Let there be... BLOOD!

Well, it's been an inexcusably long time since my last post, and for that I apologize. Mostly to myself, really, for sort of falling off the writing wagon, albeit briefly.

I've had a lot on my mind these past few days. Indeed.

Since quite a lot has happened, I think a brief recap is in order, rather than a lengthy and detailed retrospective. A sum, if you will, of the choicest bits.

I think the day after the Gay Philosophy thing I worked up the courage (or rather, whittled down my apathy) and called up this girl Tania, who was supposedly Miles' friend, and who was holding on to his suit for him. Which he had forgotten... at her apartment. And which he was so insistent that I retrieve for him, because that's what friends do for friends... you know, collect their discarded and forgotten clothing from gigantic cities around the world.

Being the kind of silly and wonderfully brilliant people that we are, Madeline and I decided to make the whole thing a PHOTO ADVENTURE. But before you get your knickers in a bunch with excitement, the photos will have to wait to be uploaded, since they're on Madeline's camera and Madeline seems to have some kind of phobia about hooking it up to my laptop. As if my laptop had cooties, or something.

DESTINATION: ASTORIA

From the above title, you should be able to deduce that our destination was Astoria. Astoria, for those who are not intimately familiar with it, is sort of like a suburb of New York. Unlike most suburbs in... say... OTTAWA... Astoria sounds like a cool and distant fantasy land full of dragons. It is in FACT a cool, distant, fantasy land full of marvelous Indian restaurants. It's also in Queens.

Well, to cut a long story short, it was really really far. When we finally got to the place, we were greeted by Rahul. Rahul is Tania's husband, has a fancy British accent, and does post-conflict work. I have no idea what post-conflict work entails, but apparently it is very dangerous and exciting and probably involves digging wells while bullets fly overhead. Rahul was very nice, and to his infinite credit was a food and restaurant connoisseur.

He also had never met Miles. Tania, his wife, arrived shortly after we did, and she too had never met him. And apparently, Tania's sister, who I originally thought was Miles' friend, only knew him peripherally through her friend. This fourth person, whose name I never got, was also apparently only the most fleeting of acquaintances with Miles. What a web of confused relations!

So, the story I pieced together from all this was that Miles, apparently wearing a suit, met some people, drove to New York, crashed at some person's house, forgot his suit, and wandered off into the streets of New York naked, probably with a bottle of Vermouth in a plastic bag.

Anyhow, we got the suit, vowed to wear the oversized thing in various comic poses and photograph ourselves doing it (since Miles is like 6'5", it really is comical), and then wandered back home. We also spotted a disgusting lump of bulbous rooty material that MAY be ginger but is more likely an alien pod waiting to birth little parasitic mind-controlling spores in order to take over and then terraform the world into a scorched carbonaceous wasteland. We have photographic evidence to prove this.

Well, that's pretty much it for that day. A day or two after the Gay Philosophy thing, I met up with Dan for some food at a Korean restaurant that Rahul had recommended. The place was called Cho Ding Sol, or something like that, 55 W 35th St., and wasn't bad but wasn't fantastic.

(For anyone wondering, Dan is not a romantic interest of mine. I met him on an online Go Server, and consider him only a friend.)

After dinner we went down to the East Village, in Manhattan, to check out a gay bar called the Phoenix. I believe I mentioned it in a previous post. No one was there yet, so we wandered around the area, which is really very nice and trendy with many cool cafes and tea houses. We found this one place that was like my quintessential nerd-hippie dream bookstore/cafe type establishment. Only, upon closer inspection, the books were really primarily gay porn, which in retrospect is not altogether a bad modification of my dream.

Dan and I perused, but did not purchase, gay porn. I swear. We bought a drink, chatted, then went back to the Phoenix to grab another drink, shoot some pool (I had originally written "people" by accident! yikes), and then call it a night. Pretty unexciting, really.

Well, a day or two after that, Trish, another friend from the Humanities, came into town on her way to Greece. She is there now, working on an organic farm somewhere. Crazy girl. Lots of fun, though!

The three of us - me, Madeline, and Trish - went out to the local bar in the area called "The Gate", which is Madeline's top pick because of its proximity to the apartment, and more importantly because an attractive sweater-wearing fuzzy British bartender called Noel works there, for whom Madeline has a bit of a crush. I drank with the two of them until about 2:00 AM, got too drunk, and came home. Madeline gave me her building key so I could get in, which naturally meant that I had to stay up and wait for them.

I lay in bed until 6:00 AM, feeling nauseated, thinking they'd been kidnapped or worse, until finally the two wenches staggered in, laughing hysterically, and collapsed into a heap of splayed, writhing, drunken limbs. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but probably not.

Their night was an hysterical, licentious romp of drunken abandon. By the end, they were pouring their own drinks. As an indication... Madeline came home with a spigot from one of the taps! Don't ask me why.

Well, the afternoon rolled around, then dusk, then evening, and still the two ladies were asleep. There was a neat Japanese bookstore I wanted to check out, so by 5:00pm I'd resolved to step out the door. (I was a little bit hung over myself. Just a bit.) Trish woke up and I persuaded her to come see a musical with me.

Trish: "Should we invite Madeline?"
Andrew: "I don't know... is she up?"
Trish: "Why don't you check?"
Andrew: "I would, you know. But... she... scares me when she's hungover."

In the end, just Trish and I went to see:

THE EVIL DEAD MUSICAL!

Oh yeah. We bought the cheapest tickets we could ($29), and when we got into the theatre and found our seats, we noticed there were plastic bags over the first three rows.

"Uhh... this doesn't look good."

Apparently, The Evil Dead Musical features a "Splatter Section", where theatre-goers are inundated with much splurting and gushing blood! Thankfully, they handed out little plastic raincoats during the intermission. Glad I wore mine, because in the big final act I got a huge stream of blood right into my lap!

Funny moments:

Andrew: "So what really IS the difference between a musical and an opera?"
Trish: *looks at Andrew like he must be joking*
Andrew: "No, come on, I mean really. They both have music!"
Trish: *starts laughing hysterically*
Andrew: "What?!"
Trish: *dull, drawling, faux-congratulatory tone* "You got a DEGREEEEEEE!"

Leaving the theatre, after the performance...

Guy in big white hoody, DRENCHED in blood: "I swear, they were AIMING for me!"
Friends: *laughter*
Guy in big white hoody, DRENCHED in blood: "God damnit."

The musical itself was alright. But damn, there was BLOOD!!!

And with that... I bring you all only partially up to date. Madeline and I are heading out now to check out the MOMA. I'll post again later! Cheers.