It’s funny, I always make fun of people who buy more than one of the same item - but right now, man how I wish I was one of them.

Strange… (or maybe not so strange considering what you find these days) but there’s a commercial on YouTube for my sneaks.

Adidas Grand Prix Commercial

…now if I could only find a place that had em.

Check out this Flickr Album featuring Lego art. The remake of Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks” is my favorite.

…on their recent nuptials. Man, it seems that I’ve been saying this a lot lately. It seems that everyone I know is either getting married or breaking up. I guess it’s a sign of us hitting our… I won’t say it.

Thanks to both of you for inviting me to be a part of your wedding. Also for spending all that time hanging out w/Jojo and me while we were in Taiwan… I’m sure there are a lot of other things you guys could have been doing w/your precious days off. I wish you guys the best.

Here’s the wedding pictures: click here
Here’s some more pictures of the venue where the wedding was held: click here

Please note the temperatures in yellow (yesterday) and red (today)…

I was sitting at an outdoor restaurant in the west village (7th and Bleeker) earlier this evening having dinner with my mom when the woman at the table next to ours said this to her dinner companion. My mom looked at me and said in disgust in Bengali, “Do people get any stupider than her?”. I nodded in agreement.

In the previous ten minutes we had witnessed at least thirty cop cars - both marked and unmarked (not exaggerating), a mobile command center, three news vans, and four paramedics blaze by on Bleeker street behind us. We could see/hear two helicopters flying around above us as well. The lady made her proclamation just as a police van stopped at the intersection and closed off Bleeker street to all non-emergency vehicles.

For the rest of the meal (another forty minutes or so) at least one emergency vehicle of some sort would pass by every two or three minutes. One helicopter would complete it’s rotation about every five minutes while the other stayed hovering in one place.

I’m sure in the back of the minds of all of us sitting there at that restaurant (except perhaps that lady) was… “Was there a terrorist attack or something?”. I’ve never seen anywhere near that many emergency vehicles go by at the same time and direction like that. I kept refreshing the news sites on my phone in hopes to find out what was going on.

I was also text messaging with Son during all this and he too saw a swarm of cop cars going towards the village from where he was hanging out in the lower east side.

We later found out that one civilian and two auxiliary (volunteer/unarmed) police officers had been shot and killed by a guy with a semi-automatic handgun three blocks from where my mom and I were eating.

[...I remember being handed recruitment flyer's by the auxiliary police department when I first moved here. I would joke around with Angela about how "...even I could do it". Now I wonder... The point however is that these two auxiliary officers who died were just ordinary folks with regular day jobs trying to be involved in protecting their communities. (Not that it's any more okay for a real police officer to die either)... But they went into the situation without even having guns to protect themselves with...]

What I still can’t comprehend, and pisses me off to no avail is (I’m gonna rant now): Who the fuck gets pissed off at cops for responding to an emergency?! I mean it’s not even like a police van just pulled up and blocked an intersection for no reason (and they still have the right to do that!). The only thing you could hear and see were the sirens and their flashing red lights… Obviously something was going down. Just cuz her skank ass wasn’t affected by it - she somehow found it her right to be annoyed. Three blocks west and it coulda been her bitch-ass who got shot.

Here’s a link to the full article:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/03/15/nyc.shootout/index.html
http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=1&aid=67691
http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=local&id=5123346#

To be quite honest, this has been driving me nuts since my first encounter with the street on my first visit to New York. I couldn’t fathom why an entire city of people would pronounce Houston (”hyuston”) as “howstin”.

My First guess was that this pronunciation debauchery was a result of the extremities of the “New Yorker” Accent. Keep saying “Houston” to yourself with a New York accent… you’ll eventually reach “Howstin”.

However, mere conjecture didn’t make it any easier to accept. So finally (I’m surprised it took me this long) I decided to look it up.

“… Houston Street is named for a congressman from Georgia, William Houstoun, who married Mary Bayard: her father Nicholas owned the land in Greenwich Village through which he cut the street in the early 1800s, naming it for his son-in-law. Houstoun spelled his name with that extra ‘u’ and likely pronounced his name Howstoon or Howston. Over time the extra letter fell out while the pronunciation remained.

Other accounts have the name derived from the Dutch term huystujn (”garden house”) from the Bleecker family gardens, on which the street was laid out.”

sources:
http://www.forgotten-ny.com/STREET%20SCENES/houston/houston.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Street_%28Manhattan%29

So I finally saw my first celeb yesterday. It seems that everyone else here has at least seen someone and most people have seen multiple someones. Even visitors will occasionally run into a celeb. Me on the other end… nada. I saw that guy Daniel Vosovic from Project Runway at a bus stop once; but he can’t count as a celebrity.

Yesterday however, as Son and I were walking down Spring St. in Soho for lunch, I see this attractive blonde woman walking towards us. So of course, I check her out.

The first thought through my mind was… “Hmm, she looks familiar, I wonder where I’ve seen her before” (not as in TV show, but as in bar/subway/street)… And then of course it hits me… Ally McBeal/Alfie!! I didn’t know her name but I was sure it was the blonde secretary chick from Ally McBeal… (who also had a minor role in the movie Alfie). So after I get back to my desk, I look her up and sure enough, I walked by Jane Krakowski. I guess she’s now on a TV show called 30 Rock. I must say, she looks pretty good for 37-38.

It’s a weird sensation seeing someone who looks so familiar but that you obviously don’t know. It’s kinda like that cute girl in college who you had a crush on but you never had the nerve to talk to. In your head you kinda do know her, but in reality, she’s just a random stranger. The first time you do talk to her you get this strange awkward/surreal feeling.

I was never a big Ally McBeal fan or anything, so I wonder how I’d feel if I ran into Zach Braff or Courtney Cox or anyone from a show I watch(ed) more regularly. I can so see myself going up to Z.B and saying, “Hey man … Hooch is Crazy.”

As I’ve mentioned before, I tend to put empty beverage containers back in the fridge before disposal. Last night, I followed my bi-monthly (or so) ritual of bagging all the empty bottles for recycling. Since I’m not fond of venturing down to the trash area at night (that’s when the mice come out) I decided to put the bags back into the fridge over night. So after stuffing the bags back into the fridge I slammed the fridge door.

Either the noise or the shaking of the fridge apparently frightened an unknown roommate of mine. Out from under the fridge comes running a little mouse… (A MOUSE… A FUCKING REAL LIVE MOUSE!!!!). In my surprise and fright, I jumped in the air (and I swear I coulda dunked if I were on a basketball court) and let out a yell so loud you’d think I was having an appendage amputated w/out anesthetic. The mouse hearing my commotion (and probably being just as frightened) turned straight around and ran back under the fridge.

After landing (I was airborne for a good 30 seconds), running out into my room, and calming down; I went back into the kitchen and put an empty box against the front of the fridge. I then emailed the pest control company used by the building to schedule an extermination. I also called my super earlier today to ask him to expedite the appointment as well as to come in and find and plug any holes that might exist behind my fridge.

Now, I’ll say it again… I love living here in New York. But honestly, every time I see a mouse/rat (even on the street) or a cockroach, a little bit of that love dies. It’s one thing to have to deal with it in public places, but quite another to see it in my own apartment. I feel like my person has been violated. It’s like having someone break into your house, and not knowing if they’ve left or not.

Strangely, as disturbing as this all is; the thought of killing the mouse does place a twinge of guilt on my conscience. He’s trying to get by and survive in this crazy world just like me… but alas, we’re enemies by circumstance. I sincerely hope that he’s gone and left through the hole in the wall, and that patching it up will be the only outcome of this ordeal.

I’m obviously not an alcoholic by any means - at most some might call me a social drinker. As such, I have no use for the information below. This is for those of you who tend to go a little overboard when you start hitting the sauce.

Here’s an article on How Stuff Works describing everything you’ve ever wanted to know about hangovers. How Hangover’s Work.

In case you don’t have time to read/study/commit to memory this article, here are the highlights:

1. The adage “Beer before liquor never sicker” is true… The carbonation in beer causes your body to absorb alcohol faster.

2. Dark liquors/red wine have the greatest amount of congeners (toxins) and those cause the most severe hangovers. Drinking lighter liquors such as vodka and gin will result in a lesser hangover.

3. Fried/Fatty foods after drinking will just irritate your stomach further; having them before however will slow down your body’s intake of alcohol thus reducing your hang over the next day.

4. Eggs for their cysteine, Bananas for their potassium, and sports drinks for potassium and other minerals are good morning after foods.

5. Fruit Juice increases your bodies energy and increases the rate at which the body gets rid of toxins. They also contain vitamins that you lost from the diuretic effect of alcohol.

6. Take Multi-vitamins for the same reason as above.

7. Avoid Coffee. While caffeine will help your headache since it’s a vasoconstrictor; it’s also a diuretic and will result in you becoming even more dehydrated and thereby increasing your hangover. (Note: there’s also a study that says that drinking coffee helps reduce the risk of alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver) - so it may be worth the extra pain.

8. If you’re going to take Aspirin make sure it’s non-caffeinated and acetaminophen-free. Acetaminophen + alcohol causes liver damage.

Obviously, the best way to not have a hangover is to not drink excessively… but since y’alls can’t seem to help yourselves…follow the above and Happy Drinking.

One can’t help but wonder certain things…

1. Who are these taxi cab drivers on the phone with all the time? I’d say conservatively 70% of the taxi cab rides I take the drivers are on the phone for the whole ride. Now I’m not exactly a ‘phone person’, I’m lucky if I spend an hour on the phone a day …Hell I’ll be honest, I usually barely pass 300 minutes a month on my phone. That’s about 10 minutes a day. While I’m sure that’s a bit of an extreme, It amazes me how much time these guys spend on the phone.

The real question is… who the hell are they talking to? Who’s free to talk at hours like 3am and 3pm? …I wonder if there’s this whole cabbie social network, and they’re just all on the phone with each other gossiping about all the crazy fares they encounter.

2. Why are the shift changes at 5am and 5pm? You’d think 3pm and 3pm would make a lot more sense. Also where the hell is this mythical cab depot? Cabs are almost unobtainable from like 3:30 pm on; you’d think it’d make more financial sense to put the terminal in Manhattan or really damn close to it.

3. How do those cabs that have all the latest sports scores and news headlines on the LED panels atop them get all that up to the minute data? I feel like those kinda cabs have been around for a while now. I just got my first cellular data plan a few months ago. You’d think that if they’re getting any kinda data feed at all (however they do it), they’d send them GPS/traffic info.

4. Why aren’t there any female taxicab drivers? I mean… has anyone ever seen even one?