the diary of antoine roquentin

It’s about 10 PM, and if you didn’t know that a massive hurricane was bearing down on the New York City area, you could rest easy. Right now, there is no wind. The kittens were gamboling in the back yard this afternoon. Today is almost the acme of a summer day. If only it weren’t for the mosquitoes, I could have a nice day outside writing in the backyard.

My cousin with the beachfront condo in Wildwood evacuated to her other house far inland in North Jersey, and I assume my aunt and the kids have gone somewhere safe as well. We haven’t been able to reach them, but I doubt they would stay at home when ordered to leave. They probably are staying with the in-laws who live somewhere in the endless suburbs of South Jersey.

I was supposed to go to see Showgirls tonight with Jason, but I am a bit wary about trusting transportation 8 hours before Bloomberg says he’s going to shut it all down. I also trust Bloomberg 10 times as much as I trust whoever is in charge of New Jersey transit. The transit clusterfucks this winter have evinced that agency’s tendency to shut things down for no reason, with no notice.

There is no ombudsman for NJT, it just does whatever it’s going to do and that’s that. I think I might end up going a little stir crazy by the end of this ordeal. We have plenty of supplies though, so short of the house sliding off the mountain I think we’ll be fine. I feel like yesterday was the germination of MSM mania, but once this thing makes landfall in NYC every news outlet will be about PANIC!

Tomorrow the panic will probably still be inchoate, but the “HOLY CRAP STUFF IS FLYING AROUND” stage won’t be far behind. I think I’m going to be boring and go upstairs to read Chaucer. I want to play some Minecraft, but my wrists have really been killing me this week.

I’ve been doing vocabulary drills nearly constantly. I need the highest score possible. I’m using two GRE vocab apps on my iPad, with a combined 1,500 word bank. I also have some Princeton Review flashcards, but I’m sure the GRE makers take that into account. Once I plow through those, I’m going to be hitting the interwebs to find any list of GRE words I can. Vocabulary is the secret to not being stumped on this test, and I am going to kick ass. You can’t equivocate on the GRE. Either you know the answer choice words or you don’t.

Time to put on Music for Men and dig into some medieval doggerel.

Categories: Ennui

A lighthouse we visited in Maine.

I have so much work to do tonight, but of course I’m on here. I had my first sort of existential crisis relating to the GRE. Our class went a bit longer than it should have, and I found myself walking up Bowery with absolutely nothing planned. As I was walking, a friend called me and I decided to walk to West 4th instead of taking the R at 8th Street.  On the bus, I felt this impending doom. Perhaps it’s because I’m not quite used to sitting through a 3-hour class  (with  about an hour of work including videos before and after), but I was completely overwhelmed.

Add to that an e-mail from my boss telling me that I need to finish a whole bunch of items by tomorrow, and I was kind of freaking out. I’m still not really sure how I’m going to get all this done. My wrists have really been acting up this week, which makes me really nervous about the writing portion of the GRE.

Still, this class is giving me invaluable information about what will actually be on the test. I just need to be esurient for knowledge, and  hopefully I will get an excellent score. Vocabulary, paradoxically enough, is proving to be one of my largest stumbling blocks. I find it incredibly difficult to memorize vocabulary words from lists or cards. I’m going to have to write some stories and incorporate those words into them. I’ve always wanted to make a New York-esque retelling of Genesis as a parable of the gentrification of Williamsburg.

In the beginning there was Hedge Fund Dad. He created the Aeroplane Over the Sea and The Suburbs, He Turned on the Bright Lights and created the Rio that separates the Pavement. He formed Sun, Must Be The Moon, and Stars. He created the Deerhoof and the Deerhunter.

Okay, that’s not really helping, although I still love the idea of the project. Oh my god, it’s already 1 a.m. and I have gotten nothing done. FML.

PS: Like the new theme? I never really liked the old one, but it worked. This one actually shows the comments, for one!

UPDATE: Instead of doing any work, I made the archives page AWESOME. AND search works! Take that, indolence!

Categories: Ennui

Let’s recap.

I ended up wasting most of my night on Minecraft. I made this huge glass-topped bunker to protect my farm, and then I discovered I had a ton of wheat stowed away in the second house I built. I abandoned that and decided that I wanted to somehow get to the other side of the mountain in the valley I’m living in (in-game). There’s two ways to do that. I could either build a tunnel from one side to the other, or I could build a staircase up to the top of the mountain. (I did both.)

Huh, I’ve never actually posted photos of my Minecraft universe. I can’t fully take credit for how awesome the seed for this world is, I got it from this website that has awesome seed numbers for worlds. Still, I built a lot of things here.

Here's the mountain that's over my valley. I have a house at the top.

The entrance to my main house at the valley floor. It's my first hideout from creatures, with a massive mine underneath. You can see my staircase to the top of the unexplored mountain to the right.

My second is up at the house at the top of the north mountain.

View from the window from the mountain house

View from the roof of the mountain house

View from the roof of the mountain house, looking towards the sea

I’m very curious as to what’s on the other side of the mountain I’ve been living in since I started the game, so I’ve begun to dig a tunnel that will hopefully end up on the other side of the mountain.

It might take a long time to reach the other side.

I’ve also been reading this anthology called That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation. It has such a panoply of queer voices all calling for the kind of change that doesn’t benefit well-to-do whites. There are just so many wonderful, revolutionary sentiments in here that jibe very well with my views, but I want to relate a few here.

Willful participation in U.S. imperialism is crucial to the larger goal of assimilation, as the holy trinity of marriage, military service, and adoption has become the central preoccupation of a gay movement centered more on obtaining straight privilege than challenging power. [ —Matt Bernstein Sycamore, the editor of the anthology]

Another major point of the anthology is that transgender people have been completely left out of the movement for equal rights. One of the writers called it the GLBfakeT movement. It’s totally true.

In one of the sections, which is an interview with Jim Hubbard and Sarah Schulman who organized the first gay and lesbian experimental film festival (which showed Paris is Burning to its first audience), one of them casually remarked “There is no community.”

Now gay people identify with the power structure that they’re working for. And that identification is a lot stronger than their relationship to each other. So, therefore, there’s no community.

So true. Yet it isn’t all gloom and doom. There were some moments of levity, like in Charlie Anders’ essay “Choice Cuts.”

The problem is that I don’t even know how to start telling you what the problem is. It’s bigger than the one that got away. Even bigger than the one you had last night at Blow Buddies.

The reference to the Powerhouse’s Sunday night fête made me chortle. It’s really interesting reading these stories, most of which were written far in advance of 2004, when the book was published. I’m sure the extremely radical authors of these essays would shake their heads at the passing of the gay marriage bill in New York. Before reading this anthology, I just couldn’t quite articulate why it rankled me so much. Now I know: rich, white gays want more privileges.  Why can’t we focus our energies on things that help the people who are actually at risk in our society?

Because there is no one to speak for them. The poor have no voice in our society, gay or otherwise.

I didn’t want to stay up this late, but it’s almost 5 AM. I read the anthology for an hour or so, then snuggled into bed, but sleep just wouldn’t come. I’m on a really terrible sleep schedule this week. It’s got to end.

I’m going to go up and try to sleep again.

Categories: Ennui

New York.

Nightlife.

I’ve been going out far, far too much.

But really, what else is there to do?

Cuddle up on the couch and watch primetime television for the rest of my life?

I’d rather be in the box.

I can’t catch you up from then to now in prose. We’re going on that other thing, the thing I’m not good at. But bear with me. I had a week of rather endless partying.

Tuesday. Work, Disco Down.

Wednesday. Work, rooftop party at KJ’s in Ridgewood. iPad SimCity marathon. Fall asleep on roof. Wake up in THE BLAZING HOT SUN. Groggy. Thirsty as all hell. Trekking to the L. Breakfast at Good Stuff Diner on 14th.

Thursday. Work, then wandering around Soho. Got some snap shirts at AllSaints. Then Metronomy at Pier 51 with KJ. Saw a couple of scene people, but was too far into the crowd to wave. Amazing show. Taylor came out, then I met this girl Sandy (sp?). We all had diner at Good Stuff (the same place we’d had breakfast, for unity), with us all totally dehydrated and exhausted from waiting for the concert in the heat. Sandy assured us that we were going to have the most amazing time ever, but she ended up losing her ID and then taking a cab back to Staten Island. We walked to Apotheke, and it was closed. Got the fuck out of Chinatown.

Friday. Work, then rode into the city with my mom and Lisa. They were going to see some kind of jazz thing in Midtown (ugh), but I walked down to Penn Station to meet Michael and his friend Riley Kilo. We ended up wandering into this Korean restaurant that looked like an Apple store that had mated with an IKEA. The food, while a bit pricy, was superb. We wandered down to Best Buy looking for some kind of FireWire accessory for Riley before realizing that Best Buy is a glorified gadget store with no actual computer accessories. Before calling it a night, we went over to Nowhere on 14th Street. I’d been in there briefly, but mostly just to see if I could ask the bartenders if it was named after the eponymous Gregg Araki movie.

We had a few drinks, then in the middle of a conversation about Warhol (what else is there to talk about ever?) this drunk guy tried to hit on one or both of us. I mean, I don’t make a habit of chatting up strangers, but, if you’re going to try to woo someone, wouldn’t you think of at least one thing to say to the target of your affections? They were either absolutely drunk or on drugs. No one can be that boring. Or perhaps it was just that he was from Miami. Hmm.

Saturday. Farewell dinner for Josh at that place on First Ave with the four Indian places that are all trying to pull you in to one of them. Incredibly busy lit-up ceiling with chiles galore. Back to Alexandra’s place, then I had to head out to meet Jason for The Room. There were a ton of Tisch people there, which ruined the vibe. Still, we got to scream obscenities at the screen and pelt it with spoons (don’t ask).

Did I mention Jason turned over a new leaf and now goes to bars? While I am a bit miffed that it took Brian’s cajoling to actually get it off the ground (I mean, who can say no to that man? He has the charisma of a Kennedy.), we went and hit up Eastern Bloc after the filum. In a supreme moment of role reversal, having my contacts in all night had ended up giving me a whopper of a headache, and I had to go home.

Sunday. Movie marathon at Brian’s house in Jackson Heights, with a visit to the diner for Greek delicacies and iced coffees. Our marathon included Samurai Cop, the worst and also most hilarious movie I’ve seen in a long time, and Choose Me, this odd 1984 comedy/drama with Genevieve Bujold. While there, I got invited to go with the two of them to Portland, Maine next week. It should be quite hilarious, as Brian and me are the only ones who can drive. Totally Driving Miss Daisy. In case there was any ambiguity, Jason is Miss Daisy. As he eloquently put it, “Just when you think I’m not dainty enough, I get daintier.”

Changing gears.

My mom’s violin teacher’s son plays in the New York Philharmonic, and was having a concert at this tiny liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. For some reason, my mom wanted to go. She went down to the local Mervyn’s-esque store across the street but didn’t find anything, so I suggested we hop the ferry to the 34th Street Macy’s. I didn’t think she’d bite at first, but she liked the idea. We parked at the Port Imperial terminal and boarded the ferry.

It took about three hours, but she ended up finding the perfect blouse and sweater. The next day, we drove down there and saw the performance. She even got a picture with him.

It was a really fun drive. I navigated via GPS, and my mom drove. We even went to this Asian fusion place in Bryn Athn, PA that was good. I mean, I played it safe and got chicken curry, but it was spicy and delicious.

After we got back from Pennsylvania, I went out. At one point we were at this loft party somewhere below Canal. There was no booze and the place looked like it was halfway constructed, but I played this random guy at pool (he was a better player than me, but knocked in the 8 ball). Ah, that was the night of Kelly’s birthday party. It started at R Bar, where I ran into Santiago, who was rather drunk. We danced to Metric, everyone was swapping their shirts, and I kept trying to get the attention of the dipsy doodle waitress that seemed way more interested in chatting with Bruce than taking any drink orders. Oddly enough, Michael and I ended up talking the most to Zach, this guy that seems to have some kind of romantic connection to Kelly. We’d never really talked to him much at Disco Down, but since we were in an empty bar we bonded over a bunch of things. We swapped numbers and all that jazz too. I have no idea what to invite him to though. Hmm.

On Friday night, Jason and I saw this horrible, horrible, horrible movie called Dead Hooker in a Trunk. We were expecting something funny, but it was absolutely terrible. It was essentially a student film that IFC had somehow bought the rights to. Don’t even ask. Here’s Jason scoffing at a Spiderman 3 poster hung up in the upstairs lobby of IFC.

We did end up befriending this geeky sort of guy who also saw the movie with us, who supposedly was going to add Jason on Facebook.

I also got Skying on vinyl that day. Can’t wait to listen to that. I also got an LP of James Joyce reading from Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses, which amusingly came from the Chico State Public Library. I was like “Aww, the universe is making me think of Molly.”

Which brings us to tonight.

After the debacle of Dead Hooker in a Trunk, Jason and I were rather burned out on movies. We convened at Bedlam on Avenue C, where a musically precocious bartender proceeded to play an all-The Knife playlist (to my delight). Turns out he is also from Sacramento, and he lived on the grid for like six years. He also would go to Aunt Charlie’s in the Tenderloin when he lived in San Francisco. The bar was totally empty, so he was chatting us up.

We got hungry and headed over to Cafe Mocha on First. I’d always had coffee and desserts at Cafe Mocha, but we tried the food a couple of days before and were blown away. My favorite restaurant, French Roast, has been declining in quality over the last six months, and we have been looking for a replacement. We actually ended up meeting the cook the first time we ate there. He was this big, affable guy from Dallas who drove down from Spanish Harlem every day to cook there. When we went back today, we were regaling the two waitresses about Dead Hooker in a Trunk and how it was far, far worse than the uninspired watermelon salad that we hadn’t cared for on our last visit.

We hit up Eastern Bloc.

Bedlam.

Boiler Room.

Even checked to see if Kelly was at R Bar, but all three other bars were unbearably crowded.

We spent most of our night at Eastern Bloc. There was this hot mess of a guy who was passed out with his fly down in the bar. People tried to get him into a cab, but he just flopped out and started lurching down Avenue A like a ragdoll. I stood against the wall smoking in the light drizzle as a few of the fellow bargoers marveled about how fantastically trashed the guy was. I ended up meeting some kind of party promoter who turned out to be from Fort Lee (the town above mine in Jersey). He even chuckled at my Fort Ree joke (Fort Lee is heavily Korean). He told me all about the date that he’d been on that night with some guy that he’d been seeing for a while, which helped to pass the time as Jason ostensibly chatted up some of the guys inside. He said he partied at this one specific place on Tuesdays, so I might go there and schmooze for no reason next week.

Got home, started writing this, and now it’s 5:48 a.m.

Sleep.

Categories: Ennui