typifying

Though I may, through this site (or, plausibly, in real life) come off as an insensitive prick, in fact, one of the few things I do well is empathize.

I don’t mean empathize as a synonym for sympathize, as in sharing someone else’s pain, but rather empathize in its purest sense, as in divining what other people are thinking, seeing things from other’s perspectives.

Tailoring a sales pitch on the fly to an audience, or searching out the perfect birthday gift, I’m grateful for this knack of putting myself in other people’s heads. But, like most things in life, it cuts both ways. Given the weight I put on what other people are thinking, I inevitably end up worrying about what other people are thinking of me.

This manifests itself in small, bizarre ways. Hearing female friends mock the wall-eyed guy at the end of the bar, for example, I’ll start to convince myself that perhaps I, too, have some horrible lazy eye and yet have never been told as much, even though it’s been secretly discussed for decades by friends and family behind my back.

I can usually cast aside such fears with a moment of reflection. I’ve seen countless pictures and videos of myself, and I’m sure that in at least the majority of them both of my eyes are looking more or less in the same direction.

Which leaves me to fixate instead on the things I hear and deduce on a regular basis. Some of them (“has anyone ever told you that you look like Matthew Broderick?”) don’t imply much beyond their surface content (I apparently look kind of like Matthew Broderick). But others I can’t keep from analyzing, from tearing apart for their loaded meaning.

One I’ve heard a lot recently is, “I’d be really, really curious to see who you end up marrying.” I’ve gotten this one, even in just the last month, more times than I can count. I think what this actually means is, “you seem like a judgmental asshole with bizarre and inscrutable dating criteria that make it nearly impossible for me to figure out your ‘type'”.

I must give off this impression in spades, because if I comment on liking a girl I’ve just met, friends usually react with, “really? I thought you didn’t go for [taller / shorter / thinner / curvier / blonde / brunette / smart / dumb / etc.] girls.” As I don’t think I say such things directly, I’m curious as to which obliquely snide comments or quirky reactions lead people to those strong impressions. Whatever it is, it’s powerful stuff. When people make such comments, there’s almost an air of helpful reminding. “Actually,” they seem to say, “despite the comment you just made to the contrary, I’m pretty sure you don’t like her after all.”

Hearing this from enough people, I start to suspect they’re right. Maybe I don’t like smart girls. Or stupid girls. Or tall blondes or short brunettes. I have absolutely no idea. Looking back through the wreckage of relationships past, I can’t quite make sensible patterns emerge.

Which is exactly the point. Perhaps the reason people so quickly rule out possibilities for me is that I’m so slow to categorically rule them out myself. My dating life, taken together, is an enigmatic, jumbled mess. Not a clear shape, but a muddy splatter.

Which makes what people tell me I am (or, more frequently, am not) looking for far more interesting, gives me license to listen carefully to friends’ constructive critiques of my crushes. Not because it’s likely to yield clues in my own search, but rather because it might give me a glimpse into theirs. Given the spattered mess of my own love life past, I seem to have inadvertently become a walking relationship Rorschach blotch.

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January 21, 2005

gotham high class of ’96

See also: subsequent ‘yearbook’ installments two, three and four.

As promised, the first chunk of Gotham High’s ’96 yearbook. Go dawgs!

Chip “Jazz Hands” Goldberg

Activities: Drama Club (Vice President); This Box is Getting Smaller! (Amateur Mime Club, Founder); The Bowl Of Nuts (Acapaella Singing Group); Daddy Warbucks, Fall Production of “Annie”; Willie Lohman, Spring Production of “Death of a Salesman”; Hamlet, Winter production of “Rosencranz and Gildenstern are Dead”

Superlatives: Most Likely To Entertain

Next Year Will Be: Waiting tables in New York

Quote: “No day but today!!!” – Rent

Tripp “Cold Trippin'” Taylor III

Activities: Thug Life Hip-Hop Culture Society (Secretary); Math Team

Superlatives: Most Street

Next Year Will Be: Attending Morehouse

Quote: “I ain’t mad at ‘cha. Got nothin’ but love for ya.” – Tupac

K.C. Leviner and “L’il Stuey”

Activities: Hunting And Fishing Club; Survivors Of Incest Association

Superlatives: Most Likely To Be A Grandmother Before Age 35

Next Year Will Be: Working at Winn-Dixie, breast feeding

Quote: “If you see Sherman Meadows you tell that asshole that i’m not gonna leave L’il Stuey in a toilet at a Burger King bathroom no matter what he says. And my baby needs a daddy. Please come home – my momma said you can live with us.” – K.C. Leviner

Amber Cocks

Activities: Cheerleading Squad (Captain); Drill Team; Homecoming Queen; Prom Queen; Fashion Club

Superlatives: Most Likely To Fuck A Baldwin Brother (If She Hasn’t Already)

Next Year Will Be: Moving to New York or L.A. to model and be an actress and stuff

Quote: “If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends.” – The Spice Girls

Donnie “Tay-Tay” Taylor

Activities: Special Friends Club; Special Olympics (Track & Field); Hall Monitor; Study Room Monitor; Bus Monitor; Inspiring Everyone

Superlatives: Biggest Inspiration

Next Year Will Be: Greeting at Wal-Mart

Quote: “I like sauce. I like sauce from apples. Sauce from apples is my favorite. It tastes good. It feels good in my mouth. Apple sauce! Apple sauce! Apple sauce! When I’m alone I can fly.” – Donnie Taylor

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November 10, 2004

eyeballing

Having spent much of my life in photography (and now, in film), I’m anal about seeing with clarity and vision. Which is why, despite my prescription being repeatedly described as ‘totally pansy’ by those who really need their glasses, I wear mine all the time. I have since getting my first pair, in eleventh grade (bought, initially, to help me read the board from my customary back row seat, rather than force a move to the front).

To be accurate, throughout most of college, I actually rotated contacts in about half the time. But, since moving to New York some three and a half years back, I slowly drifted away from rotating. Perhaps it was my hectic bags-below-the-eyes-inducing schedule, the irritating grit of city air, or a desire for the faux-intellectual look a good pair of spectacles provides. Whatever the reason, contacts fell by the wayside.

I realized as much earlier this week, and have since been trying to work them back into use. And, by and large, it’s been an excellent change. The only downside: I awake constantly throughout the night, suddenly convinced I forgot to remove the contacts before going to sleep, which might leave me hours deep in irreparable corneal damage.

I should, at this point, admit that I’m a complete and total hypochondriac. The combination of medical knowledge, vivid imagination, and general neurosis conspire to convince me – often aided by Google symptom-searching (“headache and slight fever? I knew it! Malaria!!!”) – that my world is coming to a slow and painful end.

This is particularly true with contacts, due to a booklet I once read at the optometrist’s on the potential dangers of sleeping in contacts not approved for ‘continuous use’. In pictures and gory written detail, the booklet laid out the risks of ‘serious eye infection’ and ‘abnormal corneal blood vessel growth’. It is the second that most plagues my imagination, as the line between vodka-induced harmlessly bloodshot and slept-in-contacts-induced abnormal blood vessel growth is a distinction admittedly beyond my abilities of accurate self-diagnosis.

Fortunately, unlike in the case of goiter, femoral hernia, or any of the other afflictions I might woefully cast upon myself, shaking slept-in-contacts fears should be rather easy – if I’m not actually wearing the contacts as I sleep, I’m fine. Less fortunately, my contacts-less vision is good enough that, in a darkened room without any distant objects to stare at, I’m often unable to decide whether I am, in fact, wearing them or not, at least without repeatedly poking myself in the eyeball.

Because my contacts are one day disposables, I’ve now stumbled upon a workable solution: after removing them, I leave them on my night-stand. Waking up at three in the morning, then, I’m able to simply look over at them, slowly drying out, to relieve my worries and put myself back to sleep. Gross perhaps, but certainly better than abnormal corneal blood vessel growth. Or, at least, better than fears of it. As is the case with most of my hypochondriacal self-diagnoses, I happily doubt I’ll ever have the chance to experience the real thing.

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November 5, 2004

how to not shoot yourself in foot

Dear Fellow Liberals:

In 2000, after the polls closed on election night, every single television network was calling the race too close to call. Then, something strange happened. The election statistician at Fox News, who just happened to be George W. Bush’s cousin, called the race in favor of Bush. Within minutes, all the other networks similarly started calling it a Bush win. Aside from the AP’s article the following morning – which rightly called the count still too close to call – Bush was the presumptive President-elect.

And that too-early call by the networks colored the dispute over the next few weeks. Had things been up in the air still, it might have been a fight between two candidates. Instead, with Bush called the winner before the votes were even counted, it became a fight between the next President and a bitter loser unwilling to gracefully throw in the towel.

I bring this up now as a reminder of how powerful expectations can be. By and large, we get what we think we will – especially in the world of politics. Which is why I find the current liberal defeatism particularly distressing. My friends – intelligent, well-reasoned people – are heading off to protests, all the while saying Bush is almost certain to win.

But the thing is, he isn’t. With two months to go ’till election day, the two candidates are consistently polling within the margin of error. And, from the perspective of the incumbent, historically that’s not a very good place to be – especially when matched up against a candidate (like Kerry) who’s seen his numbers swing up during the final two months of hard, pull-no-punches campaigning in every single one of his prior races.

In other words, this is Kerry’s race to lose, not the other way around. But we jeopardize that edge every single time we sigh, throw up our hands, and brace ourselves for four more years of Bush. If you’re going to play to win, you’ve got to say so.

That’s particularly important in a race where a Kerry victory hinges on undecided voter turn-out. According to the contours of the latest WSJ/NBC poll, 70 percent of them think the country is headed in the wrong direction, and a very large majority have an unfavorable view of George Bush. By all indications, undecideds are going to break hard for Kerry, but only if they think it’s worth their time to head out and vote – only if they think the race is still in their hands, rather than more or less already a Bush win.
Which is all to say, if you want Kerry to win, start talking like he will. Heaven knows the other side takes that approach. The only difference is, in our case, we’re probably right.

Sincerely,

josh

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September 3, 2004

over-sharing

There was a brief stint, after graduating college and transitioning the Silicon Ivy Venture Fund from active investing to working with existing portfolio companies, that I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do with my life. In its support stage, the venture fund wasn’t really a full time job, and the market wasn’t right to raise a second fund. I knew I wanted to start another company or two, but I was entirely unsure of what, exactly, those companies were going to be.

I related as much to Mark Gerson, a long-time friend, one night over dinner. Mark had founded and was running the hugely successful Gerson Lehrman Group, a boutique investment advisory firm that works with some of the nation’s best hedge funds and mutual funds. As I had helped Mark out in the earlier days of his company – lining up some of their first clients and early employees – he offered to return the favor, by bringing me in as the firm’s Senior Technology Analyst.

In some ways, the job was perfect – I was overpaid, underworked, with about as much power and autonomy as I could hope for in a company that I didn’t run.

And I was miserable.

I always knew, at some level, that I was a pioneer, not a settler; that I had to mark out new territory, make new things, rather than just expand existing things ever onward and upward. But I didn’t realize how much taking a ‘real’ job would chip away at me. The psychological stress of being an employee, not an employer, weighed on me constantly, manifesting itself in remarkably strange ways.

Unlike in my current job, where I rarely spend more than a half hour seated at my desk – wandering off instead to internal meetings or external business lunches and dinners – at Gerson Lehrman, I spent most of my day sitting in front of a computer monitor, banging out reports, fielding calls, and generally being (or at least feigning being) productive. And, as a result, I drank lots and lots and lots of water.

Perhaps it was sheer boredom, the lack of anything better to do. But each morning, I’d open up a Crystal Geyser bottle, start sipping away, and soon find I was refilling it from the water cooler throughout the day at nearly half-hour intervals.

As a result, my primary cause for leaving the desk was heading off to the bathroom. And in those bathroom trips, something strange started to happen. Despite definitely having to go, my bladder was suddenly shy. At first, I couldn’t start peeing when someone was at the adjacent urinal. Then I couldn’t pee if there was anyone within the entire bathroom. Eventually, that parauresis slipped over into my non-work life as well – even in bar and restaurant bathrooms, I couldn’t pee when someone else was around.

As strange as it may sound, I didn’t think much of it at the time. The problem snuck up on me gradually, and like the proverbial frog in the slowly heated pot of water, I didn’t notice it had happened until I was already in deep.

Then, after a little less than a year, I had a series of small epiphanies. I knew I wanted to make movies. I knew I wanted to publish books and release CDs. I knew I wanted to keep working in entrepreneurship and technology, though in ways that helped the world. The Paradigm Blue companies were born. And I couldn’t wait to get them started.

I was worried about telling Mark that I’d be jumping ship, worried that he’d somehow be insulted by my suddenly moving on. To my pleasant surprise, however, his reaction was exactly opposite; he was enthusiastic, supportive, offering to help in a slew of ways as I set about getting the first company, Cyan Pictures, off the ground. And while I offered to stick around for another few months if they still needed assistance, he graciously said he’d be happy to let me head off at the end of the week, as he knew I’d be eager to get down to business.

I remember walking out of his office, stopping briefly at my desk, and then realizing I had to use the bathroom. And I remember, vividly, walking into the crowded bathroom, walking up to an empty urinal, and peeing away with reckless abandon.

The shy bladder was gone, and it hasn’t, not even once, come back since.

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May 27, 2004

blog zen

“I just never knew that so much went into organizing a wallet. I would assume that an afternoon with a three year old would produce more material.”
– Senora Juego, in an astute comment on yesterday’s post.

***

I’ll be the first to admit that, when I write nearly a thousand words about wallet maintenance, it’s not because I’m wildly passionate about the subject. Instead, it’s what happens when, sitting down at the computer, I realize I have absolutely nothing to say.

***

Writers block is a fact of writing. Anyone who writes regularly, who routinely starts new pieces from scratch, has – at least on occasion – faced the terrifying nothingness of a white screen or blank piece of paper.

Novelists bitch and moan about it, drink themselves to death as a result. Working journalists, conversely, tend to simply slog their way through, quality be damned; a deadline’s coming, they ain’t gettin’ paid unless they turn in two thousand words, and so they might as well just put something onto paper.

And, in that sense, we webloggers are nearly journalists. The deadlines may be internal, driven by a sense of obligation to regular posting. But they weigh down none the less. The blank screen looms, and we simply write the first thing that pops into our heads. Quality be damned.

***

Often, when I talk to people who’ve just taken up blogging, they’ll tell me that they don’t intend to blog for long. They’ll simply go until they’ve told all the stories they’ve, for years, wanted to tell. And then they’ll quit.

Invariably, this never happens. Through the process of blogging, they come to realize that, in our small daily adventures, the minute facets of our lives, there are literally thousands upon thousands of stories and speculations to tell and share. We could never possibly run out.

And yet, day by day, it’s often difficult to see those facets and adventures. They’re too small to us, too constant, too much a part of life.

***

There is an old Koan about a young monk who, seeking enlightenment, asks Master Dae-Ju to tell him the path to Zen. Dae-Ju replies, ìZen is very easy. When hungry, eat; when tired, sleep.î

We spend all of our lives doing things without really doing them. We go through the motions. We walk through our parts. But are we really present?

If this is the path to Zen, it’s also the path to blogging well. To find material, we needn’t change what we do, merely the way we do it. Fully experience each day, and surely in each lies a story worth telling.

Of course, like any truth, it’s easier advice to mouth than to follow. Unlike Zen, though, blogging provides constant feedback in that pursuit, a daily test of how well we’ve stuck to the course of fully living. Do I have a story to tell? And, if not, is it really because nothing happened to me in the past twenty-four hours? Or is it because so much happened that I somehow missed it all, even as I marked my way through?

***

Keeping a weblog, then, is easy. When inspired, write; when finished, stop. Live through today. Return tomorrow. You’ll doubtless be inspired to write again.

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May 19, 2004

back pocket

Dear fellow men:

In case you have not already realized it, women are checking out your ass. And, frankly, if your wallet is so overstuffed as to appear that you’ve developed a large, cancerous ass-cheek growth, you’re probably not helping your cause.

So, if you’re looking for love, or simply looking to not be labeled ‘ass-cheek growth guy’ by the group of cute girls at the end of the bar, it might be time to slim down your billfold.

Thus convinced, start the process by examining the wallet itself. If it is made from cordura (or, really, anything other than leather), you will not have even the vaguest of chances of sleeping with any woman who sees you remove it from your pocket. (In fact, this applies even if the woman in question is a member of PETA; I am fairly certain there’s a special exemption to their animal cruelty platform that allows the purchase of leather wallets to keep guys from looking like complete doofuses.)

Also, if you have a crappy five-dollar wallet, every single woman who sees it will instantly know it’s a crappy five-dollar wallet. Women spend huge percentages of their adult lives idly searching for the perfect purse and handbag, across thousands upon thousands of stores. They have examined more leather goods in a single afternoon than you have in your entire life. They know the difference. Your five-dollar wallet isn’t fooling anyone but yourself.

Additionally, if your wallet is tri-fold, multi-fold, or in any way resembles an origami project, trade it in for a plain old fashioned one that simply folds in half once. Obviously, the more you fold something, the thicker it becomes, and some wallets are a good inch and a half deep even before you start filling them up. If you’re still at a loss, just buy this, which I’ve owned for the last eight years. Thanks to, as you’re about to learn, not overstuffing, it still looks new.

Onto what goes into the wallet. To gauge where you stand, remove everything from you wallet, and make four piles: one for money, one for credit cards / id / etc., one for receipts, and one for anything else. These piles are likely rather unwieldy, which is exactly the problem. The goal here is to put as little of what’s in those piles back into the wallet.

Start with the money. That’s the one thing that incontrovertibly belongs in your wallet. Everything else should be subjected to close scrutiny.

Next work your way through the card pile. From it, place in your wallet: your drivers license, your atm card, one or two credit cards, your metrocard (if you are a New Yorker), four of your business cards, and your health insurance card. That’s it. Put everything else in your desk drawer. Seriously.

You simply cannot afford to stuff you wallet full of things you don’t truly need. You don’t, for instance, need to carry twelve different credit cards all at the same time. At most, you need one for personal expenses and one for business expenses. If you’re worried about maxing out your limit (which, frankly, you probably shouldn’t be doing in the first place) you can swap the nearly maxed card for another unused one from your desk drawer as necessary.

You also don’t need things like your Blockbuster card or your museum membership cards; if they can find you in their computer system given your ID, you shouldn’t be schlepping their plastic around. Even if your grocery store doesn’t allow you to key in your phone number for rewards club savings, say, you still likely don’t need to take your grocery rewards card with you everywhere. If you’re just ‘stopping by’ the grocery store, you’re unlikely to buy much; when you head out for a big shopping run, you take the card out of your desk. The rest of the time, you leave the card, and most others, at home.

Now the receipts. Take all of them, put them in a file somewhere, and never, ever again put a receipt into your wallet. Put new ones in your front pocket, then add them to the file when you get home. Receipts are the single largest cause for outlandishly overstuffed wallets. And there is absolutely, positively no reason for carrying those receipts around. Most guys have returned perhaps two items in the past five years. When return number three rolls around, you can damn well pull the relevant slip from the file. The rest of the time, the receipts add bulk, look stupid, fall out everywhere, and generally detract from good wallet housekeeping.

Now the miscellaneous pile. If it doesn’t already include it, take a single check, a $20 bill and a $100 bill, and fold them together. Place this in one of the inside pockets of the wallet. This is ’emergency’ money, or, more to the point, ‘cover dinner after your credit card is declined so that you and your date don’t end up in the kitchen washing dishes’ money. Not much else from the miscellaneous pile should be added back into your wallet either. If you want to carry pictures, limit yourself to one of your significant other, and one each of any children you have (and know about). Nobody wants to see even the first photo, so please don’t torture them with a stack.

That’s it. Keeping your wallet organized is easy: aside from cash, and replenishing your stack of business cards, do not put anything new into your wallet. Try it for a few weeks. Then head back to the bar where the cute girls secretly taunted you for your unwieldy buttock-bulge, observe the newfound respect your svelte wallet and resulting slim line engenders, and ask the cutest for her phone number.

And, even then, place the phone in your pocket. Not in your wallet.

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May 18, 2004

freeloading the big apple

As Times columnist Charlie LeDuff famously observed, “New York is a lot like a shit sandwich. The more bread you have, the less shit you taste.” Sadly, with the cost of city living perpetually on the rise, that observation holds now more than ever. Which isn’t to say, however, that our fair city can only be enjoyed with a wad of $100’s in your back pocket. With a bit of ingenuity, and a willingness to depend on the proverbial kindness of strangers, anyone can live the good life in New York for essentially no money at all. ‘How?’, I hear you ask. Read on.

Step 1. Eating

Your first stop: high end grocers. The Amish Market, Whole Foods, the Chelsea Market – any of these is packed with enough free samples to make a meal. The secret to avoiding incurring the wrath of salespeople is to look genuinely intent on shopping. Carry a basket. Put things in. Eat some free samples. Take things out. Head back for more free samples. Voila.

Of course, sometimes even the cheapest of individuals feels the need to sit down for a meal. That’s where churches and synagogues come into play. Nearly all are brimming with lunch discussions and potluck dinners. Proselytizing and pizza. Can’t stomach the holier-than-thou moral integrity these people beam as you take their food? Head over to a twelve step program meeting instead. Plenty to eat, and certainly nobody ready to judge.

Once the weather warms, you can also pop into Central Park looking for barbecues. With a big drunken crowd of revelers, nobody’s going to stop the one guy they don’t completely recognize in line for a burger.

Bonus tip: looking for dessert? Ten cents will buy you a cone at your neighborhood ice cream store. Then simply request a taste spoonful of all 31 flavors. Compacted together, those little bits easily add up to one (deliciously free) full scoop.

Step 2. Drinking

Of course, real New Yorkers know that food stands well behind drink in the order of life, so you’ll be pleased to hear that unpaid liquor flows freely throughout the city. Start the evening at a Chelsea gallery opening. Wander around, glass in hand, squinting thoughtfully at the carefully framed spray-painted sweat socks and the like. If a salesperson stops next to you, look slightly towards them, shake your head slightly, and say something like “intriguing…” That should buy you plenty of time to grab another glass.

If you’re a mid-day drinker (or, as we in the know say, alcoholic), kill pre-gallery time at open houses. Scour the Times for any residence listed for more than $2M, then dress the part and bring a date. Free drinks (and, likely, freshly baked banana bread, to scent the house with domesticity) are yours for the taking.

Like to smoke when you drink? Well then Mayor Bloomberg’s done you a world of good. No longer able to smoke comfortably indoors, a crowd of addicts has doubtless packed near the doors of whichever establishment you’re frequenting. The brotherhood of nicotine, strengthened through months of such enforced outdoors huddling, means you can bum away with reckless abandon.

Step 3. Staying Fit

All that free food and liquor gone straight to your hips? Don’t worry friend, because fitness can be had on the cheap in NYC as well. Your first path: trial memberships. Every gym in the city offers them, from one week spans all the way up to a free test month. With over 400 ‘health clubs’ listed in the phone book, by skipping from gym to gym, you can stay fit well into old age.

But let’s say you’re the trendier sort, perhaps looking to do a bit of soul-soothing Yoga (to balance out the karmic wrongs engendered by all your freeloading). No problem! Just head onto Friendster (you knew it had to be useful for something) and search for the word yoga. There’s at least a 50% chance that any females living in Williamsburg whose names pop up are instructors-in-training, looking to log teaching hours. Free private instruction, yours for the taking.

Step 4. Entertainment

Feeling fit, feted and faded from the past three steps, you’re now doubtless looking for a bit of fun. Fret not, as New York is known around the globe for its excellent theater, attracting uneducated yokels the world over to things their simple minds couldn’t possibly comprehend. This month, head over to the American Airlines theater about an hour after the crowds first file in, and you’ll doubtless find a hearty Midwestern couple jumping ship at the first intermission, muttering about why this Pinter fellow can’t seem to just tell a story. Ask them for their tickets, and as your daily good deed, point them to their hotel two blocks up Time Square, lest they wander all the way down to TriBeCa before realizing they don’t have a clue where they are. Don’t worry about the missed first half; most playwrights save the best for last anyway.

Looking for lighter fare? Loiter outside the city’s larger movie theaters, looking for women in their early twenties wielding clipboards. They’re recruiting for test screenings (a misnomer, as distributors really couldn’t care less what you think) for pre-release films. Sure, there’s a better than 50% chance whatever you end up seeing will star Ashton Kutcher, but it’s free, free, free!

Step 5. Edification

Feeling a bit punk’d by your film, you’d best set out to feed your brain. Head over to Barnes & Nobles, which I encourage you to view as your free lending library of brand spankin’ new books (with only small deposit required). In short, buy a book or two that seem interesting. Read them on your own time. Come back several weeks later and say, “I read these two books; they were quite good. But now I’d like to abuse your overly generous return policy to trade them in for two others.” Repeat ad infinitum.

If timelier information is what you seek, head down to your neighborhood coffee shop, on weekdays after 11:00am, or weekends after 1:00pm. Copies of the city’s countless newspapers doubtless lay strewn on the floor. With a bit of search, you might even find one in which the crossword puzzle hasn’t already been partially filled in (erroneously, of course, and in ink).

Step 6. Utilities

Tired out, it’s time to head home. Sadly, no tips on how to go rent free, as that pesky landlord fellow seems to get a bit snippy if you try. And don’t even bother trying to stay with friends – New Yorkers have a nose for the sort of houseguest likely to overstay their welcome. You won’t make it past the buzzer should you hit their front door with bags in tow.

Utilities, however, are a bit more flexible, at least so long as you’re willing to whine your way to success. Free phone minutes, months of cable service, they’re all yours to be had if you can put the fear of you leaving for a competitor into their customer service rep’s mind. Complain, complain, complain. If you’re a real New Yorker, it should come easily.

Step 7. Style

Caught yourself in the mirror while wheedling your cell phone company and realized your look’s way out, did you? Then it’s time for a bit of discount store arbitrage. Pop into Syms or Century 21 and stock up on discounted designer couture. Then train on out to the Nordstrom’s at the Short Hills Mall, which sports a return policy even more generous than the Barnes & Noble kindness you previously abused. Enough cycles, and you’ve pocketed enough money to make the eventual purchase (from the initial discount store, naturally) more than pay for itself.

All dolled up, your unkempt ‘do likely looks out of place. Happily for you, New York is full of hairdressing schools looking for victims, er, volunteers to help students hone their scissor skills. Still, word is out and New Yorkers are broke, so waiting lists have begun to spring up at most such establishments. If your mane begins to look too shaggy to weather the wait, I’ve a
lso heard excellent things a
bout the trainees at either of the city’s fine dog grooming academies.

Postlogue
So, there you have it. With no money down, this little beauty of a city can be yours, all yours. Or course, at some point you’ll likely realize that all the time spent trying to live on the cheap could instead be channeled more effectively towards such fruitful pursuits as, say, looking for a job, or marrying an investment banker. Even then, only enough scrill to swim through (a la Scrooge McDuck) will lift you into the holy grail of New York High Society. Think Eyes Wide Shut, though with women WASPy enough to write thank you notes.

[Word to Yoav “King of Cheap” Fisher, who helped brainstorm this piece while brewing coffee late yesterday evening.]

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March 29, 2004

urinal etiquette

While I was at Yale, the neuroscience major was tied in to the psych department. Because of that, neuroscience majors were required to take a few ‘soft’ psych classes. Which is how, in my sophomore year, I ended up in Psych 150 – Social Psychology. Frankly, I hated the class. The research we studied was garbage, and the teaching was at a third grade level. When we were assigned a final project – executing a piece of original field research – I realized I had my chance to let the teacher know what I thought of the class. In an effort to mock the careful study of the inane that characterizes social psychology, I chose the topic of urinal etiquette. Ironically, I got an A.

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The “Number One” Social Norm

Very few social norms are completely rigid; most are violated, at least occasionally or under special circumstances. Riding in an elevator, for example, people will speak to each other instead of simply looking at the door if they already know their fellow riders. Occasionally, even strangers will strike up conversations during an elevator ride. Other norms, like eating with utensils or not sitting on the table, are sometimes ignored as well. Although the violators may be looked down upon, these violators do exist. However, up to the time of my experiment, I had neither seen nor heard of anyone breaking the strict laws of urinal etiquette. For the benefit of my female readers, I must first try to explain the tacit yet complex code that governs men

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March 1, 2004

wining

Earlier today, Geese Aplenty‘s Greg was kind enough to suggest a list of erudite-sounding wine descriptors he uses to cover the fact that, when it comes to wine, he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about.

Which, on the one hand, I very much appreciated, as I rarely know what I’m talking about, on pretty much any subject at all. But, on the other, I also recently discovered that, when it comes to wine in particular, not knowing what you’re talking about doesn’t seem to matter.

Just a few weeks back, I was lucky enough to attend the in-house wine tasting of a high-end liquor distributor. Convening a panel of exceedingly educated palettes (plus a few idiots like me, dragged along for the ride), the tasting was used by the distributor to decide how much of various vintages to order, and where to set prices.

I can say, without a doubt, the evening was the most unintentionally funny of my life. I knew it was starting well when one elderly taster (memorable otherwise mainly for an exceedingly intimidating set of bushy eyebrows) described the first sample, a merlot, as “certainly, a slutty little wine.” While the evening only improved from there, it peaked when another gentleman described one particular shiraz as “a bit like opening an umbrella on the streets of London on a summer’s day, just as the fog begins rolling in.”

As I stifled laughter, the distributor smiled broadly and scribbled copious notes. One can only assume an open-umbrella-in-the-mists-of-London shiraz is bound to be a big seller.

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February 12, 2004