Why Calamari and hard licquour don't mix

When going out to drink for the evening, the key thing you should consider is, have I eaten? I always like to eat a big meal before a debaucherous evening with friends. However the last time I went out, I failed to eat, thinking I could grab something at the bar. As I arrived at the bar in my area, I ordered some fried calamari, one of my favorite dishes. I hadn't drank too much, a couple of shots and two beers at that point. I hastily ate my calamari, relishing the taste and appreciating it's chewy goodness. Things seemed great as I began to drink more and finished my fried meal. An hour or so later things began to get creepy, I went to stand up from the bar and my legs didn't seem to work so well, I had drank much more in the past but this night something seemed wrong, my brain was saying, "walk you fool walk, you aren't that drunk, why won't your legs work?" I didn't know the answer, as I exited the bar everything went fuzzy and I fell forward into my friend who luckily caught me before I fell on my face. 45 puke filled and excruciatingly disgusting minutes later I had purged the evil calamari from my system, and was starting to feel semi-human again. Note to self, when Calamari goes bad it goes really bad, and it often doesn't smell like its bad, does anything fried really? It's such a great feeling to be prostrate on the sidewalk as people walk by staring at you and wondering what the hell you are on. The sidewalk actually feels quite comfortable in this state, nice and firm on the back, if you have to puke, try not to puke on yourself, this just makes things worse and leaves a lasting memory of last nights exploits for you to find on your jeans, shoes, or other article of clothing you wore the night before. There is no shame in puking your guts out in the street. If one measured all the bodily fluids secreted in the whole of New York City over its long history, how much would that be? Would it fill swimming pools full of fetid, stinking fluid? Would it fill football stadiums or maybe Olympic size swimming pools? Hard to say really but I am sure it is a large large sum of liquids and lets leave it at that. Some people say it's good to drink milk before drinking, it coats your stomach and helps you drink more, however if you are lactose intolerant this can cause a rather unsafe stomach condition and its definitely not a good idea if you are on a date, who wants to be the guy who has to keep getting up to fart? Ahhh alcohol, that lovely poison that we legalized, and a plant such as Marijuana, which grows naturally in nature is illegal, go figure. We all have different tolearnces to things, it helps to know your body and know your limits. I have learned my lesson folks, no more bar food, it's just mostly bad, greasy but is also good to coat the stomach, next time its going to be the chicken fingers, and pray that the stomach can handle it. Peace and hair grease.

Ahh the Job Hunt, the best way to depression via computer

I have to say that the phrase "looking for a job is a job itself" is so true. Since finishing my degree in January I, like hundreds of thousands of other unemployed New Yorkers and Americans, have started the job hunt. Now mind you, I have not much to complain about, there are others out there that have exhausted their savings, ran out of unemployment benefits and are two steps away from resorting to selling their bodies (if they are hot enough to) or jumping off the nearest high building. Ok, a bit dramatic true, but you get my point here. So where does one look for jobs these days? Gone are the days where you would look in the New York Times help wanted section, it is almost non-existent. Of course, you can go on popular sites such as Monster.com, Jobs.com and Careerbuilder.com etc. Honestly, I have had no luck from these sites, zero in fact. I sometimes wonder if the jobs on these sites even exist, or is some evil little gnome sitting somewhere at a computer, deep inside a bunker at Monster.com headquarters, entering in jobs that don't exist and giving an evil chuckle as he sucks on candy canes and drinks too much soda. That is a weird visual and a scary one and I think it might just be right. Of course there are other schools of thought, network with everyone you know via facebook, twitter, myspace and the like, but that has its own problems, you get sucked into playing mindless games and reading peoples updates and wondering why their lives are so great and yours sucks. In my case most of my friends can't help me or don't want to hear my snivelling, whiny rants anymore and have long ago given up on me. Yet I continue to try of course, because we have no choice do we? A few good friends have tried to help so that can't hurt. Any other ideas? As I talked about in earlier posts, "The Sign Guy" as I dubbed him had a good one, stand in the street all day with a suit on with a big sign saying "I lost my job can you help me?" Or "Will work for food" is always a good one that gives me a chuckle. But alas, these don't get the job done and working for food alone won't pay your rent or electric bill. Now, the city is gradually warming up so one could realistically stand outside all day in a suit with a sign and look for work that way. I never saw the sign guy again after a while, I keep the hope alive within myself that he finally did get a job and got off the street. My dark side thinks however he froze to death or left the city to hobo around on the railroads from place to place, seeking redemption in the long forever of the U.S. landscape, a bottle of cheap whisky in his hand, staring blankly out from the open boxcar and wondering where it all went wrong. Ok maybe this is overly dramatic, but these are dramatic times we live in, we all desperately want the 90's back, where jobs were plentiful and there wasn't a natural disaster happening every other week. So here I sit writing my woeful articles and wondering if anyone reads them, maybe this is just my way of therapy. A way to exorcise the demons stirring within my tortured New York soul. We all need this, it helps and is cheaper than drinking ones liver into swollen oblivion (which I don't do thank God). Depressions come and go in history and you have to just weather the storm if possible. If you can't, well it's getting warmer so you hopefully won't freeze to death if you are forced out of your home due to joblessness and hopelessness. New York is a shitty place to be homeless in, the shelters are disgusting, not that I would know, but I can only imagine. I would think being homeless in South Beach would be cool, there are showers on the beach and it's warm enough that you won't freeze to death. Maybe you can even be a travelling poet and sell enough poems during the day to afford a couple of cans of food that you can eat right out of the can, how romantic no? Well maybe not, but hey it beats freezing to death while sleeping over a subway grate in New York City. Keep the faith people, we can't be in a recession forever but I feel that this recession is different, the game has changed and I think somehow the U.S. got left behind, we are slowly being knocked off our pedestal of world power and maybe someday, we will wake up and we won't be the big kid on the block anymore, just a bully with alot of weapons and no jobs. I hope this is wrong, America used to stand for something and I hope we get our "mojo" back, I love my country and love New York City, but I am slowly forgetting why and that bothers me. So I go online each day and type and search until my eyes blur and my back aches and have less and less to show for it, but I still try because that is the "American way", we don't quit when the going is tough, we get tougher. More to come soon and keep the faith people, fate has a funny way of coming back around when times get hard. Peace and hair grease.

Where have all the egg creams gone?

For those of you who have never had one, an egg cream is a delcious drink. It consists of milk, seltzer and some vanilla syrup if your having a vanilla egg cream, if your having a chocolate egg cream, it's seltzer, milk and chocolate syrup. This drink is not to be confused with a malted. A malted is with grated ice, mixed in a blender and then adding chocolate syrup, milk and blending. There used to be many places in New York to get egg creams. There still are a few but it seems to be a vanishing beverage much to my consternation. There used to be many soda fountain type places in the city that served this beverage. Some diners still do but less and less so. According to some historians, the egg cream was a New York product, first sold mainly in Brooklyn and then spreading outwards. You can go to many places outside New York City and ask for one and the people will have no idea what it is. I recently was down south and asked for a bagel at a diner and got a look of consternation from the waitress, truly disturbing. The egg cream is a vanishing item and it is sad to see. It is one of those drinks that reminds me of my youth. Many people, when talking about egg creams, especially chocolate ones, say that it has to be made with U-bet syrup. I think this is the best way. If you can believe it, an egg cream has neither eggs in it or cream. This recipe has several legends as to how it was created, one legend is that it was created by a Jewish candy store owner in the early 1900's named Louis Auster who came to America and opened a candy store on the lower East Side. I am not sure who created the egg cream, but it is a miraculous drink. It was never able to be bottled because the ingredients tend to seperate after a while and the drink is best consumed freshly made. There is an old type soda fountain store on Chambers Street between West Broadway and Church Street where they sell them. However they put vanilla ice cream in them which is not the traditional way to make them. When I recently got one and saw the guy putting in vanilla ice cream I asked "what are you doing? That's not how you make an egg cream!" to which the guy smirked at me and told me that's how they made it there. It sucked! When I was younger, I worked in an ice cream store and I made very good egg creams. In fact there is a method to the madness, you have to make it sweet and add three pumps of vanilla syrup and just the right amount of seltzer, the old seltzer bottles that are pressurized work best for this type of drink, they are rare and hard to find but still sold by a few companies. It is depressing to see this great beverage, which is so much a part of the New York landscape and history, vanishing. Unfortunately so much of the old New York I love seems to be vanishing. The city is changing so drastically and the small things which gave it its identity and local flavor are slowly passing by the wayside. This is depressing to me, someone who grew up here and never left and I hope the trend reverses itself. If you are ever in a diner ask if they make egg creams, maybe they will and you can taste this great drink before it vanishes off the face of the earth forever. It is one of those special New York City only drinks that is wholly a part of the New York City landscape, that's how it should be. More to come soon, keep the faith, the worm shall soon turn for you too.

A storm was heard in NYC today

I have to apologize for not writing here sooner. I guess life throws you curve balls repeatedly and if you can't hit them well you fall into a deep dark hole I guess. I was also finishing my degree and now am on the job hunt along with millions of other unfortunate souls. We had a storm blow through the city today that I thought would shatter my windows, heavy winds were recorded of up to 100 mph, which for NYC is unheard of, things begin to get blown off buildings and when the buildings are 30, 40 or even fifty plus stories that can be like killer projectiles flying through the air. Imagine walking down the street and get cut in half by flying glass or some peace of whatever splits your skull and you never saw it coming. Freaky stuff to consider but hey tomorrow is never promised right? The city right now has around a ten percent unemployment rate which is really high considering that means around 800,000 plus people are out of work. I go online every day and feel that hopeless sinking feeling that i'm not going to find anything, or if I do it's going to be at some shitty job that I can't stand and makes me want to contemplate suicide with a butter knife. Well a bit dramatic sure but these are the times we live in. President Obama inherited a world of shit left over from the bush years and it's going to take a while to fix it up if that is even possible anymore. Too bad they gave AIG all that cash, we could have used it, AIG never did me no favors, I thought that if you mess up in a caplitalist world, you go under that's just the rules. These guys play with a different set though, they fuck up and the government bails them out, enjoy those bonuses boys while I contemplate if I can make it through the week on rice and beans and hot dogs as my lunch and dinner, skipping breakfast saves a few bucks! I sometimes wonde with all the natural disasters happening, (Tsunami's, Earthquakes, etc) maybe the predictions are true and 2012 will be it for us. It seems rather fitting if you ask me. I think God might be looking down and thinking, well I gave them two chances and they fucked it up again! Have you ever wondered how many innocent people have been killed, murdered, raped and pillaged just in the last thousand years, it's mind boggling. We have done a pretty good job of killing each other in the 20th century alone and the 21st is starting off with a bang. I'm ready if the end is near in 2012, i'm going to get a bottle of grey goose, sit out on my terrace and watch it come, hopefully with some close friends. I know this sounds glum people but hey these are dark days so a bit of darkness is par for the course. How many more signs do we need to convince us? I don't know, part of me wants the world to go on also, if we can just manage to get along with each other which seems more and more unlikely. I saw an interesting character today, the below picture was taken a few months back, of a way cool dude in a green fur coat with matching hat. Where else can you see a guy who is this confident in his style to rock this coat in public. I wondered if he was a pimp but then again maybe he just has pimp sensibilities whatever that means.



Anyway I think this guy is awesome, it takes alot of moxie to rock an outfit like this even in NYC where the weird is oftentimes overlooked or actually even blends in. I mean can you picture this dude walking down the street in some small town in Alabama or something? Shit that would be something i'd pay to see. On another note, I was recently out in the city with some friends, one of whom drinks way more than I can, I somehow drank seven shots of grey goose that night along with four beers and managed to keep standing, well I was down for the count once but that was a balance issue. However my other so called friend, who doesn't drink and was sober left us in the street when it was time to go home, you never leave a drinking buddy out in the street in that condition, so I was left the shitty task of taking a cab all the way uptown to drop my friend home, he lives way uptown i'm talking almost riverdale or in the 200's streets and we were in the village. You can get to the airport cheaper than this ride, it took every cent I had to get him home but at least I didn't put him on the train to get mugged or ride the rails all night in a drunken stupor. To you drinkers out there, you never leave a comrade behind, especially a drunk one and of course don't drink and drive but in NYC you don't need a car really its a luxury to have one and the parking sucks. Suffice it to say I arrived home with two bucks left over, smoked a cigarette while walking the deserted streets a few blocks from where the cab dropped me off. I love walking the city streets really late, when no one is around and its just you and whatever vermin happen to be scurrying around. It's funny though you don't see many rats in the winters, even they go hide when the winds swirl and that cold wind comes off the Hudson River. Any night you get home alive and unharmed is a good one in my book. Being a statistic just sucks. Peace and love, i'll write more soon.