bid you adieu, for the moment. My next dispatch will be from decidedly beachier climes.

As I have mentioned, I will be in Santa Monica for just shy of two weeks. Working, for sure; we do have a big show to put on, after all. But there seems to be some real potential for some leisure time as well, and I plan to take full advantage of every moment.

Posted in Out of Town & Working

Washed Away
May 4, 2007 | permalink

UPDATE: My clothes have been found. They turned up yesterday at the laundromat, having been given out to the wrong patron. Which is a big relief. Why it took them so long to bring them back and correct the error, however, is a mystery to me.

The laundromat lost my clothes.

I'm not talking about a couple of items here; I mean the whole bag, three weeks worth of clothes and assorted sundries like towels and handkerchiefs and pajamas. The bag was thirty five pounds of laundry, give or take, and I'm sure you won't be surprised when I tell you that it represented the vast majority of my wardrobe. Not to mention that of course all of the clothes that I like best were in there- the things I am least fond of I left to wear last.

I was at the Laundromat for close to two hours last night, helping them look. They are very nice people over there, and I have been going to them with my washing for years. We had several theories about what the problem could be. It's possible that my bag ripped, and so was replaced with one of a different color, and if that was the case my laundry was just hiding in plain sight. (No such luck.) Or, it could be that it mistakenly was loaded in the delivery van, and would show up when the delivery guy, who was due soon, showed up. (The van was empty.) Maybe it fell behind something? (Nope.)

By the time I left, the owner, her sons and I pawed, examined, and opened every single bag in the place. None of them were filled with my clothes. The only plausible alternatives tot he clothes still being in the laundromat somewhere that still eludes us all are that either a) someone was mistakenly given (or mistakenly took) my bag instead of their own, or b) someone purposely gave away (or took) my bag in addition to their own. In the first case, I can't imagine why they wouldn't return with my clothes to exchange them for their own clothes, and in the second, well, I just don't get it. I am not, Gentle Readers, that snappy of a dresser that someone would covet my clothing.

I left without any real resolution. They were going to continue to look today, and go through the claim tickets of the bags that have been picked up to see if there were any clues as to my laundry's whereabouts. I took the initiative and made as accurate a list as I could of what was in the bag, and what it would cost to replace it all ($568.50, as I figure it) so that tonight when I go in and they still haven't found it, I can have a conversation with them about reimbursing me for my clothes.

What really sucks is that by the time I go to sleep on Sunday, I need to be packed for a two week trip to Santa Monica, where I am being dispatched to look after The Boss' interests in a fashion show we are providing the design for. So by Sunday afternoon at the latest I need to be buying more clothes. I have less than a weeks worth of stuff right now, and like I said, most of it is not clothes that I am particularly fond of. If I weren't going out of town, I would try to stretch it out a while, doing laundry often and wearing the same things for a couple of weeks, but I don't think that I can show up in Santa Monica, representing The Boss, looking like a schlub in the same three outfits.

I expect that the Laundromat will not want to give up on finding my clothes so quickly, and I am going to have to rebuild a significant portion of my wardrobe out of my own pocket. My fear it that I will lay out a few hundred dollars this weekend, and then they will find my bag while I am gone, so I'll be left high and dry.

Grrr....

Posted in Around New York & Bad Luck & Random
(3) Comments