Requiem For A Restaurant

The absolute best part of living in Manhattan is the preponderance of awesome things within walking distance from your apartment. I have accounts with two different banks, both of whom have a location within two blocks from my place. We have two grocery stores within the same distance. I can walk to work in just about the time it takes to listen to Shine On You Crazy Diamond Parts I & II, and Central Park is under 5 minutes away. I've mentioned the Beacon and Fairway, both of which I wouldn't swap for another theater/grocery store.

Another thing that makes the location of our apartment so perfect is (was) Westside Brewing Co. When we first moved down here, we used to go there every Sunday night in addition to the impromptu visits during the week. If I had anyone came into town, it was the first place I thought to bring them.

I would place their wings in my top five of all time, with some serious consideration for the #1 spot. I'm probably biased, but trust me, these were not your ordinary orangey, fake-looking, limp dick wings you get at TGIFriday's. The sauce wasn't sweet like a BBQ and didn't really have a buffalo twang. They never detailed any of the ingredients on the menu, and I'm not much of a gourmand, so if you've never had the pleasure, you are going to have to use your imagination a little bit. They were a deep maroon color, subtly smoky, hot, but not lingering, and... did I mention they were fucking amazing?

Westside stopped brewing their own beer long before I moved down to the city, but they kept a rotating selection of ten taps to make up for that fact. They centered on local brews like Captain Lawrence, Chelsea and Blue Point, but also drew from across and the country and world. Last time I was there, they had Green Flash Le Freak on tap and around Easter-time last year they had an incredible Rauchbier (smoked beer) from Germany.

The had a pretty fervent staff turnover, but managed to keep a cute girl hostessing with remarkable consistency. One time Sampson and I walked in, and were making some offhand comment about work, and the cutest of the hostesses smiles and says "Are you guys in the movie industry?" Sampson immediately goes "Yeah, I'm a director and he is a producer". Her eyes light right up, so we had to let her down gently. She's was like, "Oh, it seems like everyone is in the movie business around here". After we sat down, I went to Sampson, "They aren't really in the movie business sweetie, they just want to have sex with you".

The place wasn't without it's faults. For one, it was closed for strange reasons way too often. Too many times someone came into town and wanted a fairly cheap, relaxed meal, I couldn't wait to take them to WSBC. I would hype up the wings and promise I could pick them out a great beer, only to roll up to the place and see a note scrawled on the door explaining some strange circumstance which precluding them from being open.

About a year and a half ago construction began on The Harrison, which took up most of the block between 76th and 77th & Amsterdam and Broadway. It was well boarded off, but through the slats, you could catch a glimpse of the cavernous void that claimed Amsterdam Billiards.

One night I walked in to the bathroom and in the corner underneath the urinal there was a gigantic hole, looking right down into a 25 foot deep rubble-filled pit. That must have violated the health code, because two nights later they embarked a a little hiatus for a month or two.

In the three years we've been going there, they never changed their menu. It's not like it diverted us from stopping by, but as a place that had a pretty large regular customer base, you'd think they'd have wanted to switch it up a little bit.

It is also extremely close to The Beacon and it gets a lot of spillover, which can be annoying if you want to get a seat at the bar. They occasionally even play the music of the act that is on that night. One night Kelly Clarkston was in town and we got sat down right next to a table full of pre-teen girls who knew the words to every single song, and weren't afraid to sing along at full roar.

Sometime last year, our friend Ian was around and we popped into Westside to grab some food. We got the wings (as always) I ordered a Hawaiian pizza, Sampson got a burger and Ian got the tuna melt. The pizza always takes longer to begin with, but at one point I glanced over my shoulder and happen to spot the our waitress and my pizza in mid-air headed towards an inevitable demise.

She didn't think we saw it happen and about two minutes later, after the mess had been cleaned up, she came over and said "Sorry guys, your food will be up in like 5 minutes. Want another beer?" We didn't feel like correcting her just yet, and let it slide.

She eventually brought us over the food and as she's sliding the pizza in front of me, I go, "Round two on this one, huh?" She stopped for a second and goes, "Yeah, I was kinda hoping you guys didn't see that". She was cute and we laughed it off. When Ian got terrible food poisoning an hour later, he wasn't laughing. There's not way of telling, but I'm pretty sure the 20 minutes that tuna melt spent under the lamps didn't help. That didn't stop us from going back either.

The allure was obviously the beers, for me personally. It was always crowded, so I don't think I'm alone in that respect. They absolutely always had a high quality Double IPA on tap, whose hoppy character was an unlikely match for the wings. Ten beers every week allows for some pretty serious breadth and they did a pretty good job of managing the selection.

I really don't go out to dinner than much because we have a grill and SeamlessWeb (and I have no money), so I'm probably the last person who is going to get sentimental about an eatery closing it's doors. Evelyn Lounge... now that was a tragedy. But wow, this sucks a fucking lot. I was moving my car the other night, saw the papered up windows and went out of my typical loop so I could email Sampson a picture with the caption "RIP Westside Brew Co." from my iPhone.

It's not all doom and gloom though. I was trawling the message boards over at Beer Advocate and found this little gem:

I have an infallible source telling me this place will be re-opened under new management in a few weeks. And by new management, I mean guys who know how to run an outstanding beer bar. UWSers should be psyched. More to follow.

It's a message board, so I'm not going to get my hopes up, but please, please, please almighty Beer Gods, get something in there soon. It's not fair. I'm dying inside.


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I just went out to take the daytime pictures above and as I was standing there, a guy with one of those chest baby pouch/carriers and his wife walk up. The dude was probably in his 30's and with a forlorn look on his face he said "It's like, closed, man."

Welcome To The Internets, Doris [Non-Sports]

Everyone has had a crazy neighbor. We knew she was a little strange when we first spotted the yellowed newspapers she had stuffed in the top corner of one of her (broken) windows visible from our apartment. Occasionally she would blast classical music out of her AM/FM-Radio/Tape Deck combo right on the window sill, which you could hear even if both of our windows were closed.

When my buddy Sampson and I were looking for a place down here, we wanted outside space. Non-negotiable. It is an incredibly valuable commodity in Manhattan and it allows us to grill year round, which is obviously essential. We pay through the nose for it, but it's honestly worth it, especially during the summer.

When we first moved in, it was July and the terrace was a death trap of silver tar. On the hottest days, you could leave footprints just by walking on it, and the railings oozed black tar that ruined more than a few articles of clothing.

Neither of us had a "job" at that point, so we spent about three days and three trips to the Home Depot in Secaucus transforming a worthless space into the selling point of our apartment.

We didn't go in blind. My Dad used to wake me up at 7:00AM on weekends when I was 8 years old to help him with carpentry projects around our house. Sampson and I both worked for my cousin in Lake George over summer breaks in high school building custom lake houses in Cleverdale.

Sampson came up with the design, and I took care of most of the logistics. We carried every board, nail, bucket of stain, and FastenMaster Screw up six flights of stairs and I don't regret a second of it.

The fact that we had people over somewhat frequently didn't sit well with most of our neighbors. The people who lived here before us were apparently never around, which was a stark contrast to two 22 year olds with no jobs and a propensity for late nights and generous pours of Johnny Walker Red.

Doris' terrace borders on ours, not shown to the left in that picture.

The first run-in we had with her was when she called the fire department on us and had them confiscate our propane tank. Common sense would dictate that like a mother bear and her cub, you don't come between a man and his grill. We still don't know what exactly precipitated this most despicable act, but despite our initial outrage, we never said anything to her or retaliated in any way. We just bought a charcoal grill and used the extra 15 minutes it took to sear a couple of sirloins to drink another beer.

Doris used to just assume that everything that ended up on her terrace was a direct result of us, so she would sweep it up and throw it over on our side. It could have been a dead pigeon and she probably still would have tossed it over. Newsflash: There are numerous explanations for why something ends up on your terrace. We don't just throw shit over there for fun.

She also thought it would be a good idea to create a barrier between our spaces using an upside down ceramic planter, a wicker basket and some lattice, all strung together with twine. One day, I actually saw her during the daylight, and sarcastically complimented her on her work. She went "Oh, I just work with what I have, like Caldas, down in Brazil there". Riiiiiiight.

We actually have had some decent conversations with her, but her weird side inevitably came out. One night, Sampson passed out on the terrace and woke up to her throwing bird seed on him at 4:00AM.

We eventually built some spruce boxes where her odd "artwork" used to be, and planted some Aborvitaes for noise cancellation and privacy purposes. Doris was thrilled that we did it and we even planted some flowers on her side.

We had a truce for quite some time... until this weekend.

Earlier in the Fall, we nabbed a pumpkin on a golf trip to Jersey. It sat on our picnic table until it collapsed in on itself in late December. We threw it in one of the boxes to compost and it lay decaying peacefully there, ready to fertilize our Myrtle.

On Sunday, we went out to grill some chicken skewers for the Super Bowl and the rotting pumpkin was smashed on our AstroTurf. We had some ladies over at the time, so we laughed it off, and gave them the background on how crazy she was.

That lasted for about .10 of BAC. Around midnight we went back upstairs and took the remnants of the pumpkin and threw it all back on her side.

Why? Cause fuck her, that's why. There was no reason at all for her to take OUR pumpkin from OUR box and throw that shit on OUR terrace.

Well, today, I got home from work and decided to survey the terrace situation. She returned every chunk and every seed of the pumpkin back on our side. HA. Fuuuuuck that.

I had some leftover posterboard from the "Look At It, Dave" experiment, and decided it was a good time to use it. I made the following sign and Zip Tied it to one of the haphazardly arranged Time Warner cables on her side of the terrace, above the pile of pumpkin remains I threw back on her side.

[It reads:]

HEY DORIS!
ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND?

I think we already know the answer to that question... There is absolutely no reason for you to throw a composting pumpkin onto our terrace, which explains why we threw it back. You really shouldn't be touching the boxes we built or anything in them. We haven't bothered you for a long time, so...

STAY OUT OF OUR SHIT!

Cordially,
The 115 guys

Grammys Screen Grab Recap [Non-Sports]

I hate the Grammys. I hate every award show, actually. The pomp and circumstance is unbearable and the music they are honoring is almost always terrible. That said, since it was on after 60 Minutes and we had an hour of fast forward time saved up on the DVR, we skipped to the performances and roundly mocked them in the typical asshole fashion you have come to expect from Fack Youk.

The Coldplay and Jay-Z combo was actually really sick, but look at the faggy lamp that dude had on his Piano.
(touches finger to earpiece)
What's that?

Oh. I have just been told that it is in fact the reflection of faggy lampshade I picked out at IKEA on our TV. That's embarassing.

Black and White, baby. Kanye is vastly overrated but this was quite a nice touch. Us Fack Youkers approve.

I don't know who either of these lovely ladies are, but that's not important. Here is the question: A chick ripping a guitar solo: Hot or Not?

Sampson says "Not". I'm going to go with "Hot", which is probably because her and I play very similar guitars.

Except mine is a hollowbody, bitch!

I don't know who the chick with Lil' Wayne was either, but she was super-pregs.

Continuing with the theme of me not knowing who any of these people are, I lost a $20 bet (it was almost $100) to Sampson because the girl on the left was actually Miley Cirus. The lady on the right is playing a Taylor with a Koa wood top. Gorgeous.


She's only 16? I'm going to stop right there.

Inspire The Ire: Eagles Enmity [Part I]

[For much of the 2009 season, the Eagles have been an afterthought to the Giants and their fanbase. After the Week 10 victory, the Giants were 8-1 and on the fast track to the #1 seed in the NFC, while the Eagles were 5-4 and trying to collect themselves for a second half run.

When they met in Week 13, the Giants clinched the NFC East despite a 20-14 loss. Maybe the Super Bowl victory took some of the edge off of our antipathy towards the team that traditionally takes top billing as the most hated divisional rival. Maybe it's because the Cowboys with all their "superstars" and drama became the primary targets of Giants' fan disdain.

As a result, we have decided to provide some kindling for the hot coals of contempt for the Eagles that smolder deep within each Giants fan with a special several-part Fack Youk presentation: Inspire The Ire: Eagles Enmity]

[Part I - By: Jay]

If you've gone out drinking on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, there's a chance you've been to Bourbon Street. If you've ever gone out drinking anywhere, you've almost definitely been to a place just like it.

It's your prototypical dive bar, with ladies undergarments stapled to the ceiling and kitchy signs and antiquey-looking trash hung on the wall like its some sort of R-Rated Applebee's. The playlist every Friday and Saturday night consists of the same cliched 80's songs like "Livin' On a Prayer", "Jessie's Girl" and "I Love Rock and Roll". In fact, they even do a cut rate Coyote Ugly imitation to "Pour Some Sugar On Me", where the female bartenders pour shots of some brightly colored vodka combination down patrons' gullets at a specific time every weekend night (I couldn't tell you exactly what time, for a variety of reasons).

I may or may not have stumbled out of there few years ago on New Years Day at about 9AM. It's the rare kind of place in NYC that actually has good specials like 50 cent (12 oz.) Bud drafts every Thursday and Friday from 9 to 11. The place does have some uses.

One of those uses is for watching football. They have a ton of TVs, and if you get there fairly early on a Sunday, you can grab a stool at the bar or a seat at a table with a perfect view of a TV with your team's game on it. They don't make their own food, so they allow you to bring your own in, and the Bud Lights are $3. If you want to watch some football at a bar and not spend a ton of money, it's a excellent option.

During Week 11, Sampson and I journeyed up to 79th & Amsterdam to catch the Giants play the Ravens. We got there sufficiently early and grabbed a high top table underneath a few TVs and across from the biggest screen the Giants game was being shown on. As it turns out, the Eagles game was on one of the TVs above our heads.

If you'll recall, in Week 11, the Eagles played the Bengals. As the Giants were running over the Ravens, the Eagles game got off to a slow start, and the Philly fans clustered around the TV were pretty quiet. After a scoreless first quarter, a wiry guy with long-ish hair wearing a Brian Westbrook jersey and a winter hat sauntered in. He looked like a pretty chill guy, like someone who might listen to Phish while driving around in his 1992 Jeep Cherokee Laredo.

Not so much. This dude was one of the biggest assholes I have ever viewed a sporting event at a bar in the presence of. As soon as he got there, he was screaming at the TV, calling out individual defensive backs like, "What the FUCK, Lito Sheppard?!?". He coined an amazingly uncreative nickname for Donovan McNabb, "Donovan McShit". He wouldn't fucking stop. Every play was "What a FUCKING terrible play call Mornhinweg!", or "Andy Reid, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!?!" He was knowledgeable, I suppose...

If you want to yell at the TV in the comfort of your own home, in the company of friends, by all means, go to town. If you are the angry type of fan who thinks they should be calling the plays, and you are smarter than everyone in the organization, let it out. Maybe if Andy Reid was my coach and Donovan McNabb my QB, I might be the same way. But Jesus-fucking-Christ, how little dignity must you have, to yell this shit at the top of your lungs in a bar in a city which your team is not even based?

Anyway, after the Giants game was over, the Eagles and Bengals were just heading into overtime, and the bartender switched the TV we were watching over to the Eagles game. Honestly, watching McNabb spike screen passes at Westbrook's feet and get called for a delay of game in OT, I thought, "Maybe this asshole has a point".

In an ending that I couldn't have scripted better myself, the game concluded in an orgasmically (for me) anticlimactic tie and Angry Winter Hat Dude stomped out of the bar and shot Sampson and I a sneer as we laughed out loud.

Guess where we are watching the game on Sunday. I really hope he's there.

Fuck the Philly, the Eagles, their fans, their damaged landmarks, their disgusting "cheese" "steaks" and everything about that godforsaken city except Ben Franklin, Cliff and Always Sunny.

WHEEEEE-LI!

(hat tip to Sampson who sent the pic in an email with a very similar title)

Moment Of Truth

The first time I ever heard a Gang Starr song, it was from an unlikely source. I was watching a skate video called VG8 with my buddy Sampson and this dude Billy Prislin's segment was backed by "You Know My Steez". I had to look up the name of the video and who the skater was, but I'll never forget the imprint that song left on me.

It was one of those tracks that I fell in love with the first time I heard it. I didn't know much hip hop beyond what was on MTV and the radio at that point, but it was immediately apparent that what I was listening to was something different, deeper and more complex than what I thought rap music could be. Gang Starr was underground back then, and even though I probably didn't really understand what that meant, I liked the sound of it.

You Know My Steez is a typical DJ Premier track that has an bouncing, addictive beat punctuated by high tones that runs behind the verse. The chorus consists of mashup of a bunch of spoken parts from other songs (most notably Method Man saying the title, sampled from this tune) tied together with turntable scratching. Subliminally, I'm sure that caught my ear, but what initially stood out were the lyrics.

Guru rapped over the tracks with a steady flow and clever wordplay, dropping ear-grabbing lines without so much as raising his voice. He often referred to his own style as monotone - which was technically close to the truth - but his verses were never boring or droned on like the word tends to connote.

We were about 14 at the time and did what you did back then when you liked a song: went out and bought the CD it was on as soon as humanly possible. Obviously, the way we consumed music was a lot different back in 1998. If you heard a song you liked, you couldn't just bring up YouTube, listen to it again and click your way through the better part of the group's catalog. So there was a period of several days or possibly a week during which I couldn't get the song out of my head but couldn't yet buy the CD.

Maybe that waiting period made me enjoy it more than I would have if I discovered it now. It could just be the fact that we tend to cling to the music that we listened to during our adolescence. But I still think that Moment of Truth, with Premier's intricate tracks and Guru's melodic rhymes, raises a hip hop of a level of high art and is one of the finest albums the genre has to offer.

That original Moment of Truth CD is long gone. It was scratched beyond repair after a couple of years of heavy play and I bought a second copy. That one is gone too, misplaced sometime during college and that too was well-worn. I bought it off of iTunes after that, but maxed out the amount of computers I could link my purchases. I finally downloaded it again, hopefully for the last time.

Gang Starr had plenty of good material before that album and Guru and Premier have each produced a ton of it afterwards, but Moment of Truth is the one creation of theirs that boxed me right in the ears and changed the way I listened to music forever.

The reason for this post is that Guru, whose real name was Keith Elam, passed away yesterday after a battle with cancer (there's a more complete bio if you click the link). About a month ago, he was hospitalized after a heart attack, but made a full recovery and was released. I was hoping I wasn't going to have to write this post for a long time, but unfortunately he was fighting another battle that he couldn't quite conquer.

RIP Guru.

Actions have reactions, don't be quick to judge,
You may not know the hardships people don't speak of,
It's best to step back, and observe with couth,
For we all must meet our moment of truth.

A Better Stat For Running Backs

Let's say you are an NFL coach, and you have a running back that gains 100 yards on 25 carries and you could choose how to distribute those yards over those carries. You could have him break an 80 touchdown run, but then he would only have gained 20 yards on those other 24 carries, thereby completely bogging your offense down. The best use of those 100 yards would be to distribute them as evenly as possible, in this case being 4 yards for carry. The reason being...

Aaaand I fucking shit you not, right as I'm typing this up (ask Sampson), FOX runs a graphic breaking down Purple Jesus's 18 rushes for 76 yards by each carry.

-1,-1, 2, 2, 6, 2, 40, 6, 0, 6, 1, 3, 0, 2, 0, 3, 0, 5

It saves me a lot of work, but wow that really steals the thunder of this post. Damn you FOX! How dare you listen in to my conversations with my roommate and instantly create a graphic solely to sabotage my shitty blog post that six people are going to read. Fuck.

Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes, even distribution. An even distribution is optimal because if you are picking up four yards every time, you can pick up a first down at will by running three times (theoretically, obviously picking up 4 yards on 3rd & 4 is not the same as on 1st & 10). You can put your team in good down/distance situations, opening up your offensive options. Simply put, given similar total yards and yards per carry, a guy who consistently picks up yards is more valuable than the one who gets you a few big gains but many short runs.

For the sake of argument, I'll say that 4 yards is the cutoff for a "valuable run" (VR). You run for 3 yards 3 times and you still have 4th & 1, so I think you've gotta round up. Look again at PJ's carries again. Out of 18, only 5 of them were VRs. Using the easy method of calculating yards per carry, he's averaging 4.2 YPC. Slightly better than my arbitrary determination of valuable.

What I propose is that in calculating YPC, have 10 yards be the maximum amount per carry. You can make more specific adjustments based on the distance remaining for a first down, but I really don't feel like laying out the specifics at the moment. You could call the stat something nerdy to piss of sportswriters, like VYPR (Valuable Yards Per Rush). Got a better one? Leave it in the comments?

Now, using my new, awesome and completely original formula (probably not) PJ is only averaging 2.5 yards per carry, well below the 4 yard "valuable" threshold. I don't mean to blaspheme Purple Jesus, I'm just trying to say that the 4.2 YPC somewhat overstates his value in that particular game.

[Update - 7:20pm] I type this whole thing up and Westbrook who had 16 touches for 32 yards before this basically wins the game on a 71 yard screen pass. Seem familiar, Giants fans?

[Update - 7:34pm] Wow, after TJack does a great job of reinforcing negative black QB stereotypes by throwing a bunch of shitty passes then breaking a huge run, a fumbled snap essentially ends the game. That was anti-climactic and the fucking Eagles won. I was a much happier person when I started writing this post.

Note: 20th Century FOX assumes responsibility for all cursing in this post.

Old Home Place

[Ed Note: This has absolutely nothing to do with sports, so feel free to take a pass. I'm taking the weekend off from blogging since I'm upstate but figured (something > nothing)]

It was about 65 today, so I decided to cue up a playlist of relatively obscure Bob Marley songs, and take a walk in my development's common land and snap some pictures. Despite what the musical selection might lead you to believe, no illegal activities occurred during the process of producing this post. Well, actually, there was about 45 seconds worth of trespassing.

I mentioned it in the Snow Day post, but here is little more about the common land, if you are so inclined: The company that developed this neighborhood had the foresight to set aside 50 of the 130 acres it is set on for the shared usage of the homeowners. Those fifty acres border on the Mohawk River and would be absolutely prime if they weren't located directly across from Knolls Atomic Power Lab and a GE Research and Development facility.

It's probably not the greatest time of year to be taking pictures back there. Actually, scratch that, it's the worst possible time. The snow is gone, aside from a few frozen waterfalls on the South side of the river, and nothing has started to come to life yet. It's gray and drab, but I think it's still incredibly beautiful in it's own way. It makes the things that are colorful stand out even more.

It was a somewhat bittersweet photo safari, as many of the trails that Sampson and I used to mosey along are totally grown over. No one really goes down there anymore, so the homeowners association has really let the place go. In a way, that's better though, because it's a lot cooler feeling like the only person to take advantage of it. It also makes the song choice even more appropriate. It's a version of The Dillard's Old Home Place performed by Phish on 06/11/98 at the Worcester Centrum.

If you watch closely, you can see Llenroc peeking through the trees in one of the pictures.

Finally [Part II]

I had this thought walking around this morning, but it didn't make it into the previous two posts.

Maybe the reason I like seeing the Manhattan covered in snow so much is that it gives you the chance to catch The City That Never Sleeps quietly nodding off.

The snow cover dulls the sounds that typically reflect off hard surfaces like streets and branches and buildings, so it's literally quieter. Parking is suspended and lots of people from surrounding areas don't come into work. I still walked here, but I can tell by the amount of pedestrain traffic on Central Park West that most people opt for the subway. Today, the infamous line at Whole Foods in the Time Warner Center was non-existent.

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Completely random food-realted aside: This is too good not to mention. At Whole Foods today, they have Creole Shrimp Fritters for $7.99 a lb. I got 5 for $2.88. If you are in the area, get 'em while they're hot, because if you ordered them in a restaurant, they'd cost $10 at least.

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The only wall hangings at the Lenny's location around the corner from our apartment (shown in the top picture) are pictures of NYC in the snow. I'm not sure if all their spots are similarly decorated, but it's really cool.

I wasn't down here for the 26.9" dumping in 2006, but I have been assured by Sampson and others that it was epic. Not everyone likes the snow as much as I do, and part of the allure for me was having to wait so damn long to really see it. I'm still holding out hope for one more shut-down-the-city style storm before I'm done with this place.

Damn, I'm going to miss you when that time comes, NYC.

A Little Something To Hold You Over...

... while I finish up the Billy Martin Countdown piece.

Via the NYPost, It appears as though out favorite tainted slugger has a unique way of preparing to tell the world he used steroids. That would be making out with one of three smoking hot women at the nightclub ajacent to the casino in the Atlantis. Sampson and I have a rather ridiculous story about our encounters with a Sheik from Saudi Arabia, three girls from Texas and Ice T, that took place in the same club when we were 18 and cashing in our graduation presents, but I won't bore you with that...

He showed up the Aura Club with the aforementioned brunette and - just to balance things out - a red-hot blonde. "The girls said they had come down with A-Rod from the US," said an eyewitness. "They were dancing in front of him and even kissing each other to entertain him. He seemed to like the brunette more." When he wasn't playing with his lady friends, A-Rod knocked back Grey Goose vodka as the music blasted.

>8

...he, the brunette and the blonde "all left the club together," the eyewitness said.

Fine work sir. All I can say is "it's about fucking time" (no pun intended). Does this mean he's no longer with Madonna?

/crosses fingers

Finally

[You can find Part II here]

This is the third winter I've been down in NYC and this is the first real snow storm I've had the pleasure of bearing witness to. Basically every time they've predicted any significant amount of snow, it turned into a wintry mix or missed us completely. I hate wintry mixes. I hate them so much that I think I also hate Christmas music compilations and the rapper Snow by association.

Although the possibility of getting a snow day has long since passed, I still get incredibly excited when we get a healthy ground cover. Far too often growing up, I would watch the weather before I went to bed, and hear Bob Kovachic talk about the slam dunk storm headed our way, only to wake up at 5AM so excited I couldn't sleep, look out, see nothing and cry myself back to sleep. It was soul crushing.

On the other hand, when we did get hit, Sampson and I would suit up and take to the streets. And by "the streets", I mean the 50 acres of common land shared by the residents of Riverview Landing, which borders on the Mohawk River. It is serenely beautiful even when it's not covered in 10 inches of snow. There are cliffs and waterfalls, a run-down pavilion, and paths connecting everything. It's basically fucking paradise to two kids with a couple of stolen cigarettes and a water bottle filled with about two fingers worth of six kinds of liquor (so we wouldn't take too much from one bottle).

Despite the fact that I don't have any boots or snow pants, today, I got up early and took a bunch of pictures in the park. Why? Because you only live once, Fackers.

I'd guess we got about 5 or 6 inches. It was windy, so the accumulation doesn't show up as much as you'd like it to, and my camera kind of sucks, but I still think they came out really well.

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I had to make these smaller because it would have taken me 9 years to upload them all. If you would like a full size one to use for a desktop background or something, email me. If your request meets my politeness requirements, I will send you a picture or two.

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On the way to the park. 75th street, I believe.

This dog was the only life form in Central Park more excited than I was.

The Dakota (and the tip of my glove)
Oops.

Strawberry Fields

You won't believe this, but I had a nice conversation with a girl who was walking her dog, standing right over the spot pictured below. Imagine that. For once, I didn't even throw up like Stan from South Park talking to Wendy Testaburger. If you are out there, you divine being, please identify yourself in the comments as "The Uncontrollably Hot Woman From The Park With The British(?) Accent". Your move.

Daniel Webster was feeling it.

Kind of cool with the statue in the background, no?

My camera doesn't do well with capturing colors, so you really had to be there for this one.

It's not Spring yet, brah.

In The Ramble. Same exact spot as the picture on that link, I believe.

View of the Buildings on Central Park South from the North end of the Pond.

Calling any part of Central Park "Forever Wild" is pretty laughable since it's all man-made and adjacent to one of the most densely populated places on planet Earth.

I have a bit of a San Remo fetish. You can see it from our terrace and almighty Jesus, it makes for some beautiful pictures. The one on the top of this post is of it too.

Looking down Central Park West.

Risked my life for this one. You're welcome.

Columbus Circle.

You know it's the real deal when they've got news crews out.

The snow almost makes our building not look like the shitshow it currently is due to the makeover. Apparently re-surfacing the building gives them the right to change the address. 3 Columbus Circle? We are a block away from the circle. It's 1775 Broadway, assholes. In light of this, I've decided to change our address to 2347 Central Park West.

Oh, you came to this blog to read about sports? Sorry. Maybe next time.

11 Hours To Go

Good morning, Fackers. Today is the big day. Well, one of at least four big days, anyway.

When was the last time you were this excited in anticipation of a sporting event? If we're talking strictly about baseball, it's obviously the '03 and '04 ALCSes. Being out Boston at the time, it was engulfing. Professors talked about it in class, everyone with a hat of one team or the other had it on, and you overheard conversations about it where ever you went. I couldn't think about much else during the days when games were played - I just wanted it to be game time.

If we're talking about sports other than baseball, Super Bowl XLII was probably the last event that came close, but no one thought the Giants had much of a chance. Big Willie Style, Sampson and I had celebrated the NFC Championship like it was the Super Bowl, going out to the college bars around 80th and Amsterdam, staying out until three in the morning and handing out spontaneous high fives to complete strangers. Needless to say, we all took that Monday off.

It felt like the Giants had just earned the right to lose to the Patriots in Arizona, but that didn't really matter at the time. We were just happy that the season wasn't over and were celebrating the incredible game they won in arctic temperatures in Green Bay. The Yankees are never going to be the underdogs like the Giants were that season, but after the last six years, it still feels like an accomplishment for the Bombers to have made it this far.

Not everyone shares that sentiment, however.

There was someone conspicuously absent from Sunday night's champange celebration. Reggie Jackson was there. Hal and Jennifer Steinbrenner were there. Hank wasn't there because they don't allow smoking in the clubhouse and you know how he gets when he drinks. But there were probably numerous members of the front office partaking the festivities after Gary Matthews, Jr. went down swinging.

Brain Cashman was nowhere to be found. Some had speculated that it had something to do with his meeting with Aroldlis Chapman. It turns out that wasn't the case:

[Cashman] purposely avoided the scene, saying he simply chose to stay away and leave it to others.

"I'll wait to participate if we have an opportunity to win the whole thing," he said.

Yet another reason I like the cut of Cashman's jib. I realize that this would never happen, but it would be incredibly bad ass if a team didn't go for an over-the-top celebration unless they won a championship. Maybe something when they clinched a playoff berth or won the division but not in the LDS, or LCS. Save the bubbly for the ultimate glory.

Players deserve to enjoy their accomplishments and the champagne lubricates those celebrations in more ways than one - it would be awfully awkward were players just jumping around and hugging each other with dry clothes in a well-lit locker room. But at the same time, wheeling out the carts when they swept the Twins seemed a little contrived. By the time the World Series winner is awarded, we'll have already seen 14 other locker rooms protected by tarps then laden with libations.

Celebrating every step of the way is the one thing that really undermines the "championship or bust" mantra that the Yankees swear they have. If they were the one team that really was only satisfied with winning a World Series, then they shouldn't pop the Perignon until they do so. It would make it a whole lot sweeter when it finally came.

Cashman is the only guy who really thinks this way. He's got no choice. He's gone too long as the General Manager of the team with the highest payroll in baseball without winning a World Series to consider anything else a success. Let's hope he gets to taste the Taittinger soon enough.

Doris Sighting!!!!!!!

Yup. That's her. Swear on my life. I obviously couldn't get a pic of her face because that would put me in her peripheral vision and that was a confrontation I was not at all interested in. That, and also I drew the line (for once). If I'm not going to put my face on this blog, I really shouldn't put hers, I don't think.

I really didn't know how this day could get any better. There are some things in the works that I don't want to mention for non-jinxing purposes, and the snow, and the shrimp fritters, and my new headphones...

I actually went back to Whole Foods to pick up some more those fritters, along with a sirloin for the grill tonight. I asked the guy at the meat counter for a steak that was about a pound and three quarters. He put it on the scale: 1.75lbs. Bang. I mean, who cares? But that was pretty cool.

That beer is the Dogfish Head Olde School Barleywine. It's 15% ABV.

I needed to stop by Pioneer on my way back to grab some more brews and walking in, I spotted the mythical beast known to you Fackers only as "Doris". I very nearly soiled myself.

I didn't observe her eating habits like Sampson did, but this is kind of similar as she was in hunter/gatherer mode. It's not everyday she leaves the apartment. Actually, this may have been the first time in 46 years.

We left Pioneer at about the same time, and I skittered back over the icy sidewalks, hid out in my entrance way and nabbed this shot.

Look familiar? It's blurry and everything, just like the original! There was a girl right there walking her dog who saw me do it and gave me this look. I shrugged my shoulders and went "It's a long story..." and scampered upstairs to write this post.

This was one of the best snow days ever.

Sean Daley from Atmosphere, would you do the honors?



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We should be back in sports mode tomorrow. Hopefully you enjoy the non-sports stuff too, because it's really fun to write. I don't really know where to even send these links, but if you read other blogs with similar content like Schiff's, feel free to point me in their direction or vice versa.

Awww, Don't You Know Who The F___ I am?

Brandon Jacobs isn't going to be happy about this...

The Giants locked Brandon Jacobs up for at least the 2009 season by slapping the dreaded “franchise player” tag on him this afternoon. That decision — only the second time the Giants have ever used the “franchise” tag and the first time since they tagged Jumbo Elliott in 1993 — guarantees Jacobs a salary of $6.621 million next season, which is the average of the top five running back salaries last year. It also gives the Giants the right to match any contract offer Jacobs receives during the free-agent signing period.

Early last season, shortly after having discovered the video below, while watching a Giants game, Sampson and I dubbed Jacobs "The Juggernaut". The Max Kellerman Show later arrived at the same conclusion and still uses some two-second drops (which are only two seconds long because there is a curse word every three seconds) from the video on their show. If you like comic book-based cartoons, ebonics or just pretending Brandon Jacobs did the voiceovers for this video, enjoy the show. . .

Remember [Non-Sports]

I'm pretty sure yesterday was my first day without writing a post since New Year's. I wish it was because I stopped burning the candle from both ends for a day and finally got some sleep, or that I was away on a business trip.

Nope. Early last Wednesday morning, the world lost a good dude, and yesterday we said our goodbyes. My best friend's brother only had 29 years of this awesome thing we call life. He was one of the few people I know who liked music more than I do. Whether he was messing with Fruity Loops, playing the drums, or DJing I think he was at his happiest getting washed up in the sound waves of a thumping jam.

Besides being Yankee fans, we shared some other hobbies that I'm not going to mention in this space, but let's just say that yesterday morning, one of his best friends twirled one up using nothing but the finest, cut it in half, and while nobody was looking, slipped Dave a little something to camp on with St. Pete at The Pearly Gates.

It always seemed like you were searching for something, man. In a really abstruse and painful way for everyone else, you might have found it.

In the book Into The Wild, Jon Krakauer talks about how, by pushing himself to climb more and more dangerous mountain faces and "peering over the ledge of death", he had hoped to gain some amazing insight into life. DJ Dangerous Dave wasn't climbing actual mountains, but he certainly caught a couple glimpses of what was over that ledge.

You slept late, but were always up for a lively conversation. You had your problems, but who the fuck doesn't? It's just that usually, people get another chance.

Not sure if you liked this song or not, but it would take me all night to find something more appropriate.



"If you ever feel so sad,
And the whole world is driving you mad,
Remember, remember, today

And don't feel sorry,
'Bout the way it's gone,
And don't you worry,
'Bout what you've done"

R.I.P. David Lawrence Sampson
[May 6, 1979-January 21, 2009]

Time Turns Elastic

As Matt mentioned last night, the penultimate destination of my road trip was a stop in Baltimore to see Trey Anastiasio (the frontman of Phish), play with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. If you aren't familiar with Phish's music, you might think this would be an unlikely match. That's probably because you didn't know that all four members of Phish are classically trained musicians and that many of their longer songs are tightly composed and would be well suited to an orchestral backing.

I've seen symphony performances before at SPAC, but never at a concert hall specifically designed for acoustics. We lucked into some pretty good seats - first row of the lower balcony - which certainly enhanced the experience as well. Above the stage at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall there were bowed wood panels, and on the ceiling there were giant half spheres with a slot down the middle that looked like flat head screws. The doors where you entered your section were closed and soundproof, each balcony was it's own little pod, the ledges of which were gently sloped and aimed (not surprisingly) right towards ear level. Each one of these design features were put in place solely for acoustical purposes, and last night, they were put to their full use.

There was a stringed band playing in the entry way across from a cocktail bar and the crowd was an interesting mix of dreadlocks and blazers, summer dresses and t-shirts. Trey walked on stage with conductor Marin Alsop, wearing a black suit and blue dress shirt, a pretty drastic departure from his normal stage attire, and was met with a rousing applause.

Standing in front of the orchestra and off to

Alsop's left, Trey then picked up his spruce-topped Languedoc, which was plugged in to a modestly-sized Fender amp, and delved into Divided Sky. The tone was clean and and carefully balanced with the mostly stringed arrangement. The crowd sat quietly through the roughly 10 minute version of the song but erupted with what I'm guessing was the loudest applause in the history of the venue when Alsop halted the strings. These being mostly Phish fans, the typical clapping was backed by plenty of "Wooohooo!!!"s and "Yeah, Trey!!!"s. It was a breathtaking moment, and one that made it impossible for me to suppress a smile.

Next came the mellow Brian and Robert (which I simulcasted via iPhone to Sampson), followed by the short, acoustic The Inlaw Josie Wales. Trey then took a moment to thank the crowd and said how honored he was to be able to do something like this.

The most emotional moment of the night came when he dedicated the next song to his eight year old nephew. Three weeks ago his mother, Trey's sister, Kristy Manning lost a long battle with cancer and they played a beautiful rendition of Water In The Sky in her honor. As I listened, I couldn't help but think back to the heartfelt post that Matt wrote earlier in the day and appreciate one of those times when life comes together - when for a short while it all seems to make sense. Last night was one of those fleeting moments.

The title song of the show was called Time Turns Elastic and was a 13 minute opus consisting of 9 shorter, interwoven songs that they played at the beginning of the second set. Next came what they call "Guyute" the orchestral composition of what is from Trey's album Seis De Mayo, and starts and ends with the intro from My Friend, My Friend. I recorded all 12 minutes of it on my phone, but haven't figured out how to get it off. The encore, If I Could, hadn't been played live in almost nine years.

Here is a link to the full setlist.

By the time I get back to New York this afternoon I will have logged over 2,000 miles on my Grandma's Mercury Sable and slept in 5 different states in 6 days. We ran into all sorts of pitfalls and obstacles and very little went according to plan, save for the show last night. I was lucky to have a traveling companion who in addition to being easy going, was a top notch iPhone navigator and text-retary who rolled with the punches at every juncture. We've been friends since Semester At Sea, so that last part came as no surprise. She's not a Phish fan, but I prepped her a little bit while we were sitting in traffic on the Baltimore-Washington Expressway and unless she was bullshitting me (unlikely), she came away almost as impressed and satisfied as I was.