Summer Stream

Miss me? Anyone? Hello?

Been awhile – but absence, fondness, and melting of writers blocks. With no sports but baseball, a paltry selection of summer movies, and little in the news, it’s been one of the longer summers I can remember. Dog days became months. Thankfully, football is gearing up like storms in the gulf, and fall TV isn’t all that far off either.

My summer recap of thoughts, anecdotes, and impressions:

We need a new airport hub for NYC. LaGuardia (est. 1939) is tiny and dingy – even its President’s club reminds me of an abandoned downtown lounge. Newark (est. 1928) is just a mess and its cabbies charge extortion rates ($16 for a 6-block drive). JFK (est. 1947) is slanted towards international flights, but I hear it’s undergoing a serious facelift, so I might check it out soon with Jetblue.

That’s right, Jetblue. I’m a card-carry Continental man, but these guys are getting an audition for a couple of reasons: (1) they were offering ridiculously cheap roundtrips ($200) at the right moment – I’m giving up a quarter of my annual income on flights right now and had to tack on another East Coast wedding, (2) no layover, (3) Direct TV and XM radio for everyone!

That last one’s a biggie. I can’t sleep on flights, even after a week of carousing 20 hours at a pop. It’s not the flight itself, even though I always regret napping in cars/planes because of the pinched neck and groggy headache that follows. I stay awake because of the in flight movie. Even one-star disasters have a hold on me like late night cable. I’ve only been able to resist two movies in my flying career: ‘White Chicks’ and ‘The Shipping News.’ On the August flight to LaGuardia, I surrendered to ‘She’s the Man,’ which was a blatant puree of ‘One of the Guys’ and ‘Ladybugs.’ Amanda Bynes was alarmingly more convincing as a boy than as an attractive female lead. I really hope that Direct TV frees my soul.

Only a few discoveries on the June and August trips to Manhatters: Joe’s Pizza in the village (seen in Spiderman 2, I swear that wasn’t what brought me there) has completely altered my understanding of what good pizza is supposed to taste like; it’s worth the trip to Magnolia’s not for the place or the cupcakes (in fact, I prefer their mini-cheesecakes), but for the Chronicles of Narnia poses to send to friends via camera phone; PJ Clark’s on 55th and 3rd is the ultimate early morning stop on the way home after a home night – full menu until 3am (get the bubble and squeak!) and Cheers-esque feel; the staff at the 57th St Four Seasons may be worth your room price by themselves – they’ll have you confused about your personal celebrity status within two days; like finding out that you have a grandmother with racist tendencies, I was shocked to realize the shopping bigotry while accompanying on a trip to Bloomingdales – that place sends its unwanted customers to the derelict subbasements like they’re morlocks. We shan’t have our valued vistors setting their eyes on the likes of you! Down below with the low ceilings, dim lighting, and dingy tiled floors is where you’ll be!

Only other rough spot in NY was the asscab we mistakenly got into one day on our way to Dinosaur BBQ (far East side of Harlem, though the Rochester location remains my favorite). We hop in and I let the cabbie know that we’re headed to 132nd and twelfth.
“Whut?”
(in unison) “132nd and twelfth”
“132nd Whut?”
“132nd and twelfth”
“132nd Whut?”
(in retrospect, this is the point I should have started Lil Jon-ing)
““132nd and TWELFTH!”
“132nd EAST OR WEST?!!”
“East!”
“What the hell is the problem with you!”

Note – this would have been a ‘my bad, I don’t know NY like I wish’ moment, had 132nd been bisected by Central Park. However, CP runs from 60th to 110th, so why this guy blew a gasket is past me. We go east a bit and swing south, which perplexed us a little, but I’ve learned from experience that the worst thing you can do in Manhatten is be a backseat driver in a cab. I assume he just needs to take a zig-zag roue to hop onto the Eastside highway, which we’ll need to run up to the 125th/132nd exit. Unfortunately, he continues past two different signs for the highway and is halfway to the Village before my friend finally, gratingly, double checks that he understands that 132nd is in Harlem. The response we get is that he figured we were trying to get to “the hospital downtown.” That cemented him in my hall of fame for good. We eventually get to the best BBQ in NY, but I was disappointed that the fare wasn’t $19.99 so I could give him a twenty and an earful. Oh well.

Speaking of foreigner service, I returned to Outer Banks, NC, to find that 30% of the people working there were from Eastern Europe or Russia. That was a tough one to reconcile fully. The island is thankfully still the strip of heaven that I remember. A lot of new construction, but nothing gaudy or corporate, aside from an out of place Applebees and Outback. Because OBX is a sliver less than a mile wide and is a hurricane front line, it’s resisted the Myrtle Beach treatment. Almost all of the new stuff is welcome – a new bar/club with a concert stage, a few more grocery stores, and 5 Guys. 5 Guys is a hamburger joint that would capsize every fastfood place in my world if it opened up in Houston. Put simply, the burger patties themselves aren’t unbelievable, but the whole package is. Toppings that outdo a picnic in terms of freshness. Fries that you douse in vinegar (I can’t articulate how big a draw this was for me). One “small” burger will leave you in need of a wheelchair. If you ever see one, make the move.

Had to counteract those burgers somehow, so I continued my (unfortunate) marathon training while out on the island. If you weren’t aware, the marathon’s back, despite how the inaugural one went. DC’s Marine Corps marathon on Halloween Sunday and the Houston one in mid-January. Thank the wife for the second one. She decided that the running needed to serve a higher purpose than my misery, so she had us registered for Team-In-Training, a group that prepares amateurs for endurance events in exchange for cancer-related fundraising. Wifey’ll be paying a rather high price, in that she’s signed up for Houston’s half-marathon (she’s never run before). Anyway, a nugget from my OBX running – even if you’re not in Houston’s swamp-like atmosphere, jogging 11 miles in the sun without water isn’t the best idea in the world. That disaster led to a pre-hurricane-esque run on CVS’ water/gatorade supply later.

Only other mentionables from the NYC/OBX trips: seeing a car with bumper stickers for Grateful Dead….Phish….and O.A.R. Sure enough, they were no older than 19. One of these things is not like the other…Hit a wedding in VA and got a classic: the groom involuntarily struggled and failed to repeat “to be your faithful husband…by not being able to get in the “faithful” part on to separate tries. This sits with (outdoor ceremony, self-written vows that became spontaneously inspired) “Jasan, it’s easy to love you on a day like this” in my all-timers. A funny development in our days of technology: all the upper class people huddling like hobos on the floor at airports so they can plug in their laptops.

On the music front, I fell into a re-discovery of Bruce Hornsby; realized he’s ten times the artist I ever realized. Completely went past me that he’s close with guys like the Dead and Floyd. Saw a fantastic show from Paul Simon (The Boxer nearly broke me, it was so good). Only movie that I really enjoyed was Ricky Bobby (“I’m all jacked up on Mountain Dew!!!”), though I have to say that Devil Wears Prada isn’t a bad choice for a bullet to take on a date night. Fairly painless way to make sure you can go see Jackass 2.

So that’s just about it for my summer. I hope to get back to more regular posting again, and hope that all 3 of you will be here to read them. I’m going to try and leave more of the sports stuff on the Fox blog if I can. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to go grab the just-released Arrest Development Season 3 DVD set and enjoy a nice evening with the Bluths.