The curtain rises on a vast primitive wasteland, not unlike certain parts of New Jersey – Woody Allen

I went to the end of Houston Street to go rowing with Floating the Apple. It's an organization that builds 19th century white hulled rowing gigs with inner city kids. The guy I am house-sitting for builds the boats and he introduced me to the adult rows on Tuesday and Thursday night.

Last night, I had a perfect row. We had no girls and a coxswain from New Zealand on his first solo coxing (he only told us afterwards that we took his solo cox cherry) . I was stroke meaning that the other three rowers followed my rhythm. We rowed strong down the island and were doing so well that New Zealand decided to strike out for New Jersey. In spite of a lot of boat traffic, we made it safely to a park on the other side to be greeted by a gaggle of toddlers waving and yelling. After about two hours on the water, we get back to the dock and pull out the boat.

Afterwards, I hang out and talk to the guys from the boat. The cox lives in Chinatown and makes a living writing screenplays. The grizzled old guy I took for a dock worker is actually an actor and played the villain in a Kevin Smith movie I’ve never heard of. The last guy, who I convinced to row when I met him at the Clearwater festival, walked with me for a few blocks. He’s had a number of jobs over the year: taxi driver, construction worker, bike messenger and my personal favorite: porn star. Now he’s “dating” a dancer that he met at a strip club but it seems like all he does is buy her food and trips together without ever seeing the fruits of his labor. Lesson to Lex: Never trust dancers, or women in general.

At home, I jump in the shower and I starting howling out curses because it feels like a red hot coal is pressing against the top of my butt crack. The infamous rowers butt! A blister formed from all the friction with the seat and the water painfully washed over it. But my tale gets worse from here. The next morning I wake up and am poking around down there only to find another blister right on the taint by the testicles. This one is even worse because I can’t stop playing with it and it gets aggravated during my bike ride. It’s time to bring in the big guns: Gold Bond

A Brethren Wedding or Shooting the Moon

I went home to Lancaster, PA, a place many people have been to on field trips or vacations for reasons befuddling to the locals. However, I went home for a wedding. And not just any wedding, but a conservative Brethren wedding.

One of my good friends, Andrew Hess, actually held out until marriage at age 23. An impressive feat. He comes from strong stock. His dad is a hog farmer and a minister. He grew up working with the death machines. When we were young, we would crawl up above their steers so we could piss on them to make them run around their pen. We stirred up trouble at youth group and our families had acorn wars in the woods (we did not fare well, the Hess men are all pitchers).

The wedding was dry which is understandable even though the temperance movement has no basis in the bible. It was a ploy by the church to increase membership during the Third Great Awakening, a strategy that ruined out to be very effective at filling the pews and emptying the bars. However, this wedding took it further. There was not allowed to be any songs about alcohol or relationships outside the bounds of matrimony. These are tough requirements to put on a DJ when he doesn’t even have a drunk audience to work with.

In any case, we still had quite a good time because the wedding was in a beautiful park . I learned the game of Frisbee Cup where you put bottles on sticks in the in the ground. If the other teams knocks your bottle to the ground, they get a point. If you catch you the bottle before it touches the ground, you get a point. My fake brother-in-law and I lost by two points. I fared better in fencing where I gave my Dad a bruise on his side. This prompted him to challenge me in his speciality: wrestling. We went to the back corner, took off our shirts and started grappling. It took him about 90 seconds to throw me directly to my back into a puddle for a perfect show stopper. On our way home, the fake brother-in-law passes us on the PA Turnpike. Dad barks, “Moon ‘em.” I rush into action while the girlfriend does something devious with a french fry.

Given Up: Safe Conduct - Pasternak's autobiography
Taken Up: Huxley's Eyeless in Gaza

Rain Rain, Come My Way

Friday’s downpour caused it to become the best day I‘ve had biking in the city. I took off my shirt, rolled up my pants and took off into the torrent, singing short snatches of songs repeatedly, loudly and off key such as “Mama’s Little Baby Loves Shortening Bread”. Because of my recent reading of The Rum Diary, I used the phrase “vicious rat bastard” often, although always in good humor. I was so happy. I was flying through the streets of Manhattan with little traffic. I skid stopped at every opportunity because it is always most fun in the rain. You can skid for twenty feet, the back end starts fishtailing, you stop skidding for a second to straighten out and then lock them up again. It’s a glorious feeling. I’ll take a rain like that any day. It’s the damn sun that’s killing me.

Currently reading: Safe Conduct: Pasternak’s autobiography

Free Room Service or Theater for the Asses

The girlfriend got free tickets to a play called Room Service at the Bank Street Theater. I was excited because this play was turned into a movie by the Marx Brothers and I am a big fan. It became their greatest flop because “the Marx Brothers were constrained by having to play characters with a passing resemblance to human beings.”

I had some time when I got off the train so I went to one of my favorite spots in the city: the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park. I plan to start busking there as soon as I spend a weekend in the city. In preparation, I rememorized all the plaques of his poems around the statue.

Twinkle twinkle little bat!
How I wonder what you’re at!
Up above the world you fly,
Like a tea tray in the sky.

They told me you had been to her
And mentioned me to him;
She gave me a good character,
But said I could not swim.

Beautiful soup so rich and green!
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful soup!

Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to have a battle!
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
Had spoiled his nice new rattle.

Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases.

Then I finish up with the Jabberwocky poem. I practiced yesterday on three little kids. I don’t think they spoke English and they regarded me with much more fear than admiration.

I headed down to the theater on 8^th Ave at a good clip when my chain fell off. On a fixed gear bike, this is the worst thing that can go wrong because the chain is used for braking. Luckily, I am not hardcore fixie because those guy ride without a backup brake which would have left me brakeless at high speed in the middle of Manhattan at rush hour. I still barely avoided an accident because I had to be grabbing for the brake which is not aligned well and does not slow me down very quickly.

This is why I like fixed gear for commuting through the city. I had a dangerous situation and I had to be grabbing for the brakes which left me very little control over my handlebars. Usually, when I have a problem and need to stop quickly and swerve, I have complete control of where I am going because my legs are taking care of the braking. I also can stop much quicker because I can skid to a stop instead of allowing the friction of the hand brakes to slow me down. But enough preaching,

I actually just put the chain back on the side of the street and kept going carefully. It means my chain must have been too loose and I’ll need to tighten it up when I get home. I continued down to the theater and met the girlfriend. The show was in a small theater with about 50 seats, cheap beer and only one bathroom.

The show was a “door slamming farce from 1937” and the director did a great job selecting the cast. Everyone fit their role, especially the lovable scheming producer who, of course, managed to pull it out in the end in spite of the odds. It was full of fast dialogue, one-liners and faked deaths. I’d recommend it to anyone.

Faith in Humanity: Restored

I was in a rush to lock up my bike at Grand Central yesterday because I was going to miss my train. I locked the front wheel to the frame but didn’t notice that I hadn’t gotten it around the projection on the side of a lamppost. This means that my bike was unlocked and sitting in front of one of the city’s busiest daytime spots for 11 hours and was not stolen. This either means that New Yorkers are much more honest than their reputation or my bike really looks like a piece of shit.

Reading: The Rum Diary by HST

Take My Ex-Wife, Please

At work in my lab, a professor I didn’t know was demonstrating a technique where you insert 10 mL of air into a mouse’s back to simulate a certain type of injury. As the air was inserted, the mouse began to bulge and stretch ending with a grotesque bulge in the middle of its back. I looked at it and said , “Looks like my ex-wife.” He gives me a look for a second and then turns to my professor and says, “This boy should be put in shackles and in prison. He’s sick.” I thought that was a strong response to a bad joke until I realized he thought I said “Looks like my next wife.”

Way Off Of Broadway

Using trusty CL, I volunteered to bartend at the Off Off Broadway Nominee Celebration. I figured it was a good shot for meeting a sugar mama or score free tickets to a show. SPOILER WARNING: Score on the latter but swing and a miss on the former.

Unfortunately, I was driving home from work in Westchester which always sucks because a car feels like being trapped in a sarcophagus after the freedom of a bike. I also had very little gas and decided to press on through to the city. Between the heat and the fear of running out of gas, I had sweat running down me by the time I got home. I only had about 20 minutes to bike to 8^th St from south of Prospect Park. That’s just about enough time to make it if you push. So I pushed hard and got there just in time, albeit sweaty as hell from the heat wave. I didn’t think it would matter because I could cool off inside quickly. Unfortunately, the AC was broken and the sweating just increased.

Since I got there right on time, there was no training and I have never served mixed drinks before. I had to ask the girl next to me how much vodka to put in these drinks and constantly asked customers what was in their drinks. Luckily, everyone was in a good mood because the booze was free. I had fun even when it was busy and made a shitload of tips (which we weren’t allowed to keep for some unknown reason probably having to do with the glory of the theatre).

Once the crowd had thinned a little, I could start drinking and chatting. I started talking to a few people who ran their own company. I asked them what Off Off Broadway was and the guy explained it as theatre with no money so you’re really doing it for the love of the art. It soon descended into silly insults and fun and they told me that they wanted me to come to their next show for free. They were a good group and I got a number so I can meet them for drinks.

By the end of the night (which was very early because no one cares about the nominee party besides the nominees), I had three HS girls who wouldn’t leave me alone, a few gay guys who kept coming up and winking and two attractive women who told me they weren’t sugar mamas but would take me if they were. I helped everyone clean up and traded the contents of my gift bags to people on the street for smokes. I had a nice leisurely half-drunken ride home with the highlight of complete fascination with the speed of my shadow from the lights on the Manhattan Bridge.

Currently reading: A Confederacy of Dunces by O'Toole