the best thing to ever happen ever

so, i just got a new 'pod. i call it elefant because it's gigantic. 80GB of storage. that's twice the size of my piddly laptop's hard drive...it's a video, which i never saw the point of. but now, thanks to magic or fate or just pure dumb luck, my vast wasteland of disk space will soon be filling up with the greatest comedy show of all time ever in the world...

the state.

the first season is now available on itunes.

rejoice!! now!

i'm going as a JW for halloween

Son: Daddy, what's that?
Father: That's the Watchtower.
Son: What do they do there?
Father: That's where they teach people how to ring doorbells.

--B train, Manhattan Bridge

ONY

had a lovely weekend at camp guillaume. we celebrated the yid new year with the hasids in the 'skillz. bonjour, brooklyn brewery Ocktoberfest! bienvenue! thanks for getting us all drunk, along with whatever that other beer was, saturday night. pics of leaves changing? maybe.

also, Lambchop at bowery busts its way into my top three gigs ever. maybe four. wow. but they managed to take the win as the lowest ever attendance at bowery ballroom. including west river and me walking in just before the opener and seeing no more than 15 people in the whole place (except, of course, the tables upstairs. those fuckers got there super early). it's very sad that so few people were at the show, but having space and quiet during a gig was certainly welcome.

i'd say there are generally two mindsets for gigging: you're either going to see a band you know well & love hoping it will be the louder, clearer, louder, better, funnier, louder, somehow more transcendent (yes, wr I used that word) version of the albums you've been listening to, OR you go to check out a band you've heard here and there who happen to be in town so what the fuck, you haven't got anything better to do--is there anything better to do than go to a gig? doubtful.
anyhoo, Lambchop was the textbook example of all the hopes and dreams of scenario 1 coming true. 12 or so peeps on stage, including a string quartet and everyone on top of thier game, not to mention (finally) a very respectful crowd, who cheered, danced, and shut the fuck up when it was called for. go, lambchop, go!

you get me through my current occupation

i think it's pretty well established that i LOVE devotchka. I saw Little Miss Sunshine because they did the music (liked it a lot as well!), i saw them back in june or something and i went back into manhattan at 1130pm last friday to see them at midnight at spiegeltent.

so surely you wonder if this was worth it? yes. yes it was.

because not only were the awesome and play loads of loviliness, they had an aerialist:

11

:(

here's a very interesting recap from teendrama, with photos (be sure to click on the link at the bottom).

i lived in atlanta and saw most of it go down on telly. it was mind boggling to wrap my head around how someone crashed planes into buildings, not to mention how strong the buldings were, and their size, since the planes didn't go right through them and they stood standing for a while. then i freaked out even harder because i'd had a dream i was in the world trade center looking out and there was smoke coming from below me and then the whole floor i was on started falling a few days beforehand.

digression, digression, point

so i just had HALF of a SMALL (or grande or whatever) mocha (not from *bucks) and i'm pretty amped. i absolutely cannot hold my caffeine. i just walked into the boss's office and spouted off a stream of words even i didn't understand, closing with "i just had a cup of coffee and i'm really hyper, sorry", so part of why i find this so hysterical might be because i can't even type without hitting two keys at a time right now.

while i define myself as a smoker, i rarely smoke during the day. but when i do, i take rudolph with me because he does. i cheated this morning and just a few minutes ago he came by my desk to see if i wanted to go again, i looked at him with my caffeinated eyes and said "no thanks, gottafinishredliningthiscausewehavetosenditouttodaybecausetheauthor
isallmadit'stakingthislong" so moments ago i got this email from him:

I just saw Dan Rather come in our building. I wonder if he’s meeting someone here. See what happens when you don’t smoke, you miss DAN RATHER.

ps i think all the jonathan swift i'm reading is rubbing off.

sometimes it looks like we might just be OK

war, poverty, hatred, stress, stupid jobs and kevin costner movies are some of the bad things we've come up with as a species.

but we can do things like this, too.

via ze frank, who was hysterical at ted. (via Waxy)

two weekends in one

not only did we have some seriously divergent weather patterns this weekend, but i managed to get two weekends for the price of one by spending thursday, friday and most of saturday at camp guillaume and kicking it bk style sunday and monday.

thursday evening got off to a rousing start as rudolph and i left the office to walk to PABT and Penn Station, respectively. of course, this sort of required going through the Radio City Music Hall area, where googols of sad-sack teenagers were waiting to go inside and cheer about bands that suck and the imagination-lacking videos they use to burn into viewers' subconscious. more to the point, i said to randolph how my 16-year-old self would have probably shit bricks to get into something like that and now here i am walking past it at a jaded 28 thinking everyone involved with the VMAs is beyond pathetic. i don't even know who was nominated so that could be a total lie. either way, they were blocking up the sidewalk and that was annoying. and MTV blows.

what was awesome was when we finally emerged from the vma holding pen, we were in Times Fucking Square. i was pretty sure i was moving through the circles of hell; i was waiting for phlegyas to show up and offer me a ride. rudolph took off for jersey and i went into penn to find guillaume for the 6:57 train to port jervis, via secaucus junction. meeting people at train stations is fun and simple. especially when njtransit has two "ticketing areas" with "waiting areas" right the fuck next to them and you are on the phone with guillaume, patience waning, screaming, "i'm in the ticketing area and i don't see you, you must be in a different ticketing area". finally i decided it would be easier to just meet on the platform, which eventually worked out.

guillaume bought this cute little cabin in bethel, new york. bethel is in the catskills, which is a mountain range and which, like many other mountain ranges, tends to be quite a bit cooler than the surrounding lands. i was not informed of the fact that the heating oil man was not meant to show up until friday morning before we left. meaning that we were heatless for thursday night. obviously this isn't normally a problem in august, but since mother nature decided to smack us upside the head this weekend, it was a pretty serious issue. not only that, but the cracked out people who sold guillaume the house had kindly left the matresses there, but they'd never taken the plastic off. so i slept on a mattress in a plastic bag with one sheet over me. maybe it was the poor quality of the previous night's sleep or my unending generosity, but friday morning i was up and at 'em on the way to home depot for a grill and then on to wal mart for some flannel sheets and comforters and other homey items on which i spent entirely too much money.

some of you may be aware that the catskills were once known as the "borscht belt", a lot of hasids still hang out at decrepit camps in the area and there was no shortage of them when i went on my excursion. still, it's weird to see loads of them roaming around home depot, and odder still, wal mart. it was hard enough for me to simply be in a wal mart, but a wal mart full of hasid families was almost too much. because i like any sport involving a lawn and not much skill, i wandered into the "sporting goods" (read: guns and camo-everything) aisle. i saw a dude buy a gun. i heard another dude (none of these people were curly-cues, by the way) arguing with the gun man about the mandatory waiting period. i walked up to the gun counter and asked if they sold horseshoe games. they were out for the season.

i got back to the house and the heat, propane and cable had been hooked up so i hopped online and did a little work and then got to work grilling the steaks i'd imported from fairway. i bought some lovely hickory chunks which did not abide my impatience and eventually got covered in charcoal. it was a delightful dinner, after which we got insanely baked and watched harold & kumar go to white castle. the next morning i whipped up some chocolate chip scones and strawberries and cream. not healthy in any way, but fantastically delicious.

spent most of saturday travelling through the drizzle of upstate new york and new jersey to the drizzle of brooklyn. luckily, the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy had arrived via netflix. sunday xx and i went to atlantic center. why the hell does it always look like there's about to be a national emergency at target? entire aisles are devoid of product every time i go there.

we hopped up to the maj's who threw a bbq in honor of summer ending and her brother's visit to ny. this event ended in us all being so fucked up that we started throwing any flammable item within reach into the grill. monday was all about productive. i finally finished editing a friend's manuscript in the park and then xx and i met the maj and brother deegan (and briefly lucy) at lovely union hall, where we played some fantastic bocce.

and now here i am, at work. boo.

tip for a long weekend

even though my job sucks, they do things like give us the entire friday before labor day weekend off, so what can you do? guillaume and i are headed up to his fancy new house somewheres upstate for some steak grilling and i guess a lot of copy editing for me. yee haw.

knox: but that's not the point, that's not the point at all
charlie: what is the point?
knox: the point, charlie, is uh...

beer

is it just me?

or is the nytimes.com front page every conservative republican's worst nightmare?



yesterday on the subway i finally saw something that inspired me enough to fill in my username and password on blogger and get this party started again. at least for today.

these two guys were sitting next to me and being generally annoying and loud. each listening to headphones and so talking over their own soundtracks. they took pictures of women as they got off the train with their cameraphones, which is just bizarre behaviour in my book. but then i looked over and noticed in one guy's armpit -- brace yourselves here -- was something that really really can only be described as a cocoon-like ball hanging in his pit tresses. talk about naseous. repulsive. of course then i couldn't stop staring at it. gross.

ps - the day my skillz go beyond screenshots and ms paint is the day i sell out.

didya miss me?

i got me a free starbuck's coffee. i don't even like coffee. or iced coffee, but i'm a jew. and it was free.

the woman who sits behind me has just informed me that tomorrow is "miller time" and seems to believe that she is going to bring beer to work and we're gonna drink it. i don't have anything against this, but that does not make it any less fucking weird.

finally made it to union hall last night. hoorah! they've got some nice bands lined up for the next week or so. i'm sadly going to miss oppenheimer tomorrow cause i'm going to see the 'rents. but maybe i'll catch the mugs next week finally. and rumor has it that sam champion will be there at some point.

so the point of this post is to welcome me back by telling you this quick tale....

i downloaded the newest version of itunes on my computer here at the office...in norwegian:

first off, through no fault of the US govt, the aforementioned friend's family are safely back on us soil, or at least on their way (i'm not sure when she sent the email).

perhaps you've seen movies, or even that windows wallpaper that alludes to a place...a tropical paradise where it's just you and the sand and the lapping sea. a corona ad, perhaps. the end of 'trading places'. that stupid 'kokomo' song. there is always the promise of a place where mangrove trees grow over the ocean with enough low hanging branches to sling a hammock over, where the palm trees gracefully arch out over the sand, straining to get a look at the sea, where the water is blue, or green, or some new color that defies description. and there's no one else around. no one. unless you count the few people staying at the same bamboo hut village you're staying. where the food is unbelievably good and the beer is cold and they don't sell it during the day, but they are willing to give it to you for free. and the weather is perfect. and the rain is a performance not to be missed. and on the other side of this perfect island is another beach. different from the miles of uninhabited, almost flat, shallow waters of the first side. this side has thunderous surf, chrystalline blue waves, and is backed immediately beyond the sand by a jungle. perhaps a nice richshaw driver will take you and those with whom you came on a short walk, where you will see a lagoon that brings tears to your eyes because the color of the water can be captured only by an immensly expensive and rare gemstone, if that. and you will see a bird that glows.

you might, if you're very very lucky, spend three days floating on your back in this paradise of paradises, and continually say or agree with the maj as she says, 'holy fucking shit, this place IS perfect.'

so there was that whole thing. we're in chennai (madras) now. you may not know that indians didn't stop at renaming their cities. a great number of streets were renamed too. this makes it damn near impossible to get anywhere in the cities. it's not like anyone knows where the hell he's going anyway. every taxi, rickshaw or auto rickshaw we've been in has stopped to ask directions, or taken the lonely planet map away from me and made it perfectly clear that he is not at all familiar with his city of residence. i used to think new york cabbies weren't so great compared to london taxi trivers (which is true), but this shit is ridiculous.

good god i've gotten about ten mosquito bites since starting to write this. my feet are on fire.

ok, this ghetto version of IE won't even let me change the font or colour, so we're goin' analog. enjoy.

baited breath

today's update is only this:

i just found out that one of my closest friends in the world's family are stranded in beruit. it would seem that they should be fine but it will probably be hard for them to get home what with the aiport bombed and all. some day i will tell you the stories of the post office, and the train to calcutta and maybe even some other stuff, but for now, let's just wish them well.

wcs

a quick tally

Number of times my imminent death has become a very real possibility:

5 july: 2
9 july: 2
10 july: 4
11 july: 8

jeeps with a minimum of 10 people + fog + himalayas + monsoon season + washed out roads + 7+ hour journeys = lots of really fucking close calls.

ps--we had our very own bomb scare here in gangtok...a box was left in the middle of MG Marg and the police shut everythihg around it down and cleared the area. turned out to be some dude's pyjamas.

it sure does rain a lot here

greetings from gangtok! the commercial and something or other capital of sikkim. the views from here are pretty great, even if the clouds are still blocking the major himalayan peaks.

we arrived yesterday, promptly found some other travellers, and got drunk. today was a bit of shut up monastery and walking up steep hills and krrish, a movie you should see if you're anywhere near a theatre that's playing it. (ny kids, i'm looking at you here.)

the rain will not hold us back, we will trudge on through the mud. and the leeches. tomorrow we go up to some valley with some dudes and trek around. it sounds like a lot more driving and staying in hotels than trekkking, but if you could see the kind of rain that's coming down right now, you'd be OK with that, too. pray for clear skies.

i've finally realized that there is a minimum of three cups of chai a day, and this is if you refuse upwards of five offers of it. what's more, it's usually poffered by some adorable child who looks at you with gigantic brown eyes and a dazzling smile and has this cute metal basket that holds glasses that he or she is delightedly swinging back and forth in anticipation of bringing you a hot glass, and sweetly says "chai?" you've said "two please," before you even know what happened.

hey, HBO has commercials on it here. isn't that weird? i suppose that might be the least weird thing i've seen here, but i still get a kick out of it. i'm surprised at how many hotels have had tellys. even the bare bones place we stayed in siliguri had one. we do not have one here and it's a nice change of pace.

this town apparently has a city-wide wake up policy that requires some dude to roam the streets at some ungodly hour banging on a gong and yelling something in one of about four options of languages, a la "bring out your dead". who knows, maybe that's what he's saying.

gangtok is the source for "alpine gouda cheese". what else do you want from me?

chow mein is very popular here. i've enjoyed it myself. it is more like what is called lo mein in the states, but with thinner noodles. also popular here is chewing on red stuff and spewing a geyser of red saliva all over the place. these dudes are way into that.

a spring roll has nothing to do with anything you've ever seen before. it's basically a chow mein omlette. yep, that's what i said, and that's what i meant.

per usual, it is loud, chaotic, confusing and beautiful. and the water is rather unreliable.

who knows what my rrs reader looks like

so we're in darjeeling at the mo. it's a bit wet here. but that's what happens when you travel to india during the monsoons. despite all the rain/mist/clouds, etc., it's still been sweet. all wide eyed and what not. i've been taking pictures like a japanese tourist, and will upload them at some point and you will all gasp with disbelief when i show you just how fucking insanely enchanting this coutnry is.

a few highlights:

our shared jeep (read: 15 people in the equivalent of a shitty land rover) broke its axle on the way from siliguri to darjeeling and we were serendipitously picked up by the bus. this is clearly not scratching the surface of this story, but it's enough to give you an idea of how things work around here.

delhi is kind of a hell hole. the maj and i were thrilled to leave. we flew to bagdogra or something like that. it's beautiful in this part of the coutnry (west bengal).

people LOVE taking pictures of us. we were at the zoo earlier and we felt like one of the attractions. the maj and i patiently smiled whilst about 20 bangledeshis (who we'd met thenight before at a park) all posed one by one to have their pictures snapped (with oldschool film cameras) with two white chicks.

the food is unbelievably good and almost as unbelievably cheap. we ate lunch for less than a dollar each.

that's it for now as i'm typing this on a shitty keyboard with a pretty heavy buzz on and we'rea headed off for more beers.

xo

wcs

the longest day of my life

currently i am relaxing at my friend wanda's house in woking, surrey. she very kindly came and fetched me at heathrow, drove me to hers and had her lovely fiancee (congratulations!!) make bacon sandwiches, which we enjoyed in the garden. i've had a shower and a tea and it's fantastic. in a couple hours, i'll go back to LHR and await my final leg to delhi. i do not like planes. i will also be enjoying the second of two flights in middle seats, hurrah. i am tired. it's 1230 here, about 730 eastern time.

weather in london is spectacular. even a bit hot.

watched 'junebug' on the plane. it's rather enjoyable.

cheers
wcs

so this is it

my final entry on us soil for a while. last night, we had a very good celebration of all things american, mac 'n'cheese for dinner, a west wing, oh, and roll bounce.

xy shaved my head, and i won't mention the weird bald patch right above my right ear and the chunk he tried to take of my left ear (of my ear, not my hair). i look like i like the ladies...ooops.

namaste, motherfuckers.

come pick me up

the maj just emailed me this confirmation from sweet ass hotel in delhi re: our pick up at the airport. it's like a piece of candy, this one:

Please note the driver would be standing near the arrival lounge with a placard in his hand which shall be having Hotel’s name and your name printed on it. The same shall be at the time of pick-up for Ms. Wild Cherry Sara. The placard shall be having her name printed. The car would definitely be in the parking but the driver would wait for you near the arrival lounge. If in case you find any trouble locating the driver please contact the hotel reception at [redacto].

the placard shall be having my name printed!! and the car would be in the parking lot! yes! and what do i do if trouble finds me first?

with a little help from my friends

this is a special shout-out edition to those of you who have been so sweet about me going away...

some folks from work went out for a special lunch yesterday, and i was presented with my very favorite insanely delicious dessert: buttercup's banana pudding, so for that, thanks to rudoph and west river.

west river came through with the hilarious "sara, please come home safe EP" mixtape. i've never gotten an EP mixtape before, but i love it. we discussed how it makes good sense, as he didn't want to overload me with stuff, and this was the best and why waste time with filler. nice work, wr. thanks.

lester sent me the 21st century version of a mixtape, a buncha links. including lilly allen's LDN, which he suggested i listen to whilst im back home is where the heart is, and i just might!

stella has kindly volunteered to take me for a last fling with charred cow flesh tomorrow before i go to the airport.

and xy will be not only watering my plants, but doing the honors of removing the vast majority of my hair tonight. too bad he has no idea i sabotaged the shit out of the netflix queue for the time when xx and i will be gone.

xx took the time to read through more of my lonely planet than i did and spent tuesday night following me around the house as i pre-packed spewing all sorts of useful facts.

apple brandy gave me a handy list of good street foods to try in delhi and the name of a restaurant or two.

and lots of others who've given me advice or hooked me up with people who've travelled in india. thank you all!

i hope to do at least a few posts from hindustan, but who the hell knows what will happen. check in every now and again and i'll try and give you a reason to stay.

ps, what's up with this? someone stole a government laptop that had all sorts of infor about veterans? kinda strange thing to steal if you ask me. this is just like the time someone stole bono's laptop with all the lyrics to the then-upcoming U2 record.

a last holdout

brooklyn record's all up in timboo's with a great, albeit quick, piece about the age-old bar. it's not a place i frequent. i've been maybe twice in the last 4 years, but whenever i did go in (super wasted and ready for karaoke) the people were friendly and fun.

br talks about how it is an ironworkers bar, which makes me wonder how many ironworkers are really left in the slope. but the best thing about the article is the picture...see that guy in the cowboy hat? he's always standing out front of timboo's. full suit, hat, great stache (the kind you're just not allowed to have unless you're over 70), beautiful cane and a bunch of union pins on his lapel. i see him out there almost every saturday and sunday morning. yeah, morning. anyway, whoever you are, cheers to you, that guy!