Cash bar

For those of you still lacking for New Year’s Eve plans, I give you the following: The Applebee’s at 50th and Broadway has a New Year’s package which offers, for the sensible price of $150 a head, a three course meal (including choice of entree: “Honey Grilled Chicken, House Sirloin or Delicious Salmon”) and open bar from 8 to 11pm.     A DJ will be spinning festive music (although hopefully none so adventurous as may distract anyone from enjoying their Delicious Salmon) from 8pm to 1am.  And, my favorite part, ”Cash bar available from 11pm until . . . ?”  That’s right, Applebee’s is cheekily suggesting that its patrons will be so uproarious in welcoming 2008 that it would be unwise to set limits on how late they can stay and continue to pay for their drinks.  This is not a night for boundaries; this is a night when Mixed Grill Vegetables and Mashed Potatoes, normally $1.50 a la carte, will be flung wantonly in front of Applebee’s guests as part of an all-inclusive bacchanal.  At the same time, I can’t help supposing that the silencing of the DJ at 1am might serve as a guidepost for when Ma Applebee’s gotham regent will send the revelers packing, turning them over to the care of the bar in the lobby of the Marriott Marquis, just a few blocks south.  It must be quite misfortunate to have to work the New Year’s Eve shift at Applebee’s, and perhaps the refusal of the manager to commit to a specific last call time represents a bedraggled, Gethsemanean wish that the House Sirloin and vodka tonics his partiers consume will leave them so besotted and worn out that by 12:35 he can start vacuuming the carpet.  That would certainly be my hope.              And if that’s not enough, you can return, starting at 8am the next morning, to toss off your hangover at the Applebee’s New Year’s Day Brunch.  This one will only set you back $30 a person, a price which makes them considerably, albeit understandingly, more stingy with the alcohol: each attendee is entitled to “One Complimentary Bloody Mary, Mimosa or Champagne.”  It is true that describing this one drink as “complimentary” invites the inquiry of whether in the cosmic scheme of things you’re actually paying $30 for a plate of eggs while Applebee’s is simultaneously throwing in some OJ and Mum’s on the house.  But there is an echo of the previous night’s recklessness in the promise that the meal will be “[s]erved with unlimited coffee, tea, and juice.” (emphasis mine).  That sentence strikes me rather ominously, and conjures tortuous images of being waterboarded with coffee by a maniacally chipper waitress.  In any event, the brunch is a buffet, and it does go until 3 in the afternoon, so although you’re stuck with one drink, if you walk out of there unsatisfied it will be your own fault.      

Wait

A few weeks before Thanksgiving I was out at lunch with a couple coworkers.  My friend revealed that he does not care for Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.  I was flabbergasted, almost spitting out the avocado chunks from my Pret A Manger salad as I blurted “But that show is . . . one of the best things about America.”  

 

I was touched by the sincere depth of my own love for it.  My in-laws, aware of this affection, got me a Wait, Wait quiz show book as a Christmas stocking stuffer.  They drove us back to Brooklyn after our traditional holiday ‘burbs fest, and helped out with a few things around the still-very-much-a-work-in-progress-apartment.  I hope they were not in any way offended by seeing that, upon arriving back home, near my first order of business was putting the Wait, Wait book straight in the bathroom reading basket.  This was no denigration of the gift, but merely its natural and perfect home.  

Sucking the fun out of everything

I came across the concept of Ignosticism while trolling through wikipedia this week, and found it intriguing.  Based on my understanding, which is nothing more than superficial and is based solely on the linked article, ignostics observe that it’s difficult to figure out whether the proposition that “God exists” is true or not before first defining what you mean by “God” in the first place.  If the definition you come up with is not suspectible to falsification (or, to put it another way, the evaluation of whether it has the characteristic of, how you say, truthiness), then the concept is meaningless, whatever poetic/imaginary value it may have for its user.  Or, to put it daintily, “I have no idea what you mean when you say ‘God’, but who gives a fuck anyway?”

. . . .

 I take in funny stuff quite a bit, and, upon reflection, decided that if I were to rate my own funniness on a 1-10 scale, I’d give it a 3.  Maybe 3.5 if my caffeine or alcohol levels are calibrated just right.  I’m not being modest — I know plenty of 1s, but I also know a ton of 7s and 8s — people who very consistently can be funny–not limited by format, whether it’s written, extemporaneous, behavioral, whatever.  I’m very happy for these people, because being funny comes with a certain ease and inevitability for them, not with hesitancy and deliberation, as it does for me; nor is it, as it is for me, quite so frequently borne of and twinged with a certain bit of ethically-motivated cruelty.  For example, in my last improv class, I several times made use of 9-11 as a punch line/theme, not because I think terrorism is inherently funny, but out of a disgusted reaction to Bush’s nationalization of a specific historical, tragic event as PR fuel for the fait accompli of invading Iraq, and then Rudy Giuliani’s incessant invocation of it both to make himself rich, and  to try to win the GOP nomination (his use of it for the latter purpose has been tempered somewhat since being called out on it; now he refers to “being tested in a time of crisis” or some other such nonsense as code for the same).  I was, and am, so repulsed by this distortion and appropriation that I decided to express my disgust by treating “9-11″ with the same flippancy, by using it in the same talismanic way, that they did, and do, in order to underscore the extent to which they have profaned it.  I repeat:  my way of getting back at Bush for Iraq and Rudy just for being a dick is to make 9-11 jokes in an improv class in front of 8 other people.  How am I not Time Magazine’s Person of the Year?

. . . .

Partially because it seems to me that surprise is an ineliminable element of the funny, I think that laughter/humor (and this is, once again, without ANY research or knowledge–not even wikipedia to indemnify me for the inaccuracies and ignorances I’m about to relate) must have evolved out of situations where ancient, pre-human types (or maybe full-on humans, I’m not a doctor, ok?) would accidentally scare each other: Ogg would come in from hunting late one night and Ugg would think he’s a predator, and so Ugg would go into fight-or-flight mode, but then would feel a rush of relief upon the recognition that it’s not a wolf but just good old, lovable Ogg.  The immediacy of the relief would cause a kind of nervous hiccup, which became laughter.  Because humor is usually in some way derived from the surprise you get when, although you were expecting the world to be as X, you are instead suddenly presented with information that it is Y (or at least some subset of it is), and appreciate the contrast between yourself-perceiving-X, and yourself-perceiving-Y.  You think about that, next time you witness hilarity ensuing!  Next week, on Mr. Wizard, we learn how to turn water into a gas, and why that made your parents stop loving each other when you were ten.

Yeah, bitching about your weight is just the right way to resume posting

I hate blog posts that start with an apology for not having posted in a while.  I will not apologize: since moving into a new apartment, we have not had internet access at home, and I don’t want to do this on my work computer, so I have to resort to the occasional visit to kinkos to handle my business, which has apparently included matters of higher priority than updating this thing.  Whatever. 

I will take a few moments of precious, $0.30 a minute kinkos time, however, to grouse about not being in shape:  since moving and since the weather has gotten cold, I have not been to the gym, or even gone running for a few weeks.  Last night, after returning to our apartment from a Middle Eastern place where I had a very filling dinner, I found it fit to polish off the cold leftovers from the night before while sitting on the couch watching a DVD of Flight of the Conchords.  I’ve caught myself drawing strange solace from my memory of a line from some ancient Perfect Strangers episode where Cousin Larry is putting on weight and his paramour, Jennifer, consoles him by offhandedly commenting “A little tummy on a man is cute.”  Consequently, I have decided to change my name from Billy to Captain Fatness.  I’ve earned this designation, and will wear it proudly, at least until after Christmas when I buy myself some new running shoes.