Shawn Stories

2008-03-16T01:35:00.002-04:00

We interrupt this Shawn Story to bring you this breaking news. We are getting reports of, and I want to make sure I have this correct… an explosion, yes an explosion… in the oft discussed Molar # 2. We’re going live now to our correspondent in the field.

That’s right Brock, we can now confirm that there has been in fact been a very large, very painful explosion in Molar #2. Witnesses say that for the past year, all has been calm with this tooth and in fact we have been getting reports that Shawn was beginning to believe that perhaps the tide had turned in its tale of woe, but it appears now that the tooth problems are back, and in a major way.

Reliable sources tell us that on Sunday, March 9 Shawn went to bed with what some people here say was a “mild headache,” and then neighbors say he woke on Monday morning to a pain that was apparently intolerable.

“Um, yeah, I never thought this could happen to this kinda guy. He’s always so quiet and I never heard nothing from him. But like, you never know, you know? One day you could be enjoying a Slurpee with no problem and the next day, wham! A cold diet coke is enough to bring you to tears. I really can’t believe it. I mean, if this can happen to him, what about me? I got kids, you know?”

And Brock, we’re now being told that on Wednesday Shawn had reached his tipping point of pain and broke down and went to the dentist. But, and this cannot yet be confirmed, he apparently did not go to the same dentist who caused this problem so many months ago, but to a new dentist recommended by none other than his current boyfriend, Mason!

However, that dentist was stumped and Shawn was sent to an “endodontist,” which we now understand is a dentist that focuses solely on root canals. While there, Shawn learned that his former dentist had in fact not killed all of the bacteria lying in wait in the dark recesses of his tooth, and that it was only a matter of time before this kind of pain would reappear.

But Brock, I’ve heard from a number of people on the ground here that even more shocking than the fact that Shawn is yet again in agony because of Molar #2, but that also, upon leaving the endodontist’s office he was presented with a bill of One Thousand, Seven Hundred Dollars. That’s right, if you put seventeen one hundred dollar bills side by side, that would be equal to the amount Shawn now owes on molar #2. I, uh, I have to tell you Brock, I’ve been doing this for, well, for years now, and I can honestly say I’ve never, I’ve… never, I just, seventeen hundred dollars?! I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say that while this will be a difficult hill for Shawn to climb, uh, we know he can do it and we’re all behind him. Back to you Brock.

Thank you, Silda. Our hearts and prayers are… what? I’m sorry?

Excuse me, this just in…really? No. I can’t believe it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry I have to be the one to share this with you, and I can… I can barely believe it myself… but it appears that, yes, we can now confirm, Shawn’s bedbugs have returned. That’s right, the bedbugs have returned! What appeared to be a few innocent flea bites on his ankles were apparently the work of his old friend the bedbug. Elliot, what can you tell us?

Well Brock, this is what we know. Shawn woke up a week ago with a few seemingly innocuous bites on his back and that while he thought it was possible that the bedbugs had returned, he didn’t think it very likely. After all, he had done everything he was supposed to do for some time now, and there had been no sign of them for well over a year.

But Brock, sources tell us those bites are actually the work of what is believed to be a pack of bedbugs hiding somewhere in his bedroom. Witnesses say that right now as we speak, with his tooth throbbing, Shawn is taking all of his clothing to the laundry mat, spraying his stuffed animals and pillows with some cancerous causing materials and awaiting the arrival of an exterminator to start the process of eradicating these evil, evil creatures from his room. His downstairs neighbor had this to say.

“I did not think that the bedbugs I brought to this building from being so filthy and disgusting would make their way to Shawn’s apartment. I honestly thought that the curry I cooked from dusk to dawn would keep them dizzy so that they couldn’t migrate from one apartment to the other. If he likes, one of the ten of us who live in this humble, one bedroom apartment directly downstairs from him can help him move his furniture to clean behind it? It is the least we can do. And please, tell him, if he needs some curry, to go to my store, Ali’s House of Curry and Grime.”

Brock, I will keep you as up to date as I can on this developing story, but as you can imagine, details are itchy, er I mean, sketchy. Back to you.

Thank you Elliot. And finally tonight, we bring you the harrowing tale of how one disc in a spine full of discs can wreak havoc on one man’s life. Cindy McCain is here to tell us that story. Cindy?

Brock, I’m sure you can relate when I say that back pain is no laughing matter. Ha ha. We’ve all had our aches in the morning, but how do you know when something is more serious than the everyday stiffness one gets from being caged in a Vietnamese prison for five years? Well, incredibly, this story also involves Shawn, and it began about a month ago when he began his weekend by throwing the windows open and giving his apartment a thorough cleaning.

After scrubbing every surface, and shining every fixture, he began the final task of mopping the hardwood floors throughout his apartment. All seemed fine until, he says, something in his chest seemed sore.

“I didn’t think anything of it really, just that maybe I had worked out at the gym too hard the day before. Cuz, you know, I’m hot. But by the time I was done with the floor, I was glad it was clean because I was in so much pain I had to lie on it.”

Shawn had experienced what is known in the shady world of chiropracty as “a slipped” or “herniated” disc, wherein the gelatinous material between the vertebrae in your spine seeps out and squeezes a few nerves in the surrounding area. The resulting sensation varies from person to person, but one thing is for sure; it is not pleasant. Pain radiates from one place, then another, as the nerve attempts to untangle itself from the jelly like material, and your fingers sometimes go numb.

Then, as all the other muscles in your back try to compensate for the muscles that the nerve is screwing up, your entire back seizes up and you can’t turn your head, look up, look down, or perform any variation of oral sex on your partner or partners. It is a terrible, brutal thing to watch and I hope that none of you have to. Brock?

Thank you Cindy. And what, if any, treatment is there for this horrible condition?

Well, treatments vary but Shawn’s doctor gave him a series of cortisone injections, followed by a steroid that allows the muscles to relax into their natural position, but also causes significant water weight gain. In fact, some nearby relatives of Shawn have said that it looks as if Shawn is carrying a small bowling ball where his abs used to be, though I’m sure they wouldn’t say that to his face. I’ve been told that he hasn’t been to the gym in five weeks – and counting – and that it shows. Brock?

Thank you. It must be terrible, awful really, for Shawn to have to go through all of these things at a time when he thought everything was going so well. I know if I were his friend, I would be sure to be extra supportive of him during these difficult times, and go out of my way to make certain that he knows he is my most favorite person in this wide, wide world. Or at the very least, I would give him a handy.

We now return you to your regular television program, already in progress.

Having a Ball

2007-10-18T00:21:00.001-04:00

Oh readers. Oh fair lovers of my prose, I can’t imagine the pangs of withdrawal you’ve been suffering, the litany of despair you’ve been enduring while I was gallivanting around all summer. There I was tripping the light fantastic in the most exclusive haunts on the eastern seaboard while you, poor readers, were trolling the internet for entertainment like Lindsay on the bathroom floor scouring for remnants of blow. Save for one hot spell, we had great weather up here this year, and I took full advantage of it. I traversed the coast like a pixie, leaving droppings of cheer and humor wherever I went. And all the while you darlings met each new day with the hope that the sunrise brought with it another Shawn Story, only to watch the night fall with your prayers unanswered. I feel your pain, I do. It cuts me to the quick. But good news! Your wait is finally over. (I told you it was coming, negative nancies!)

Before jumping into my newest adventure, a quick update on all things Shawn. Everything… EVERYTHING… is working! I know I’ve just cursed it all, but my internet is great, my dvr is recording and playing away (if you’re not watching Mad Men you must) and there hasn’t been a bedbug in over a year. (Everyone knock your wood please.) There were no blackouts, no cell phone outages and no mysterious electronics failures. You might be saying to yourself “Well no WONDER he hasn’t written in so long; nothing is happening.”

On the contrary, this has been a summer chock full of Shawn Stories, and I’ll share them all with you in due time. But today’s post (and I warn you ADD types now, it’s going to be long) is what I like to call a Shawn Story Classic. Many of you may have heard the tale of woe I’m about to share with you, but I encourage you to read on because if you HAVE heard the story it was certainly after I’d had a few drinks and I probably left stuff out.

Picture it. Chelsea. Circa 2004. It’s Spring time. It’s dawn. Birds are chirping, young lovers are embracing and your beloved author lies deep in blissful slumber, dreams of Justin Timberlake making their way through his psyche. The boyfriend-at-the-time is lying next to me, and all is right with the world. As is often the case, your hero awakens with the urge to urinate and slowly he rolls over, stands up and plods to the bathroom. Half a step later, he is doubled over in pain.

“Self,” I think, “this is not good.” As I’m not entirely awake yet, I have difficulty pinpointing the cause of the pain at first, and assume it is a cramp from having to pee so badly. I take another step, and am quite nearly on the floor due to the excruciating spasm of pain making its way through my stomach. “Self,” I think, “this is really not good.”

I hobble to the door, quite unable to manage a normal stance, pull the door open ever so quietly so as not to awaken the clueless, er, I mean, slumbering boyfriend-at-the-time, close the door, flip on the hall light and let out a deep, elongated “Fuuuuuccccck.”

Save for my underwear (some very cute Calvin Klein tighty whities that cling in all the right places) I am naked. (Control yourselves.) I try to pinpoint the pain which is difficult, because like Paris going to jail, it’s everywhere. I poke around my chest; nope, all seems normal. Fearing the worst, I try to locate my appendix, but having retained only the plot of the Matthew Modine vehicle “Gross Anatomy” from my high school anatomy class I’m woefully unqualified to make such a diagnosis. Regardless, the pain is not centered in my abdomen; indeed, it’s lower. And to the right.

With no small amount of trepidation, I pull down the CK tighty whities to examine… down there. Normally, what I’m about to say would be a good thing, but in this case it was quite the opposite. You see, there was a LOT to investigate. So much in fact, that it became painfully and instantaneously obvious to me that my right testicle had ballooned to quite possibly four times its normal size. Again, usually I wouldn’t complain, but as this was accompanied by severe bouts of pain coursing through my stomach, I quickly determined that something was amiss.

No longer worried about disturbing boyfriend-at-the-time, I turned, opened the door as loudly as possible, and said in the calmest, most rational voice I could muster, “Hal, I think I need to go to the hospital.” After a few minutes of confusion on his part and frustration on mine (I may have screamed “It’s the size of a FUCKING BASEBALL, what do you mean does it hurt?!” but I can’t confirm that) we were on our way to lovely St. Vincent’s hospital in Greenwich Village.

On the way to the hospital, I thought it would be prudent to call my office and inform them that it was likely I wouldn’t be in. Of course you can’t drop a bomb like that without your co-worker asking what the problem is, so as politely and discreetly as I could I informed him that something in my right testicle had caused it to blow up like Britney’s back fat. (Ok, I’m done with the pop culture references.) For a moment all was silent, and then he said the words no one ever wants to hear in such a situation: “Let me take you off speaker phone.” Yes, the entire office had just been informed that I had a grapefruit where once there was a walnut. Or something like that. After my boss shouted “Is he walking in circles?” I hung up and made my way to the ER.

I’ve since learned that if you’re ever going to the emergency room for a non life-threatening situation, it’s best to call your primary care physician first. He/she usually knows someone at the ER and they can get you right in. (See, I entertain AND educate.) As it was, when I arrived at the ER it was painfully clear to me that this was going to be quite a long wait.

For those non-New Yorkers out there, St. Vincent’s Hospital is the southern most hospital in Manhattan yet it’s actually a few miles north of the bottom of the island. What that means is that every whacked out starving person, every coke’d up stock broker and every tweaking tranny between the Statue of Liberty and 14th Street goes to St. Vincent’s when they need to see a doctor fast. As you can imagine, there were quite a few people in line ahead of me.

Upon entering the waiting room at St. Vincent’s, two things become painfully clear. The first is that everyone in there has been there a really, really long time. The second is that there is neither hide nor hair of any person of authority. There is a person with a clipboard on a stool and that’s it. You are to walk up to this person, tell them your affliction, they take your temperature and pulse, and you cop a seat (if you’re lucky enough to get one.) The person managing the stool that morning was the cutest, kindest little old lady volunteer candy striper you ever did see. Although she wasn’t wearing a uniform, you could tell she believed her job to be the most important one there, and while I don’t know about that, she was probably the most qualified person to do it. She was so patient, with even the most difficult cracked out people, that when I got to her I felt almost dirty explaining to her what was wrong with me.

“My right testicle is swollen and in extreme pain” I said.

"Oh dear. Name?”

I have to admit, I was expecting a little more sympathy, but she clinically and expertly took my vitals and the like, then told me to take a seat and that a nurse would see me soon. As she clearly had a lot of time on her hands, I was sure the word “soon” was relative.

Some time later, I was called into triage where I got to tell the nurse the whole sordid story again: I woke up, my right testicle was thrice it’s normal size. (Thrice?! Nice!) I was in extreme pain and discomfort. No it didn’t hurt to urinate. No I was not having unsafe sex with random people. Yes I could touch it, but really didn’t want to. Yes, the swelling was visible. So on and so on.

Meanwhile, boyfriend-at-the-time had been waiting with me patiently on what was his one day off. Upon returning from the triage nurse, he informed me that he had to go, as he had lots of things to get done. Although my life wasn’t in any immediate danger, his suddenly was. I appreciate that he had one day off a week, but when your boyfriend of five years’ testicle explodes, you make the sacrifice. You just do. I let him know in no uncertain terms that my position was that he would either stay there, or suffer the consequences. I wasn’t sure what those were at the time, but I’m certain they were dire. He capitulated, and we sat. And waited for many, many hours.

I was then called into the actual ER by a somewhat handsome, but obviously exhausted, doctor. He brought me into a private room, shut the door and asked what the problem seemed to be. “Well,” I said, “I woke up this morning…” and told him the story. He didn’t seem too impressed, or even too interested really, and he casually asked me to remove my pants and CK tighty whities. Under normal circumstances, a guy that attractive asking me to remove my pants would have been given a very stiff reception, but there was none of that on this day. And really, everything was eclipsed by the ball anyway.

McFeely then decides that there’s only one way to determine what’s wrong with my poor teste, and starts kneading it through his thumb and forefinger. Ladies, let me tell you, don’t ever do this to your man, even when his ball is its normal size. It’s just not comfortable. A gentle cupping sure, or even a firm grab and tug is sometimes nice. But taking it and squeezing it between two rigid, cold fingers. Not so much.

McFeelys mc-feeling me pretty much caused the reaction you would expect, to which he replied “Oh that hurts?” Well Captain Obvious, if the tears didn’t give it away the scream should have. He removed his glove and decided that he could not determine anything until I had an ultrasound taken; once my family jewels had been properly photographed, he would be able to make a diagnosis and we would be on the road to recovery.

And that is a road I shall take you down next week. I promise, it’s worth the wait. In the meantime, gently take your testicles (or your boyfriend’s testicles) in your hand and tell them that you love them, and appreciate them for what they are. They have a way of letting you know when they’re unhappy.

Kisses.

2007-09-27T14:04:00.000-04:00

No Excuses

2007-06-07T23:03:00.000-04:00

Dude, I suck. Well, some of you knew that already, but seriously bro I’m a total loser. Two months! It’s been TWO MONTHS since I’ve been able to sit down in front of my computer and put together a Shawn Story worthy of my readers’ time. While I would love to come up with some fantastic excuse (like Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire finally came out of their closets and we had two months of trans-global three ways as we bounced to and from Spider man premieres) but sadly neither that, nor any other reason I could come up with could pardon my absence from the blogosphere. All I can say is I’ve been living the Shawn Story to end all Shawn Stories, and while I’d love to regale you all with it, I’m afraid I’m just a little too bitter about everything right now to objectively, and humorously, share it with you. Someday I’ll put it all down in an incredibly long entry, but for now I have to forgo that little missive until such time as I can think about it without getting angry. In the meantime, a quick update.

My dvr is… WORKING! Even on weekends! I can hardly believe it myself, but so far there’s been almost six uninterrupted weeks of television viewing pleasure. My teeth are… still screwed up. The gum by our old friend Molar #2 decided to grow over the crown rather than around it and that created a food trap bigger than Oprah. It quickly became infected, so I had to have emergency gum surgery. (The words emergency, gum and surgery should never be in the same sentence together.) There is nothing quite like sitting in a dental chair and hearing the pleasant “whheeer” of the drill all the while knowing it’s shredding your gumline to pieces.

Other than that, hold onto your seats because I actually have some good news for once. With the exception $1,000, I am officially debt free, and that will be taken care of with my fiscal year end bonus. I’d like to use that for an actual vacation (Phoenix anyone?!) but I will finally be free of the burden I’ve been carrying for six years and that will be a vacation in and of itself. And, in March I got a big, fat freakin raise so I decided that it was time for my ushering gig to come to an end. Not only am I excited to have my weekends back, but I am overjoyed to put a little space between the ex’s world and mine. Christ, there were pictures of him hanging up in the theatre; it was more than any normal person could bear and I’m glad to be done with it.

In other news, I’m kinda/sorta seeing a boy. He’s a total hottie, but he and his friends read my blog so I can’t say too much about him lest he learn all my dirty secrets. I will say that my friends who have met him or seen me with him are baffled at how disgustingly romantic we are. “Nauseating,” “barf inducing” and “sickeningly sweet” are just some of the colorful adjectives used to describe us. Who knew that despite everything that has happened over the past year I still had an affectionate bone left in my body? (Shut it dirty minds.) But that’s all I’m going to say about it, except that if he’s reading this GET A MYSPACE PAGE already so I can show people what you look like!

So campers, you are now completely up to date. See how quickly I can encapsulate two months? Hopefully that will be the longest stretch between entries, but I have a serious travel bug that needs some taking care of so I may be off to who knows where sometime soon.

In honor of the end of my ushering days I’d like to share with you my two favorite Shawn Ushering Stories. As I’m sure we all remember from our high school/college days, the service industry is a miserable existence. Whether it’s retail, fast food or waiting tables, people treat you like crap. The same can be said for the cultured masses who attend Broadway, only they’ve paid $100 or more for their ticket and they’re going to be damn sure you know it.

When I first started ushering, I was at a blissfully short show called Doubt. This show was a four person play that took place in a parochial school, so all in all it was very conversational and very, very quiet. On day one of my ushering gig, as I was nervously escorting patrons to their seats and fielding the same two questions over and over (where are the bathrooms and what time does the show let out), whom should I happen to seat but my former dentist, Dr. Thaw. (You may recall my having mentioned Dr. Thaw previously. I still swear, that is her real name.) My molar #2 would not be where it is today if it weren’t for sweet Dr. Thaw, and she holds a special place in my heart, but despite that I politely showed her to her seat and went on with my ushering duties.

The lights dimmed, the show started and I plopped down with my gameboy for an hour and a half of video game bliss. Two minutes later, Dr. Thaw runs to the back of the house holding her stomach and says to me “I need a bathroom. Fast.” I point her in the direction of the women’s room, which is unfortunately for her all the way across the theatre. I have to give her credit, she tried to make it on time. But alas, she did not. Just as the audience was settling in to the cadence of the show, a not so subtle “Blehhhggccchh” rang out from the last row. Luckily, she managed to avoid hitting anyone else with her projectile vomit, but there was what appeared to be the remains of a pasta dish on the floor, and the acrid smell we all know and love emanating throughout the theatre. She ralfed a couple more times, then made to the women’s room, where she sat for the rest of the very, very quiet show, barfing every few minutes. I called her the next morning to make sure she was still alive, and I was surprised to hear her as chipper as ever. “Bad fish” she says to me, and then has the chutzpah to say “You’re due for a cleaning.” As if.

Sadly, Doubt closed and I moved on to a show that I’m not allowed to name because my office is now representing the tour, but it was a horrible piece of theatre that I had to endure for many, many months. It got particularly bad when a certain American Idol loser joined the cast. Every piece of South Jersey trash decided to trek into the city to see their favorite long-haired reality show reject, and I could start a whole new blog with the stunts they pulled. But my absolute favorite was a family of four I like to call The TransFatties. Now before you all pinky commies start shouting “WEIGHTIST!” at me, the TransFatties redefined the gluttonous American we all have come to know and love. I’m sorry, but they were really, really… out of shape and had obviously spent way too much time enjoying Costco’s free samples. Just to be clear, I don’t begrudge someone their right to eat as much as they want, but there is a time and a place for everything, and no matter how overweight you may be, you cannot honestly believe that a Broadway theatre is an appropriate venue for you to whip out your bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

And yet, there they were, ensconced in their seats and chowing down on some Colonel Sanders. Surprisingly, they were shocked… SHOCKED I tell you… to learn that not only were they not allowed to consume their finger lickin good snacks, but that they ALSO weren’t allowed to even have food IN the theatre. Mr. TransFatty, blustered out some line about how he guessed things were different in “the city,” and went to throw his chicken away. Never one to waste food, Mrs. TransFatty had the nerve to ask if I could hold the food for her so that they could pick it up on the way out. I was on the early shift that day and as far as I was concerned whatever happened after I left wasn’t my problem, so I told Mrs. TransFatty that the usher Mary who reads tickets at the door would have it waiting for them. Poor Mary is 100 or so years old and can’t walk, and to this day I don’t know how it turned out, but something tells me she ate every last piece of that fried goodness.

Well readers, I could go on and on… seriously, I could… but like every good fashionista I know less is more. Until next time, I hope you all are enjoying your springtime weather and that you eat your KFC in the privacy of your own home.

Fortune's Fool

2007-03-31T00:46:00.000-04:00

Well dear readers, once again I apologize for the delay in updating my blog. It has been a hell of a month. My DVR isn’t working on the weekends now, of course, but other than that my humble abode is doing ok. Oh wait, there is that whole broken window thing. (Another story, another time.)

Today’s blog is a little more personal than most, so if you’re in the mood for a glimpse of the inner workings of Shawn read on. If not, see you next time around. And those of you who keep nagging about the length of my blogs, no one said you had to read it all at once, but there is a certain flow to my stories and I don’t think you really get the full effect unless you commit to reading the whole thing. Just my two cents. And I’ll try to keep em shorter, ok?
Off we go.

Picture it. New York. 2000. Your beloved writer is living in Brooklyn, and had recently broken up with a boyfriend who he had also dated in college. For some reason, I invite this ex – we’ll call him Hank – to come visit me in New York. And for some reason, Hank decided (and I let him) bring the boy he’s seeing at the time, some nubile singer/actor type. Yes, there seem to be a few trends at work here, but I was not entirely over Hank at the time and while I should have never agreed to let twink come to New York, I did because I wanted Hank to be happy.

You can imagine my angst. Here I am longing for Hank, while the hottie boyfriend gets to cuddle with him and make obnoxious lovey dovey noises and all of that crap. In fact, I actually walked in on twink performing an unmentionable act on Hank. (It’s unmentionable because twink’s mouth was full at the time.) That was awkward.

Well, needless to say I was an emotional wreck, and to my friends’ credit they rallied around me in my hour of need so that I wouldn’t have to endure the new lovers’ bliss on my own.

On the final night of Hank’s visit, we all decided to go to a famous Chinese restaurant in the Village. All of my friends volunteered to go with me and support me in my hour of need, so we were a table of ten. I was surrounded by people who loved me, people who I loved and a person who I wanted to love, and it was a beautiful portrait of the infinite varieties of how we can be intertwined with the most amazing of people in the most random of ways.

Everyone but Hank and his twink knew what I was suffering through, so there were constant pats on the my knee, winks and smiles to comfort me, and I felt very touched. Still, I had an absolute volatile pounding in my heart and I had to make frequent bathroom trips to mute the tears (and of course pee.)

The meal came and went, delicious I might add, and along came the standard fortune cookies. Suddenly, for some inexplicable reason (I’m thinking the free wine), the cookies became the most important thing in the world to me. I was convinced that my cookie would contain the answers to my questions about Hank, about how we should be together, and about how we could grow to live in gorgeous harmonic bliss for years to come. (Apparently I was anticipating a novel in my cookie.)

The tray with the cookies was set down in front of us, and I eyed each one carefully, hoping to receive a message or vibe from a specific cookie, saying “I’m the one, pick me.” I decided on the one that spoke to me the most, and my compatriots and I reached in and the unwrapping began.

The usual pithy fortunes ensued. “Love thyself and others will love you,” or “One’s neighbors are not always ones friends,” and so on. I paraphrase of course, but it seemed that night that everyone’s fortune were strangely in sync with where the readers happened to be in their lives. Everyone’s, even Hank’s, whose fortune said “Love blossoms in the most usual of places,” seemed dead on.

I was therefore convinced that my cookie held my entire future in its crispy golden goodness, that the core of my existence was printed on a crappy piece of paper baked into a cookie. It would tell me how to proceed, how to start our lives over, fresh and new, and how to finally move on.

I trembled as I picked it up and slowly tore open the cellophane wrapper. Careful not to break the cookie, I tugged at the seam of the wrapper until it popped open. I held it in my hand, caressing it for a moment longer than what would be considered normal, and thought about what I was holding, what the rest of my life would be like. That cookie contained my destiny and I wanted to cherish the moment. Everyone stared at me as I held my cookie, clearly wondering what the hell I was doing.

“All right,” I thought, “here we go.” I cracked open the cookie, slowly like Charlie with his Wonka Bar, and as it snapped in half I was holding my breath, anxiously awaiting the words that would put me on the path to peace.

The cookie, however, had altogether other plans. Dear readers, the cookie, that tasty treat I had entrusted my future to, was empty. No fortune whatsoever. No words of wisdom, no advice, no answers to anything, not even some lousy lottery numbers.

And suddenly it was clear to me; that WAS my future. Empty.

I excused myself to the restroom and cried and cried and cried. I was so confused and lost and frightened and I had put all my faith in that damn cookie. My friend Beth knocked on the door, clearly clued in to the fact that something was going on, and talked me down from my ridiculous precipice. It didn’t take her too long to convince me that the whole thing was completely, freakishly random, and I went back to that table with my head held high as I possibly could.

Hank and I are still great friends, I’ve gotten some fabulous fortune cookies since then, and I know that I will still be able to approach every table with my head held proudly high, ready to once again rip open that fortune cookie with abandon, no matter what the results may be.

I hope you all internet denizens are well.

Gotta go Gotta go Gotta go Right Now

2007-03-07T22:49:00.000-05:00

It’s been way too long since I blogged last, so a quick update. My dvr isn’t working again, my #2 molar hurts and there’s a strange smell coming from the kitchen sink. Everything is normal! Thanks for all the comments on my last post; I love the stories, so keep ‘em coming.

All right campers, when last I left you I had just popped a few vicodin and gone into a haze of blissful oblivion. Despite having to change the gauze every few hours, and practicing a fun game of “put the ice on one side, put the ice on the other side,” I was comfortably ensconced in my cozy living room. John stayed the night, just in case I bled out or something, and he also loaned me a few movies from his absurd dvd collection. (I encourage everyone to take drugs and watch Amalee.) Save for one small problem, I would have had the ideal recuperative rest. But because this is a Shawn Story, you can guess it wasn’t that easy.

As most of you know, I have what can only be described as a minuscule bladder. In college my friend Nina tracked it, and a single can of diet coke led me on 8 trips to the bathroom within an hour. Movies are pretty much a waste of time for me; I have to avoid all liquids for hours before hand or I spend the entire evening climbing over people and running back and forth to the bathroom. During my recuperative period I was told to drink lots of water, so I was already anticipating a few late night emergency trips to the loo. Unfortunately, matters in my nether region became… complicated.

Back in those college days I wasn’t much of a player, despite my devastating good looks. Nonetheless there I was one day standing innocently in front of a urinal when it became painfully clear to me that something was wrong. Peeing felt like razor blades being forced through my unit. (All the boys are cringing right now.) Shocked, I consulted a few of my more experienced friends, whom all agreed that I had managed to contract a “social disease.” Being a college student I had no money, so off to the free clinic I went.

The Dr. assigned to me was a good southern Christian woman, who clearly had decided that I needed to be punished for my sins. She told me that she was going to perform some sort of “test,” and that while we wouldn’t have definitive results for a week, she would assume the test would come back positive and treat me with antibiotics. The “test,” she explained, would be somewhat “painful.” When someone is talking about your johnson, you don’t want to ever hear the word “painful,” especially when that person is a born again Christian who looks forward to the End Of Days. She went on to say that although even some FSU football players had cried during the exam, it would be very quick. She popped on rubber gloves, ordered me to drop my shorts and unveiled the longest Qtip I have ever seen.

“No,” I’m thinking.

Ohhh yes, dear readers, it went… there. And was swirled around a bit for good measure. (Cue the cringing again.) She plopped the swab into a baggie and said I could go. I hobbled home, feeling punished by the universe.

Until, that is, the test came back negative! I didn’t have one of those diseases after all. “But Shawn,” you ask, “what was it then?” Well, the evangelist doctor explained that it could have been some other infection, or even some very acidic juice (as in the orange juice with my vodkas), but that if the symptoms were gone, I shouldn’t worry, and thank god. So I didn’t worry.

In the years since then, the razor blade peeing, accompanied by the constant need to go, has come back to haunt me at least two or three times a year. As an official adult, I have health insurance, so a few years ago I decided to go to a urologist, whom I like to call Dr. PeePee. You could tell this guy was the real deal because he had a really thick Polish accent. I figured if anyone knew about suffering, it was a Pole.

Dr. PeePee felt around… down there, and around… inside there and then he fingered the problem: Acute Prostatitis. (Even my prostate is cute!) Apparently, I have an incurable malady of the prostate that results in painful urination, the constant urge to go followed by extreme bouts of what most of us know to be “pee shyness.” Oh joy. I guess I was happy to have an answer, but I was not so thrilled that it was incurable.

It is possible, Dr. PeePee explained, to treat the symptoms. One method is a medication that makes all those feelings of having to urinate go away, but also happens to turn your pee a delightful shade of rust. The other method is through what the doctor called a “sitzba.” I had never heard of a “sitzba” before, but I told Dr. PeePee I would get one right away. He looked at me strangely, and sent me on my way with a prescription of the rusty pee pill.

As the pharmacist took my scrip, I asked her if she might know where I could get one of these “sitsbas.”

“A sitsba?” she asked.

“Yes, a sitsba.”

“A sitz… bath?” she asked.

“Um, I guess,” I said, resigned to the fact that she had no idea what I was talking about.

She looked at my prescription, looked up and me and started laughing uncontrollably. She explained that “sitba” was Dr. PeePee’s Polish way of saying “Sit Bath,” which meant sitting in a tub of hot water for as long as you can stand it. Who knew? I mean, I wasn’t even aware there were positions other than sitting that one could bathe in, unless there are two people in the tub, and even then your options are limited.

So it was to be a lifetime of funky looking pee and long baths for me. I guess it could be worse right?

Yes, it can. Try a raging flare up of prostatitis during your recuperation from a wisdom tooth extraction. My bladder was already on overdrive from all the water I was drinking; now in my drugged up state, it felt like I had to pee ALL THE TIME. I would wake up from some trippy dream to realize that I seriously had to go, only to stumble to the bathroom and realize I had been tricked by my prostate once again. And when I actually could pee, it felt like my old friend the razor blade.

To make matters worse, as if they could be, I was so loopy I couldn’t really stand to pee like most boys, so I had to sit like a stupid girl. There I would sit, waiting for the razor blades, while holding ice to my face or changing gauze. I definitely fell asleep a few times. Once a bag of ice even slipped out of hand, and fell clumsily onto my boys. Few can imagine the surprise of a heavy bag of ice slamming into your bits and pieces, and I encourage you not to try.

While the holes where my teeth used to be eventually healed, this latest case of prostatitis has been the most stubborn one I’ve had in some time. Dr. PeePee has even gone so far as to prescribe six weeks worth of Cipro to try and nuke whatever infection is going on this time. At least I’m safe if we’re hit with anthrax. Meanwhile, I wait for the day when I can pee normally again. You’ll know it has come when you hear a really loud, long “Aaaaahhh.”

Until then dear readers, take care of your prostates and enjoy your sitbas. I know I will.

2007-02-17T11:01:00.000-05:00

All right, all right campers! You have been clamoring for weeks now for me to update my blog, and I am happy to report that I am FINALLY able to satisfy your craving for a Shawn Story. Old Man Winter may have arrived last week in the form of three inches of the white stuff, but I’m all warm inside knowing there are millions of teeming fans endlessly clicking “refresh,” eagerly anticipating a new entry. So without further ado…

As you all know, I had the pleasure of having some wisdom teeth extracted a couple of weeks ago. Millions before me have had their wisdom teeth removed, and I’m sure by dental standards mine went as routinely as can be expected, but this wouldn’t be a Shawn Story if there weren’t some snafus.

On the eve of the surgery I hit the grocery store to stock up on supplies. I don’t know what’s available in other locales, but New York has a very limited variety of these commodities, so I pretty much had vanilla, chocolate or strawberry something. Despite my refined tastes, I also picked up some powdered mashed potatoes. My momma raised me right and I am happy to say that until this point in my life I have never had the pleasure of powdered mashed potatoes, but I am here to tell you that Betty Crocker saved my life. They were filling, warm and comforting and I highly recommend them to anyone who wants something soft and mushy in their mouth.

As it’s not such a great idea to traverse the streets of New York in an anesthesia induced haze on one’s own, my friend John graciously offered to see me to and from the surgeon’s office on the day of the surgery. We arrived at 12 noon on the dot, and surprisingly I was ushered in shortly thereafter. As I settled into the chair, Dr. K came in, grabbed my chart and said, “So what are we doing today?”

I was a little surprised that I had to tell HIM why I was there, but once his memory was refreshed, he was raring to go. Careful readers will recall that I was to have the top, left and right wisdom teeth removed, as well as an examination of the #2 molar on the right hand side. While Dr. K went through the list of all the calamities that were about to take place in my mouth, the Science Experiment of an assistant was laying out his barbarous implements of destruction. She then declared that I shouldn’t worry, everything was going to be fine. Well, if you can’t trust chubby Science Experiment, who can you trust?

Dr. K slid the IV expertly into my “extraordinary vein” (why, thank you Dr.) and said that in a few minutes I would feel very relaxed. The last thing I remember before crashing is wondering how much of the mixture running through my blood was made of the ketamine sitting on the counter, and then I was gone.

When I woke up, Dr. K was telling me that everything went very well and Science Experiment was cleaning up the now bloodied tray of instruments. I couldn’t really feel much except for an odd pressure in the back of my mouth. Science Experiment informed that this was perfectly normal, and I really wasn’t in much of a position to argue so I went with it.

As luck would have it, Science Experiment and I happen to live in the same neighborhood, and she decided now would be a great time to rub her bouncy belly and tell me how the noise of our neighbors’ Harleys made her feel “all wet inside.” Well, yuck. I smiled meekly as she helped me out of the chair and took me to the “recovery area.” The “recovery area” is a room about the size of a smallish bathroom, with no door but a bed built into the wall, and is conveniently placed in front of a window that looks into the lobby. Thus, when one is recovering from whatever atrocities have been done in the torture chambers nearby, all the anxious patients waiting outside can see you. I don’t think this is very good planning, but what do I know. As Science Experiment led me to the bed, my knee slammed right into the corner of it with a resounding “crack” and Science Experiment laughed and said “Everybody DOES that,” as if the thought of warning people never actually occurred to her.

I chilled out for a bit, and then was brought to the nearby reception area, where John joined me. The receptionist assigned to the task of talking me through the post-op protocols was a bespectacled, smarmy woman who had a habit of treating every object she touched as if it were made of the most fragile china.

She placed two small envelopes of gauze in front of me and told me when to change them and how, what to eat and when, and when to put ice on my face. I gave her the phone number for the pharmacy by my house and asked if she could call in the prescription for pain medicine so I wouldn’t have to wait, and she obligingly passed it off to a nurse, who made the call. She then reached into her printer, pulled out a piece of paper, gingerly brought it to me and placed it so delicately in front of me you would have thought it was the Magna Carta itself. She pushed her glasses down to the base of her nose and stared at me like I was her son and she had just caught me picking my nose.

I find it incredibly rude to present a bill to someone just as they’re coming out from under anesthesia, but maybe I’m naïve that way. Regardless, that’s what she had done, and after a few quiet seconds, I said something like “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“How do you want to take care of this today?”

Resigned to the fact that I would have to deal with this in a bit of a stupor, I took the bill and read through it. Of course the requisite sticker shock ensued, but upon careful review it became clear to me that something was amiss.

My more devoted readers will recall that my dentist had agreed to pay a portion of the bill because all of this was his fault. However, there was no mention of any adjustment on the actual bill. I mentioned as intelligibly as possible to the receptionist that there was supposed to be a portion of the bill taken care of. You would have thought I said “There is feces on your chin.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” she curtly replied.

“Dr. F was supposed to talk to Dr. K about it,” I mumbled.

“Again, I don’t know anything about that. I’ll have to ask Dr. K.” And with that, she popped out of her chair and bounced happily to the back of the office. Clearly this was a woman who loved sharing bad news, but then who better to work in a dental surgeon’s office? Even in my drug haze I realized that this was not going to end the way I wanted it to unless I took matters into my own hands. I asked John to pass me my cell phone and I called Dr. F.

Dr F., conveniently, was not in. Dr. K came out of whatever procedure he was in the middle of to inform me that Dr. F had in fact never even contacted him about my case, which was mildly surprising to me given that he was examining the #2 molar at the recommendation of Dr. F. I knew if I paid the bill in full I would never see my money again, so after some hemming and hawing on Dr. K’s part, and some quick thinking on my part, he agreed to take a copy of my credit card and let me sort it all out later.

It was at this moment that the nurse phoning in my prescription came out from around the other side of the desk and said in the most exacerbated voice I’ve ever heard, “Well I ain’t never heard THAT before.”

Receptionist popped up like a prairie dog from around the corner and said, “What?” Man, she really got off on bad news.

“The pharmacist said I can’t phone in the scrip. He say I got to give it to the patient and he got to bring it in to be filled.”Shocked, but clearly elated, Receptionist bellowed a hearty “What!?” and I put my head on my desk and sighed. Say it with me readers; this would not have happened in Chelsea.

“He said I can’t fill it over the phone and he hung up on me!””I can’t believe it!” Receptionist said with glee.

Dr K., upon hearing all of this, decided THIS was something he could ball up and be a man about, and said “Give me the number.” He called in the scrip, and then told me I should never go to that pharmacy again. I thanked Sherlock for his opinion, and John and I left.

John expertly hailed a cab, and off we went to Queens. It was upon arriving at the pharmacy that the Novocain began to wear off. As we trudged toward the back, prescriptions in hand (just in case), it became immediately clear to me that the five people in line before me weren’t getting their meds anytime soon, and thus I probably wouldn’t either. I was prepared to have a hissy, but held off.

Surprise of all surprises, Rashid the Pharmacist had not filled my prescription, despite Dr. K calling it in. So I dropped it off and mentally decided that Rashid had 20 minutes to get this done before I went postal and began throwing bloody wads of gauze at his turban. I’m not sure if it was 20 minutes or not, but when I hit the end of my rope and my pain threshold, I got back in line. Luckily Rashid had just put my precious pills in a bottle and called my name. John got me home, and I promptly entered into a Vicodin induced Jimmy Hendrix Experience. That’s some fun stuff.

Well readers, that’s it for today. I’ve been told that my blog, not unlike so many other things in my life, is too long so I’m going to wrap it up here. In my next installment, coming soon (I promise), you’ll learn more about me than you ever wanted to know and how my recovery was made even more difficult by a little friend that visits during the most inconvenient times. Until then, be well. And send Ricky Martin an email thanking him for giving George Bush the finger. Oooh, that’s livin la vida loca baby.

2007-01-23T22:19:00.000-05:00

Hello dear readers. I hope you’re all doing well and that the Internet’s Best Blog finds you happy. One of my two New Year’s Resolutions was to blog more often; as you can see, I’ve not done so well with that one. If it’s any consolation, I’ve not done so well with the other resolution either, which was to use all of my vacation days at work instead of letting them go to waste again. (NO, I do not get them “bought out” at the end of the year.) I should have taken Martin Luther King day off last week, but didn’t plan far enough in advance. I guess it’s not that big a deal, but it would have been nice to sleep in. Anyway, hopefully this is the last time I have to apologize for the delay in dropping in on my corner of the world wide web.

I don’t know how things are going for you, but so far 2007 has been a bust. So much for high hopes. A week into the new year, the very same tooth I had a root canal on in good ole ‘06 began throbbing. As the whole point of a root canal is to abate throbbing pain, or any other sensation, it didn’t take me long to decide that this was an unfortunate turn of events. So off to Dr. Fine I went.

After he fiddled with the tooth (which shall henceforth be known as Bain) and took a quick picture of it, he decided he couldn’t determine what’s wrong with it because, as it turns out, there is a wisdom tooth blocking the camera’s view. “If we want to figure out what’s really going on,” he says, “you should go to an oral surgeon. That’s the gold standard determination.” I don’t know much about teeth, but whenever the words “surgeon” and “gold standard” are mentioned in the same sentence, I don know it ain’t gonna be cheap. However, given the choice between debt and pain, I guess I’ll choose debt. At least there is a possible remedy for the debt; like George Bush’s bungled war, the pain could go on forever.

My dentist recommended a surgeon, and off I went. Apparently being an oral surgeon is good business, because that was one busy office. It was so busy, in fact, that I waited ninety minutes past my scheduled appointment to be seen. Finally a woman who looked like a science experiment gone horribly wrong escorted me to a room and took a panoramic X-ray of my mouth, which I have to admit was pretty cool. I was then shown to the waiting room in the back of the office. To get there, one has to walk by three operating rooms, which appeared to be the training grounds for future soldiers at Guantanamo. Each room had a patient in a chair, lying back, mouth agape, eyes staring straight ahead as if to say, “I’m not here, I’m not in pain,” while two pairs of hands darted in and out of their mouths, holding sharp bloodied tools.

“Self,” I thought, “this is not good.” When Dr. Klein introduced himself, I was a bit taken aback by dollops of blood splattered across his chest, but I bucked up and put on my best game face. Klein smiled as if to say “they didn’t feel a thing” and proceeded to tell me that there was one of three things wrong with Bain; A) Nothing, B) It’s fractured, or C) It’s infected. Unfortunately, the only way to find out is to take out the wisdom tooth next to it, and while the gum is cut open take a look and see what’s going on.

“If it’s fractured, we’ll pull it, if it’s infected, we’ll clean it and if nothing is wrong, we’ll close it up and send you home. If it’s B or C, it will be a little painful and/or costly.” For all you dentists out there, I recommend when relaying bad news to your patient, you do so with a modicum of grace.

“So,” I say, “I guess while we’re taking out the one wisdom tooth blocking the bad tooth, we should consider taking out any other wisdom teeth, right?”

“Well,” Klein sighed, “we can take out the other top one no problem, but the one on the bottom… that one has a nerve wrapped around it. I’ve never said this to anyone, but never, never have that tooth pulled. Unless you can be unconscious for a week after. Ha ha.” In my mind, an oral surgeon telling you to leave a tooth alone is like a waiter being honest with you about the fish of the day; you should listen. So I agreed to leave that tooth alone.

That still leaves the two wisdom teeth on top that have to be ripped out, and as Klein was explaining the procedure to me and the various options available to Bain, I couldn’t help but see dollar signs floating above my head and then popping like little bubbles right in front of me.

“Ok, so two wisdom teeth will cost about how much,” I ask.

“$400 each, plus another $400 if you want to be put under by the anesthesiologist.”
”If? Book him.”

“Ok, now for the other tooth, well it depends on what we find. If it’s fractured we’ll pull it and that’s about $400. If it’s infected, we’ll clean it out and that’s a little pricey, about $1500.”

Once again, in the span of two hours, I went from being a hair’s breath away from a debt free existence to another six or seven months of working two jobs.

Dear 2007: I am not impressed.

“So, call your dentist and then we’ll talk,” Klein said, “but either way, go ahead and schedule the extractions.” The science experiment and I scheduled the appointment for February 2nd and I went on my way.

My conversation with my dentist was very brief, but it is time like these that I’m happy to be from the South. See, in the South everyone knows you attract more flies with honey. Some situations call for absolute sweetness; New Yorkers in general aren’t capable of sweetness. So I dug down to my roots, called my dentist and played the nice guy. Pay attention meanies, you’re about to learn something.

Start off with a little flattery.

“Gee Dr. F, I don’t know what to do. I would really appreciate your advice, because I know you and trust you. Should I go through with this?”

“Absolutely,” he says.

Then suck up a little.

“Well, you know, I mean I’m sure you think it’s best, but we don’t even know what we’re going to find when he’s in there. When all is said and done, this could cost $2500… before I commit to that, I would really appreciate it if you could assure me that this is the best way to proceed. If you say it is, then I guess I will go ahead and do it.”

“Yes, I think you should do it,” he says.

And now, ever so delicately, drop the bomb

“But gosh, it’s so expensive. I mean, geez, I really am shocked at the cost because when you filed this tooth down after I said not to, you said you would cover the cost of fixing it if something went wrong, but this is a significant expense, and I wouldn’t want either of us to have to absorb it.”

Silence.

“Let me call you back,” he says.

Five minutes later, Dr. F called and said he felt horrible about all of this and that if I could cover the costs of extracting the wisdom teeth, he would cover the costs associated with saving Bain.

And now, the coup de grace; play humble.

“Oh my god, Dr. F. I can’t ask that of you.”

“No, I insist.”

“Thank you. Really, thank you.”

I figure, all in all this will cost me about $1200 for the wisdom teeth, which is a little easier to swallow. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than the alternative. However, consider yourselves warned dear readers, you will hear all about my wisdom teeth extraction. Experience dictates it will not be fun.

In other news, my dvr is not working properly again. Now it freezes whenever I watch The Colbert Report. (Maybe my dvr is Republican.) I haven’t had the strength to call Time Warner yet. And get your Nan and rice out, because it appears that Curry-Fest 2007 has begun. Last night the smell was so bitter it woke me up out of a dead sleep at 4:00am. Who cooks curry at 4:00am you ask? Cab drivers.

And finally, I learned a valuable lesson today and I thought I would share. See how giving I am? MSNBC had an article about how some scientists discovered that if you microwave your sponges for two minutes, it kills 99% of the bacteria living on them. “Great!” I thought, “I’m going to go home and sanitize my sponges.” Hey, we take our excitement where we can get it.

What they failed to mention, and for some reason what I didn’t even consider, was that the scientists were not talking about the sponges with the scrubby green side. The results were less than spectacular, although there were fireworks. I assure you, I’m not this dumb normally. In fact, I’m very bright, which is a good thing, because it took some quick thinking to toss the carousel of flaming sponges into the sink. It’s now three hours later and my eyes are still stinging from the acrid smell of burning scrub brush.

Moral of the story: for the sake of your olfactory senses, please just buy new sponges. Be well.

The Saga Continues

2007-01-03T22:22:00.000-05:00

Howdy all. I hope the millions of you out there who enjoy my blog had a great holiday season. I, of course, celebrated the birth of my Lord and Savior in style, but that was way back on November 11th. (Leonardo’s birthday. Duh.) I also had an awesome Christmas and New Years by doing what I enjoy most. (Well, second most.) I drank, slept, played video games, hung out with friends and tooled around the city. FOR 11 DAYS! It freakin rocked.

In other news, guess whose DVR is not working again. No, not Condoleeza Rice’s, mine. Color me surprised. The latest technician to visit literally looked at the cable box, turned it on, turned it off and said “I don’t know what’s wrong” and left. He was so absurdly stupid it wasn’t worth even discussing and I let him leave. I did manage to get into a screaming match with some moron at customer service, and now I have another technician coming on Saturday. Joy.

So when last we spoke, I had just regaled you with my story of how putting a plastic cover on a mattress can lead you to insanity. Sadly, that’s not where the bed bug story ends. That would be far too easy.

The day after I confirmed that it was indeed bed bugs biting me and not some kinky trick, I called my landlord to let him know. I figured it was A) important to tell him because bedbugs can travel from apartment to apartment easier than the smell of curry (which we all know is pretty easy) and B) I needed him to schedule the exterminator. New York City law requires that landlords provide an exterminator once a month, which ours does, but there is no requirement that they actually tell you when one is coming, so I usually miss him. This time I wanted to make an appointment.

This is how our conversation went.

Your Fearless Hero: “Hi Larry, it’s Shawn in Apartment 21.”

Larry the Landlord: “Sigh. Hi Shawn, how are you?” (He hates when I call him because he knows something is wrong.)

Your Fearless Hero: “I’m ok, Larry, but I wanted to let you know that I’ve just discovered that I have bedbugs in my apartment.”

Larry the Landlord: “Oh Jesus! That’s horrible. I can’t believe it!”

Your Fearless Hero: “I know, so can you schedule an exterminator to come out?”

Larry the Landlord: “Absolutely, let me call him and call you back.”

Pretty fair result as far as I was concerned. Sadly, the story merely begins here.

The exterminator arrived the next day. Let’s call him Exterminator A. Exterminator A could barely fit through my door, or the narrow hallway that goes through my apartment. (A foyer if you will.) He squeezed his portly way through, plopped out on the other side, whipped out his can of chemicals and started spraying. While he sprayed, the following conversation ensued.

Exterminator A: “Roaches, huh?”

Your Fearless Hero: “Uh, no. Bedbugs.”

Exterminator A: “Bedbugs!? Jesus, nobody told me that. I don’t got the right chemicals for bedbugs.”

Your Fearless Hero: “Oh.”

Exterminator A: “I may as well stop now, cuz this crap here ain’t gonna do no good. This here’s for roaches.” (Stops spraying.)
Your Fearless Hero: “Uh huh.”

Exterminator A: “You got roaches?”

Your Fearless Hero: “No.”

Exterminator A: “All right, can you sign this to show I was here at least?”

Your Fearless Hero: “Sure.” (Signs paper.)

Exterminator A: “See yous later.”

This new wrinkle did not make me happy. All the websites I read made it very clear that you should spray early and often, because the eggs can hatch within a few days and then the whole process has to start all over. So now I was a day behind the eight ball. I’ll let you imagine the phone call I made to Larry the Landlord, since most of it is not suitable for children under the age of 13.

The following day, another exterminator arrived. For shits and giggles, let’s call him Exterminator B. And just so you know, Exterminator B is really, really smokin’ hot. Like Brad Pitt hot, but dumber, which I think makes him even hotter.

Exterminator B: “Hi. Bedbugs, huh?”

Your Fearless Hero, quivering: “Yes.”

Exterminator B: “Yeah. I’ve been to this building about 50 times or so because of bedbugs.”

Your Fearless Hero: “Uhh, really?”

Exterminator B: “Oh yeah. It started about a year ago. The guy upstairs from you? He bought a bed off ebay. Who buys a bed off ebay? And most the people in this building, they don’t let me in. Cuz you know, they’re afraid I’m immigration.”

So not only was the whole bedbug thing a recurring issue and not only did my landlord act all horrified at the situation and not only did I have neighbors who were more concerned about Homeland Security than cleanliness, but the whole thing started because Stompy McStomper bought a nasty ass bed off of ebay! The ignominy of it all.

Exterminator B: “Hey, you mind if I take my shirt off?”

All right, I can dream can’t I?

Exterminator B then proceeds to spray chemicals over most of the obvious areas one would think to spray when combating pernicious little fuckers like bedbugs; floor boards, closets, dark corners and so on. He sprayed around my bed a little and by all the windows. Then he took his pants off. Oops, sorry, wrong movie.

Exterminator B: “So you know you gotta have someone out here next week right?”

Your Fearless Hero: “Yeah, I know, I heard that. Will it be you?” I was, you know, just curious.

Exterminator B: “Dunno, but if you want I can tell them you request me since I got knowledge about the case.”

Your Fearless Hero: “Yeah, that’d be cool. I’d rather have someone who knows what’s going on.”

Exterminator B: “Yeah, sure thing. Oh and hey, I got this really tight spot on my inner thigh. Would you mind rubbing it down for me?”

Your Fearless Hero: “No problem.”

End scene.

The week between Exterminator B’s first visit and what I hoped to be his second visit was interminable. I vacuumed every day when I got home from work, and scrubbed everything I could think of within an inch of its life. Twice. I have never seen a cleaner apartment. And while I was enjoying some small comfort from the fact that I was no longer being bitten, my friends and coworkers… and you know who you are… decided that the best approach to take with me during this delicate time was to mock me.

True there are those of you out there who chose not to make fun of me during my crisis, but some of your fellow compatriots were not so kind and decided it would be funny to make the whole situation fodder for their twisted sense of humor. I lost count of how many times I heard “Don’t let the bed bugs bite.” Or, “why are you scratching so much? Got crabs?” Or, “do they bite… down there?” And my personal favorite, “I can’t believe they went after those skinny legs.” The horror, the horror. But you are all forgiven, because that’s the kind of guy I am.

At long last, enter the third, and final, exterminator a week later. Exterminator C was sadly not Exterminator B. Sorry to disappoint you all, but Exterminator C was a husky, middle aged man with more hair in his nose than on his head.

Exterminator C, coughing: “Aw geez, bedbugs huh? I’m sorry man. Hey you mind if I smoke?”

Your Fearless Hero: “Yeah, bedbugs. I’d prefer if you didn’t smoke actually. Sorry.”

Exterminater C, begrudgingly placing cigarettes back in pocket and coughing: “That’s all right, I understand.”

Exterminator C then does a quick perusal of my apartment, and applauds me for how thorough I’ve been. “Most peoples, they just throw the bed away and get a new one, (cough) but that don’t do no good cuz the bedbugs, they just get into that one too. They should be called EverywhereBugs because they can live everywheres. Ha ha ha ha ha (cough) (cough) (cough) (cough) (cough) Sheesh, you got your clothes in vacuum sealed bags. (cough) I gotta get me some of those. You know, these bedbugs, they’re really making a comeback. (cough) The city only lets us use this one chemical. Back in the old days, we was allowed to use (cough) DDT.”

Your Fearless Hero: “That was a long time ago, right?”

Exterminator C: (cough) “Oy yeah, (cough) that was back in the 70’s. I was spraying that stuff all the time. (cough) I’ve been doing this (cough) since (cough) I was 12. It was my father’s business (cough) and now I’m takin it over, and (cough) my son, he’s next in line, only he don’t want to do it. (cough) He says he doesn’t like bein around chemicals all day. (cough) Pussy. (cough).”

Your Fearless Hero, eyeing Exterminator C spraying chemicals all over the floor: “These chemicals are… safe now though, right?”

Exterminator C: “This stuff here? (cough) Oh yeah, perfectly safe. (cough) I’ve gotten this stuff in my mouth, in my hair (cough) and even once on my YOU KNOW WHAT. Don’t ask. Hahahahaha (cough) (cough) (cough) (cough).”

Your Fearless Hero, backing away: “Oh, ok.”

Exterminator C: “(cough) So the thing is, with these bedbugs, you gotta be thorough, you know what I mean? (cough) You got to spray everything you can think of. (cough) You mind if I do that?”

Your Fearless Hero pauses, then agrees.

Imagine, if you will, an elephant happily sunbathing in a gentle pond. Imagine said elephant plops his long trunk down into the pond, snorts up a huge gulp of water, lifts his snout up high into the air, and sprays the water far and wide. Thus you have a fairly accurate picture if how Exterminator C approached my bedbug problem.

He opened my dressers and sprayed inside those. He opened my closets and sprayed the floors and walls. He sprayed my bathroom, my toilet, my tub, the area under my tub, the tv stand, the computer desk, the bookshelf, and then to my surprise the bed, plastic sheets and all.

Exterminator C: (cough) “Might as well get them where they live.”

Your Fearless Hero: “Um, it’ll be ok to sleep on that right?”

Exterminator C: “Just let it dry for a day. Maybe two. (cough)”

Then he started on the walls. Anywhere that even appeared to have a crawl-able space was blasted with whatever chemical the city has deemed safe to employ in the attempt to kill bedbugs.

Your Fearless Hero, standing on one side of kitchen doorframe: “Wow, you sprayed a lot.”

Exterminator C, on the other side of the doorframe.: “I’m almost done. I just gotta do the kitchen. I’ll start with this doorframe here.”

Until this point in my life, I have happily been able to say that while I’ve had many things sprayed in my face, cancerous bug spray has not been one of them. Unfortunately, as your Your Fearless Hero stood shocked and awed, Exterminator C lifted his sprayer, pointed it at the door frame and went to town, without waiting until Your Fearless Hero could get out of the way. I was covered, head to toe, in a fine coating of whatever it was Exterminator C was blanketing the rest of my apartment with.

Your Fearless Hero: “Uh, um, I, shit, I’m in your way.”Exterminator C: (cough) “Eh, don’t worry, this shit, it’s pansy ass. It won’t hurt you. Just don’t swallow it.”

Your Fearless Hero, to self: “I’ve heard that before.”

Exterminator C: “Huh?”

Your Fearless Hero: “Nothing. Um, so you’re done now right?”

Exterminator C: “Yep, all wrapped up here. So, you know, if they come back, just call us. But this should pretty much kill anything that can walk. (cough) This stuff here, you’ll be lucky if your little tadpoles will be swimming tonight, you know what I mean? (cough) Anywayz, just sign this piece of paper that shows I’m here, and I’ll be (cough) outta your hair. You gotta nice place here. Once you get rid of these bedbugs, it’ll be a nice little home for you and your girlfriend.”

Your Fearless Hero: “Yeah, she loves it here. Thanks. Here you go.”

Exterminator C: “Thanks man. Call us if you need us. (cough).”

Exterminator C was barely out the door when I slammed the door shut, ripped off my poisonous clothing and booked it to the shower where I stood under the hottest water I could stand and scrubbed every square inch of my body a la Silkwood. I threw the pants and the shirt away.

To Exterminator C’s credit, and knock on wood for me when you read this, I’ve not seen a bedbug since. I now have six toes, three testicles and a boil on my left knee, but I’ll be damned if I have any bedbugs.

I leave you, and this story, with a final thought. For the love of god, if someone you know or care about becomes afflicted with this horrible pestilence, please… please don’t say “Don’t let the bed bugs bite.” Seriously, it’s not funny. Or original.

Up next, apartment hunting in New York City. Until then, have fun sleeping tonight.

What's that itchy feeling?

2006-12-19T22:27:00.000-05:00

Well, once again I find myself in the awkward position of having to apologize to my legions of fans for the lengthy delay in updating my little corner of the internet. I know it’s no excuse, but I have been quite the busy beaver with two jobs, holiday shopping, working out and sleeping. Every once in a while I do something social which is nice. I’m beginning to forget what the New York bar scene is like, though I’m sure it’s the same botox’d faces I saw the last time I was out.

It seems we’re almost to the present day now with my blog! (It’s really not necessary to sigh in relief you know.) “But Shawn,” you’re saying, “if you’re out of Astoria adventures, what are you going to write about?” Well fear not beloved admirers, there are plenty of Shawn Stories out there. I haven’t been on this planet for thir ---, I mean twenty-five years for nothing. Besides, I’m sure Astoria will continue to provide fodder for my blog and just like the folks in line at Winn Dixie reading the National Enquirer, you’ll want to know.

Today’s story is a long one so I apologize in advance. I really need an editor who can help me focus on brevity. Less is more. (Or so countless dates have told me.) I’ll try to keep it short and sweet, like me, but you all know how long winded I can be. So shift your ass into its most comfy position and park it there.

Picture it. Astoria. Late Summer, 2006. I’ve now endured power outages, blistering heat, root canals, near fires, cable issues, phone issues, Ipod issues, the list goes on and on, as you all well know. There comes a point in ones life, you’d think, that you reach what some may call the breaking point, that special moment when you actually start listening to the voices in your head telling you to throw that plate across the kitchen or stomp on that absurdly expensive framed print of a heart wrapped in flowers your ex got you. Not that I would know, those are just examples. Late Summer, 2006 I hit that point.

I should start out by saying I love my bed. It’s been with me in 8 of my 9 apartments that I’ve had in New York, and it was given to me by a friend several years ago who was suddenly transferred by her job. She had only had it for two weeks, so I considered it new. Through thick and thin it’s been with me, a constant companion in a sea of change. Lovers come (sometimes on the bed!) and go, but this bed has been my rock. Sadly, at the end of summer, my bed fell victim to the insidious, pernicious Cimex lectularius, or as you and I know them, the household bed bug. They aren’t kidding when they say don’t let the bed bugs bite, because let me tell you, those suckers can bite.

A little history lesson for my avid readers. Bed bugs have been with man since, well, man was around. They are parasitic insects that feed off of the blood of you and me (or dogs if they absolutely have to, but they’re pretty picky eaters.) They live not only in beds but anywhere there is a crack, crevice, nook, cranny or hole. They often choose to live in beds because then they’re right at the source of their breakfast lunch and dinner, but they can travel up to seventy feet for a meal. They are nocturnal. They are flat and oval in shape until they feed, at which point their bodies engorge to four times its normal size, filled to the brim with our juicy blood. That word engorge really grosses you out doesn’t it? Me too.

Here’s where it gets scary. They can live up to a year… a YEAR… without eating. The female can lay up to 5 eggs a day, and if any of those end up being little girls, they too can lay five eggs a day. In a little over a month there can be twenty generations in your home. They are resistant to any chemical sprays that you can purchase over the counter. Spray the suckers directly with Raid and they’ll tip their hat good mornin’ to you, and saunter off with a smile on their face and a song in their heart. As far as I can tell, there’s no herbal concoction that will rid your home of these pests either. Once the bugs are there, you have entered a battle that will cost you a lot of money and countless sleepless nights.

I, of course, didn’t know I had bed bugs at first. There are a few telltale signs, like brown spots on your sheets (which is your dried blood), or a pungent odor in the room they inhabit, but I hadn’t really noticed either of those. After all, the curry pretty much covers up any other odor that might exist in my apartment. My discovery came in a much more traditional way; I had been eaten alive. I woke up one fine sunny day, anticipating the glorious work day ahead, and by the end of the evening I was a mass of itching, burning flesh. At first I thought I had contracted chicken pox because I was covered in all these little bumps, and I was actually a little happy about the possibility of missing a few days of work, but then I noticed something strange; the dots were all in neat little rows.

When bed bugs bite you, they do it three or four times in each feeding. First, they stick you with a numbing coagulant so that you don’t feel anything, and then they stick a tube in and commence their meal. When they’re full from that tap, they pause for a bit so that their bodies can expand to accommodate its new bounty and then they take a few steps and start the process again. By the fourth bite, their feast is over and they plop into an easy chair to watch the big game. It’s only the next day you discover you’ve been bitten.

I googled “bites in a row” or something like that, and came up with a website about bed bugs and how to identify them. I scanned my sheets and there were a few brown spots here and there, but they were pretty old sheets so I wasn’t sure if those were new brown spots or old brown spots. (Who knew how many brown spots there were on my sheets. Gross.) The website also said they molt, so you should look around for skins. I pulled my bed from against the wall, and my fears were confirmed. There on the floor were three or four dried up bed bug skins. Rather than freaking out, I calmly scooted the bed back in place and started my research on how to combat this little problem. The freaking out came soon after.

As noted before, these buggers can live just about anywhere. What that meant in terms of my apartment was that the hardwood floors, the dresser, the desk, the laundry hamper, the couch, the chair, the tv stand, the bookstand, the books, the cds, the clothes, the alarm clock, the radio, everything I owned had become a Hotel 6 for these nasty creatures. Commence the freaking out. It’s very difficult to look around you and consider that everything you own is now the domain of an insect that wants to suck your blood in your sleep. (I would imagine its about how Bill feels around Hillary.) The website I consulted recommended cleaning out anything under your bed and focusing on your room first.

Like many New Yorkers, the area under my bed is an extra closet. I had three of those nifty under the bed containers, shoe boxes of receipts, photo albums and other sundry items not worth mentioning here. With much gusto I dove into the “extra closet” to determine the extent of my infestation. As it turns out, this area of my apartment was Club Med for my bed bugs. I found them in my receipts. I found them in my Christmas ornaments. I found them in old greeting cards. In magazines. In old headshots. Basically, everywhere. They like really dark, dry places, which I had unwittingly supplied for them in abundance. I tossed a lot of stuff that day, and much of it was of great sentimental value.

I then bagged up every item of clothing I own and dropped it all off at the laundry mat. I figured I had to tell the people working there why I was washing a few large bags of clothing all at once, and they were very kind and said they would be careful with it all because they didn’t want any bedbugs getting to other people’s clothes. At least they had some common sense about it. I came back home, and got out the vacuum. Bed bugs hate vacuums. The website recommended vacuuming once, throwing out the bag, then vacuuming every day for a week because the eggs are covered in a sticky substance that prevents them from being sucked up; you have to wait until they’ve hatched to catch them..

I vacuumed every square inch of my room seven times in as many days. Take a moment and look around your room. Now imaging vacuuming everything. Everything. Seven times. I then went to bed bath and beyond and bought 20 gigantic ziploc bags to put my clothes in so that if the buggies ever came back, I wouldn’t have to spend the money to wash all my clothes again. I bought new sheets, new pillowcases and pillow protectors. Rather than throwing out the bed and bringing a new one into the apartment, the website recommended wrapping your current bed in plastic so that the ones in it will die (after a year) and so that no more can get in. Yes, like a child who can’t stop wetting his bed, my mattresses are now covered in plastic. Nothing says hot times like plastic mattress covers. “Uh, we can play slip’n’slide?”

Unfortunately for me, the plastic they provide for keeping mattresses dry isn’t really made to be air tight. It’s made to be a basic barrier, not a condom. I’d get the plastic on one side of the mattress, and it would rip on the other. I’d patch that hole with packing tape, and another would appear an inch away. The website also said that the plastic shouldn’t touch the floor, because the bugs can then just climb right up on it and into bed with you. The mattress covers made today are made to fit beds with those fluffy mattress pads. My bed does not have said pad. Thus, the mattress cover was far too big, and the extra plastic ended up on the floor. I had to stand my bed up on end and put shipping tape all around it so that the extra plastic wouldn’t fall to the floor. Of course in doing so, I ripped it about twenty times. What should have taken twenty minutes was a several hour process, because every time I moved, lifted, or shifted the bed, the plastic would rip.

This was about the time I hit the aforementioned breaking point. And that half of the story is saved for next week. Until then, don’t worry; that itchy sensation you feel is probably just psychosomatic. Probably.

What A Turkey

2006-12-04T23:35:00.000-05:00

Man, what a crazy time of year this is! Everyone has been so busy lately; the parties, the get togethers and reunions, the huge meals and the gallons of cocktails, not to mention the nationwide celebration of thanks. And that was just my birthday! I had a pretty delightful birthday this year. A very low key dinner, a few drinks and then home with my new Xbox. Relax possums, I didn’t buy the $400 Xbox 360, so those of you who are video game geeks can put it back in your pants. It’ll be some time before I can afford the 360, thus I settled on a gently used original Xbox for a mere $100.

I think this was money well spent, and quite the birthday present to myself. (One of two. If you have to ask what the other one was, you’re too young to be reading this.) I also picked up two new used games that have completely captivated me, which may also explain my lack of updating what USAToday will soon be calling The Best Blog of 2006. In the meantime, grab a cup of your favorite guilty pleasure, kick your feet up and read on.

Tonight I was going to write about the most recent, and most disturbing apartment story, but as so often happens, fate decided to intervene. When Thanksgiving was approaching I thought it would be nice to write an entry about all the things I’m thankful for, despite what a challenging year it’s been for me and so many people I know. (Seriously, 2006 sucked and I for one am glad it’s nearly over.) I woke up Thanksgiving morning and that plan was shot to shit.

Like most of America’s youth, I went to bed Thanksgiving-eve with visions of cranberry sauce and turkey breasts dancing in my head, which may very well be the first time I lay in bed thinking of breasts. See, if there’s one thing I cook well, it’s Thanksgiving dinner. I don’t know what it is, but I turn that shit out! My mashed potatoes, with their secret ingredient, are creamy and smooth, my turkey with its special basting cocktail melts in the mouth and we won’t even TALK about my pecan pie. I call it the Happy Ending.

I thought it would be a good idea to cook the pecan pie on Wednesday so I plopped in my cheesy holiday music cd, and dove in. All in all, it was a pretty normal pie baking experience, with one significant exception that would prove to be very important on Thursday. My oven is nowhere near true to temperature. I don’t know what temperature it thinks it is when I’ve set it to 350, but it was pretty far off because it took about 20 minutes longer to cook the pie than it should have. One would think that I would make a mental note of that for the next day when I had to time an entire meal based around how long it would take to cook a turkey breast, but one would be wrong.

On Wednesday night I had the most horrible case of insomnia. I figured it was either the nerves about all the work that had to happen the next day, all the caffeine I’d had, or just the excitement of good friends coming over to partake in my Thanksgiving blowout. At about 3:00 I’d had enough of tossing and turning in bed and dragged my pillows and blankie to the couch. Along the way, something registered deep in the bowels of my brain, but it wasn’t until much later that the import of this transient bit of information hit me. When I hopped off the bed, my feet landed on the floor and turned into blocks of ice. When I walked into the living room, I had to wrap my blankie around me to ward off the chill in the air. I should have thought, “Self, this is not good,” but I didn’t. I thought “the couch looks so good,” and promptly threw myself into its welcoming cushions, hoping for at least three or four hours of decent slumber.

At about 9 in the morning, I plied my eyes open to a new day, thought about all the work ahead of me and decided to go ahead and get started. First, and most important, was a shower to wash the cobwebs from my head. I plodded over to the closet, grabbed my cutest holiday-ish outfit and went into the bathroom. I always keep the window in the bathroom cracked to get a little fresh air in the apartment (you know, because of the curry) so I’m used to it being chilly. Chilly. Not arctic.

Still, I was so groggy, this didn’t really register and I opened the shower curtain, took my clothes off (calm yourselves) and turned on the water. I was so tired, though, I decided to bring out the big guns; it may have been 9 in the morning, but it was time for a diet coke. Something about the walk from the bathroom to the kitchen was… not right. I may have been in my birthday suit (not Prada), but judging by the amount of shrinkage taking place it was freezing in my living room. Yes ladies, shrinkage is not just a Seinfeld episode, it exists. I grabbed a diet coke and scurried back into the bathroom where a steamy shower was about to envelop me. Or so I thought.

Astute readers may have deduced by now that Apartment 21 had no heat or hot water, but this had not really occurred to me yet. Until I stuck my hand in the running water to test the temperature, the thought had never even crossed my mind. When my hand shot back in agony, it was clear; I was about to host four people in an apartment with no heat or hot water. Cursing, I dragged my sorry ass back into my bedroom and began the grueling process of getting dressed. There is nothing worse than feeling grimy and having to put clothes on without showering.

Then I picked up the phone and started dialing. First I called my super. Voicemail. Then I called my landlord. Voicemail. Then emergency voicemail. This was at 9:30 in the morning. It would be 7:30 that night before I heard from either of them. That emergency voicemail works very well obviously. Next, I called my friends to tell them the sorry news. I was seriously considering canceling the whole affair, but nothing could be more depressing, so I told them to bundle up and come on out. My friend Anthony came over right away so that I could run to the gym and shower.

Freshly showered, I ran home to start the cooking. Now I was behind schedule and we were going to have to push dinner back about an hour. When I got to my apartment the rest of the crew had arrived, and I greeted them all with apologies about the cold, and decided to go ahead and turn the oven on. It was way too soon to start cooking Judy (the name I gave to my turkey breast) but at least it would take the chill out of the air. And honestly, once we started seriously cooking, it was blazing hot in the apartment anyway.

As I only do any real cooking about once a year, my apartment is not really outfitted for big meals. Anthony had to bring over knives because, well, I don’t have any. Why spend $100 on a set of knives I’ll use once a year? My plan was to wash dishes as we went along, but clearly that was not going to work, so we kicked it old school and kept pots of water warming on the stove to wash dishes with. That worked surprisingly well, until such time as we actually needed the pots to cook with. All we could do at that point was pile them in the sink.

The hour before the turkey is ready, as I’m sure you know, is when things go nutso. The chef, in this case me, has to be the conductor of a carefully orchestrated machine. Things have to go on the stove and come off the stove, drinks have to start flowing and the table has to be set (because in New York your table is your counter space). In those fifty or so minutes, if you’re not helping, you’re in the way, so I put everyone to work. Some may call it bossy, I call it efficient.

At about 5:00, the last of the side dishes was done, Judy had been resting comfortably in her pan on the counter and the biscuits were golden brown. You can smell it can’t you. I grabbed one of the borrowed knives, picked a spot, and starting the carving. I’m not by any means a carving kind of person, but the knife slid in easily enough and I didn’t seem to do any major damage, so I went a little further. When the juices started pouring out, my stomach growled and I declared that Judy was a success.

But like her namesake Ms Garland, Judy was half-baked. It’s fine for a person to be half-baked. A turkey? Not so much. My heart sank, and I turned to the wide eyed crew of four, with their forks in hand, and said “Uh oh.” Imagine if you will for a moment you have chosen the best gift in the world for your boyfriend/girlfriend/
transgender domestic partner. They open it. They scream in joy. They cry. They laugh. And then, out of nowhere, a vulture flies into your house, snatches the present out of their hands and bolts out the window. Now imagine your loved one’s face. That is how my crew of friends appeared to me. Stricken. Shocked. Saddened. Bereft. “Fear not, this is fixable” I said. I pieced poor Judy back together as best I could, cranked up the oven and put her back in.

An hour and twenty minutes later my gang and I dug into a perfect turkey, and a bevy of lukewarm side dishes. Sure, we microwaved them, but mashies just aren’t the same when they’re not fresh out of the pot. The biscuits we won’t even discuss. My friends were great sports, and we all had second helpings, but I couldn’t help thinking that my meal was kind of like Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes; something was just not right. At least we all had a Happy Ending to look forward to, and it did not disappoint. The matter of the dishes was left until the hot water came back on, which was mercifully about 9:00 that night.

So that’s Thanksgiving 2006. Pretty damn apropos if you ask me. I hope that you and yours all had the most fantastic Thanksgiving ever. And because I think it’s important, I’m thankful for: my friends, my family, the health of those who are still healthy and the strength of those who aren’t so much, that there are only 777 days left of George W. Bush’s presidency and that I still live in a country where saying that won’t get me killed. So far.

Until next time, be well, and stop thinking of me naked scurrying around my apartment.

Who put the lights out?

2006-11-16T00:51:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone! Hope you’re enjoying my birthday week as much as I am. Don’t worry if you haven’t gotten me a present yet, there’s still plenty of time. Size seven shoe (or a Prada 6), size 29 waist, size small shirt, or extra small if you can find it. (Obviously my attempt to bulk up hasn’t been too successful.)

There isn’t much new to report this week, except that something really great happened at work. Sadly I can’t tell you about it because it’s confidential and my coworkers, like you, check my blog every five minutes to see if I’ve written another brilliant entry. But it was really excellent. If you want to know, email me.

Today’s entry won’t be new information to a lot of you, but I hope you’ll continue to read on just the same, if for nothing else then to hear my unique take on an absolutely absurd situation. And trust me when I say, it wouldn’t happen in Chelsea.

On July 11th, New York City issued a “heat wave” warning. For your reference, a heat wave is defined by New York as two or more consecutive days with temperatures of 95 degrees or higher. Or as we called it in Florida, a weekend. Quite honestly, the media makes a much bigger deal of the weather here than is ever required. Six inches of snow and there are five reporters “on the scene” showing you the exact moment when the flakes start coming down.

But of all the climates that run their course through this city, heat waves instill absolute panic. The news stations run up-to-the minute “heat index” reports, which use questionable science to determine the “feels like” temperature. As the heat index climbs, so does the hysteria. Don’t leave the house unless you absolutely have to. Avoid strenuous activities. Hydrate the pets. The one reminder they always fail to issue, however, is the most important; put on your freakin deodorant. Trust me, many many people need that urgent reminder, summer or not.

So as the dire predictions came pouring in (Heat Index of 115), residents of New York responded in the only way they could; they cranked up the air conditioners. Because the city is full of old, crappy buildings, very few people are blessed with central heat or air, meaning most apartments are cooled with window air conditioners which, as you know, are energy cows. No one thought to mention on their emergency reports that it may not be a good idea for everyone in the city to put their air conditioner on high.

Late on July 11th, Con Edison, the “power supplier” for the city, noticed that there was a severe power issue looming in the horizon. The subways, the air conditioners, the lights in Times Square and the fans pumping fresh air through the tunnels were all placing an extraordinary amount of stress on the system, and they had a choice. They could begin reducing voltage across the city, which basically means you get your lights and maybe your air conditioner, or they could completely black out one large neighborhood and divert their power to the rest of the city. Con Edison chose the latter and the lights in Northwest Queens, the place I so begrudgingly call home, went out. Conveniently, they chose not to inform the public of their grand scheme.

I woke up at 4am on the morning of July 12th covered in sweat. “Well, this sucks,” I thought, but I was confident that it was temporary. When the sun rose 3 hours later, and I still had no power, I was frustrated, but understanding. After all, I surely wasn’t the only one suffering. I ripped off my underwear (calm yourselves cheeky monkeys) and plodded into the bathroom to take a nice, refreshing cool shower. I open the curtain, turn the knob and… nothing. “Self,” I thought, “this is not good.” I turn the other knob, because, you know, it might work. And as expected, nothing. Choose the swear word… I probably said it. I stormed into my room and called my super, who informed me that in a completely non-heat related incident, the water main outside our building burst and that the repair people were on the way. So now I had no ac, I was a sweaty mess and I couldn’t shower.

Off to work I went, and trust me I was happy to do so. At least it was air conditioned. I’m sure I was pretty gamy by the time I arrived, and I certainly wasn’t in a good mood, but I settled in and tried to find out what was going on with the power. Con Ed was saying that perhaps 2,000 people were without power. I was a little suspicious about this estimate, because there are probably 2,000 people on my block alone, but I figured they knew what they were talking about. They were also saying that they were confident they would be able to restore power soon. I worked through the day, anxious to go home, shower and bask in my air conditioned glory.

What I saw when I got off the subway that evening scared the living shit out of me. The main street by my house, 30th Avenue, looked like a scene from a Tom Cruise action movie. Smoke was pouring out of manholes. Power lines were melting. People were dazed, walking around shirtless and sweaty. Children were sitting on curbs, desperate for shade and women were uselessly fanning themselves. Traffic lights were out and none of the drivers seemed to know how to deal with a four-way stop. There wasn’t a single police officer to be found. I walked down the street, accepting the harsh reality that I too would have no power. As I passed the grocery store that was shuttered, I heard to the right of me a loud “pffffhhhht” and then a “PHALOOM” just as a manhole cover ten feet away from me flew into the air, slammed into a car and smashed its window. Black, bilious smoke spewed forth from the hole in the ground, and people scattered. I crossed to the other side of the street and walked as fast as I could the rest of the way home. I should also mention that there wasn’t a single Con Ed crew around.

Outside my apartment, however, was a crew of guys working on the broken water main. This proved to be challenging, because the water main was under the sidewalk. They had to jackhammer the sidewalk away, dig a few feet and then fix whatever the problem was. I was going to offer the guys some cold water when I remembered that I had no water to give them, and the stuff in my fridge probably wasn’t very cold anymore. When I walked upstairs, I had a harrowing realization; I had left my windows open so that the apartment would be a little more hospitable when I got home. I’m on the second floor, over looking the sidewalk that was being jack hammered. I walked in my door, and knew right away that I was absolutely screwed. Everything in my living room was covered in a thin veneer of sidewalk dust. Most of my sensitive equipment (which is not a euphemism) is in a cabinet so it was ok, but my books, my furniture, my floor and my walls were completely coated. I walked into the kitchen and turned the faucet, just to see. Nope, no water.

So I had gone from feeling like I was living in a third world country to actually doing so. I walked into my bedroom, threw my stuff on my bed and thought about my options. I clearly couldn’t stay here, but I wasn’t sure where to go. I tried to call the only person I could think of, my ex, but guess what; my cell phone couldn’t get a signal. I packed a bag, and showed up at my old apartment hat in hand and smelling very ripe. He was of course incredibly gracious, and offered me a place to stay. Which wasn’t awkward at all.

On Day 3 of the blackout, Con Edison revised its earlier estimate of 2,000 people without power. What they actually meant to say, they announced, was that 2,000 customers were without power, and a customer was defined as a building. The average building in Astoria holds between 50 and 100 people, so NOW the rest of the city started to take notice; there were possibly 200,000 people without power, if not more. After work on the third day, I went back to my apartment to pick up some more clothes, and to throw away whatever food was in my refrigerator. Many of my fellow Astorians (or suckers as I choose to call them) were way ahead of me on this and had tossed their food into the trash. The only problem was that as the trash pickups take place at night, the city put a stop to them because the streets were not lit and it was therefore not safe.

So now there were piles of three day old putrid, rotting food on the streets. By the time I got to my apartment I was pretty horrified, but nothing could prepare me for the stench that smacked me in the face when I opened my fridge. I had a lot of frozen meat (thanks George Foreman!), some milk and eggs and of course tons of diet coke. Obviously the d.c. was fine, but the rest of it was toast. Like a first try at oral sex, I plugged my nose and dove in. I threw the rotted food away, packed a bag and got the hell out of there.

On Day 6, Con Ed once again revised its estimates and said that there were approximately 10,000 customers without power. You can do the math. What was supposedly an “isolated problem” was quite obviously a much larger, systemic issue. Amazingly, Con Ed told people to remain calm and to be patient. I was lucky; I had a place to stay. Many of the lower income, larger families in this neighborhood were absolutely stuck. The only form of help anyone was receiving was a red cross truck down the street. One truck, filled with a small supply of canned goods and other non-perishables. I say it again because it bears repeating; one truck.

On Day 7, Con Ed announced that they had determined the cause of the blackout. When they chose my neighborhood to “temporarily blackout” they had conveniently chosen the one neighborhood in the city that hadn’t been the lucky beneficiary of any of the funds earmarked for infrastructure improvement. What that meant was that the feeder cables that supply power to this area were over 30 years old. When Con Ed tried to restore the power to our neighborhood after the “temporary blackout”, the incredible voltage coming forth all at once fried the feeder cables, block by block until Con Ed realized what was happening and shut the power back down. Needless to say, this would NOT have happened in Chelsea.

In the middle of all this insanity, the politicians were behaving like absolute children. The ones who represented this neighborhood were screaming their heads off, and the ones who represent other neighborhoods turned a blind eye. Mayor Bloomberg pulled a W and gave Con Ed high marks, even as the civilization crumbled around him due to their actions. Even the most naive, trusting person could see that this was clearly a classist, racist action by Con Ed, yet no one seemed to care. They didn’t choose the rich white neighborhood to steal power from; they chose the poor hispanic neighborhood, and then lied about the consequences.

The blackout lasted for 10 days in some parts, because they had to go manhole to manhole and replace every inch of cable. It’s kind of amazing it only took 10 days. What’s more amazing is that Con Ed issued a credit to every customer for their troubles. $3.

I think that pretty much sums it up, don’t you? Next week, the big itch. Until then, happy birthday to me!

Can you see my roots?

2006-11-07T22:28:00.000-05:00

Hi all! Hope you internet junkies are enjoying November so far. It is my birthday month, so how could you not? I can’t believe an entire week has gone by since my last post. All day long I was thinking, “Something is missing in my life. Sex? Sure. Money? Absolutely. But more importantly, I’ve not spread my joy and charm across this great land of ours in some time. That has got to change.” In my defense, I have been ushering a bunch of shifts in the past couple of weeks, so I’ve been pulling fourteen hour days, but that is no excuse. My readers have come to expect a certain frequency of reporting, and I cannot disappoint. So get off my back already.

A quick weekend update. I saw Borat over the weekend. Don’t go. You’ll laugh so hard your stomach will hurt the next morning. Mine still does. As horrifying as it is in points (like when the rodeo guy says America is working on hanging all the gays) it is refreshing to see someone finally portray George Bush’s America with some honesty. Granted he tends to pick the most extreme morons to interview, but those people’s opinions are really out there and it’s about time people started talking about them.

In other news, Time Warner came back and still can’t figure out what’s wrong. Nuff said. On top of that, my cell phone has officially broken, so if you’ve called and I haven’t called you back, don’t be offended. It seems I can’t hear anything anymore. People can hear me, but I get nothing unless I use a goofy headphone or speaker phone. And it’s a Treo which I’ve grown accustomed to using, but my boss won’t spring for another one, so I’m probably going to end up with a blackberry. I’m going to be one of those annoying people who check their email every three seconds. Most importantly though, my new George Foreman arrived! I’m grillin now baby!

So as I’m sure I’ve mentioned, the whole reason I’ve been ushering is to pay off debt. I’ve been making some good headway, but I’m still pretty buried. It’s the most frustrating thing to carry credit card debt, especially since the only thing I can actually remember buying is some really nice shoes. (Curse you Prada!) I guess it all adds up, but it sure takes a long time to pay off. By the time it’s all done with the shoes will be three seasons old and I won’t be able to wear them anyway!

The problem with trying to pay off debt is that while you’re busy picking away at the glacier of cold, hard numbers staring you in the face every morning when you log onto your bank’s website, life keeps happening all around you, and as we all know, life is expensive. I don’t have a car so thankfully I don’t have to worry about the constant drain on my budget that comes with owning a gas guzzler, but the cost of living in New York mitigates any savings I enjoy from not driving. I bought a half gallon of milk today. $3. I decided to get a salad for lunch. $11. I needed to get diet coke on the way home. $7. Spending $21 to do nothing? Priceless. And that’s just food. Entertainment is a whole other story. Cocktails? $8-$10 each depending on where you go, EVEN if you flirt with the bartender, who more often than not is straight anyway and is only working in a gay bar because he knows 30 something gay men are suckers for a tight body and a killer smile. Not that I would know.

But right now, the biggest financial drain in my life is my mouth. Before you say it, yes, I’m a loudmouth, but thankfully I’ve not said anything that actually cost me money. No, the financial drain is all dental. I have the good fortune of having a set of teeth that refuse to chill out. Like the war in Iraq, I am fighting an endless, expensive (not to mention immoral) battle to fix something that is fundamentally screwed up.

It all started in college, when I went to a dentist to get my teeth cleaned. Apparently, that “permanent retainer” wasn’t supposed to be “permanent”, it was supposed to be “temporary.” I should have just left it in. He plied it out, and took four good chunks of my teeth with it. The most damage happened to the two teeth on the bottom right. The very back molar had a hole the size of a lima bean ripped out of it. I went through about five fillings, but ultimately it had to be root canalled and crowned.

Despite many reports to the contrary, I actually have a small mouth. The petite nature of my frame extends even to my jaw, and most dentists can’t get their fingers back there to do the work. (This sounds really gross.) So when my last dentist, Dr. Thaw (I do not jest) did the root canal on the bottom tooth, she decided she had to file away some of the tooth on top in order to make room for her stubby digits. I said then that I thought she went a little too far but she completed the root canal and fashioned a crown out of metal that was anything but a good fit.

About once a year the crown would fall out and I would go back to Dr. Thaw, who would file a little more of the top tooth away to make room for a bigger crown that would inevitably fall out, and cost several hundred dollars. Somehow, they always seemed to fall out at the most inopportune times. Really, nothing says “Your place or mine” like a big hunk of metal falling out of your mouth and onto your plate. (That is a true story by the way.) The last crown she cobbled together lasted about a year and a half, until about April of this year.

I was ushering at The Wedding Singer when someone asked me the running time of the show. I was tempted to say “two and a half hours too long,” but when I opened my mouth I was stopped short by a familiar feeling of… emptiness where a crown used to be. “Oh thit” I said, just as the crown plopped onto my tongue and very nearly down my throat. I hacked it up into my hand, looked at the patron and said “Don’t worry, there’s more where that came from.” So now I had a big hole where the crown used to be, and fears of another few hundred dollars being whisked away from my checking account. “Enough is enough,” I thought. “This show sucks and I’m never coming back.” Then I thought, “I am going to a different dentist, someone who can fix this permanently.” Enter Dr. Fine. I’m not kidding.

Dr. Fine is a fine doctor, but I wouldn’t say he’s all that good looking. I was expecting someone much more Antonio Saboto Jr. like, and while Dr. Fine is rather tall and dark, it’s more of a Father Guido Sarducci look. As a new patient, I had to go through the whole process of getting my teeth cleaned and examined before he would consider putting on a new crown. $300 for the cleaning and the xrays. With my shiny new teeth, I went back to Dr. Fine’s office, and he asked to see my old crown. I pulled it out of my non-Prada bag and handed it over to him. “What. Is. That?” “That’s my crown,” I said. “That is… not a crown.” Apparently all this time Dr. Thaw had been putting what amounted to a massive filling over my tooth, but never really bothered to fashion a crown that involved an actual post that you put the crown on. The post, as it turns out, is key to keeping the crown where it belongs. Who knew.

When he patted my shoulder and said “We’ll fix you right up,” I was blinded by the diamond encrusted, three pound Rolex strapped to his wrist. “Self,” I thought, “this is going to hurt.” ”How much is a crown” I eeked out. “Oh, $1200.” At this point I had been ushering for about three months and hadn’t even made that much. I now was further away from being out of debt than when I started. Holding back the tears, I muttered something about being broke and he said I could work out a payment plan. I thought that was very nice of him, until I learned that the payment plan required a minimum of $200 a month. No one I know has an extra $200 a month lying around, and I sure don’t, but the receptionist could see this was really upsetting me, and she said she would make it $100 a month until I could afford more. There are some kind souls out there.

Unlike a crown that goes on your head, a crown that goes on your teeth has to be very carefully designed so that it’s a good fit. So they put a temporary crown in to try it out. (As if I hadn’t had enough of those.) After I chewed on a few of those pasty tasting articulation papers, Dr. Fine decided that the tooth above it would have to be filed down a bit to make room for a proper crown. I warned him. I said, “Be careful, because it’s been filed down several times already.” “Don’t worry,” he said, “we’re nowhere near the pulp of the tooth.” I kind of gagged at that word, pulp, and prayed that this would end well.

Because I’m writing about it here, you can guess that it didn’t. That afternoon, as the novacaine wore off, I sat at my desk and realized that something very, very bad was happening inside my mouth. Instead of the normal, non-painful existence we all enjoy, I was going through what can only be described as a feeling similar to someone repeatedly punching me in my face. It was a constant, deafening, blinding hammer of pain every ten seconds or so. I hobbled into my boss’ office and said something like “My mgf hha bbe bpo” to which he replied “Jesus, go home.” I got home and popped three vicodin. I don’t remember anything after that.

The next morning I called Dr. Fine and told him that whatever he had done had caused a massive problem in my mouth and that he was going to have to see me that morning. He had to get his snotty kids off to summer camp he said, and could see me at 12. So at noon I went into his office and he did the “does this hurt” tests. Yes, yes, and fuck yes, that hurts. “Well,” he said, “I’m afraid we’re going to have to do a root canal. This tooth is shot.”

"Shot?” I asked. “It was fine the day before yesterday.” Oh, the wheels were spinning. He could see exactly where I was going with this line of thought, so he got his yet-to-realize-he’s-gay associate, and they both poked around my mouth for a while until his yet-to-realize-he’s-gay associate confirmed that yes, the tooth was shot. I pointedly asked how much a root canal would be, and he said the root canal was something like $400-$500, and that the crown would be another $1200.

So in a matter of 48 hours I had amassed $3000 in new debt. This was not the way things were supposed to go. I was supposed to usher for six months and be done and onto bigger and better apartments in a building that didn’t smell like India. Not that I have anything against India, I just don’t want to smell it all day. Now all of that was shot. I was back to square one. Not even. I was back to square –25.

Dr. Fine and his yet-to-realize-he’s-gay associate came back into the room just as I had put together in my head exactly how much debt I had just incurred. I must admit that there was a small part of me that was relieved at finally, once and for all, having this tooth done with, but the amount of money I now owed was staggering. I was shaking and sweaty. But Dr. Fine sat down and said “I’m going to pawn off this here $16,000 watch and pay for your root canal, so don’t you worry.” OK, not really. But he did say that as I had very specifically warned him not to touch the upper tooth, he would assume responsibility for that tooth and cover whatever costs were associated with fixing it.

I didn’t know what to say. Here, at last, was a gentleman. I thanked him. Really, what else can you say in those situations? Somehow “You’re damn right you’re responsible asshole” just didn’t feel appropriate. But, he was responsible and I didn’t want him to forget that. So I left it at a simple thank you. I get my new crown next week. What a pretty prince I’ll make. I’ll be sure and take pictures.

Well, once again I’ve written a novel sized entry, but the throngs of compliments I get from my fans encourages me to write and write. So keep the comments coming! Meanwhile, have a great week, and be sure to floss.

Down for the count

2006-10-30T00:32:00.000-05:00

Hi campers. I hope you all had relaxing and recuperative weekends. I had an involuntarily low key weekend. The train that I take into the city was replaced by shuttle buses today and yesterday so they could do “track work.” Now I am a lot of things, but I’m no train expert, so I have no idea what they were doing, but I can tell you what they weren’t doing; carting my happy ass to and from Queens on a bus with 300 other late, pissed off people. I stayed as far away from there as possible. It worked out well as I didn’t get any ushering shifts this weekend anyway, so I had a homespun weekend of errands and chillin out. I managed to get two episodes of The Nine in on Friday evening before… my dvr froze.

This time, however, I was actually a little excited that it froze, because as it turns out, I already had an appointment scheduled for Time Warner to come look at the problem. I could barely contain my excitement as the four hours between 10 and 2 approached, and when the buzzer’s siren-like wail wrapped around my ear drums I jumped off the couch and sprinted to the door. In just a few short moments, Mr or Mrs cable guy was going to get to see first hand what I had been experiencing for the last six months. I buzzed the lock, and when I heard the tell tale sound of clomping feet outside, opened the door. (I tend to wait until the last minute to open the door so that the curry tsunami is held off as long as possible.)

Much to my surprise, this week’s cable guy was the same as last week’s cable guy! When he saw me he had that look we all know and love, the “oh SHIT how do I know this person” look. “Back again are ya?” I asked him, and he laughed, relieved to be out of that awkward social scenario. I chuckled a bit when he shook his head and asked, “Are you still having problems?” I mean at this point the whole thing is pretty absurd, and there’s no point getting mad at him, so I just sighed and said “Yes, it seems to be a trend with all things technical lately,” and then told him about how I had written all about it on my blog. He said something about not seeing a fireplace in my apartment, so I let the whole blog thing go.

He puttered around for a few minutes, said hi to the dust bunnies behind the tv stand and then climbed my ladder to look at the connection from the outside cable to the inside cable. “Well the signal’s boomin here.” Despite my ten years in New York City, I still haven’t picked up a lot of the local vernacular, so I can only assume that “boomin” is a good thing. Then he checked the signals on the cable box and the modem, and made his diagnosis. “Boomin.” Money well spent on that PhD I’m sure. After puttering around for about ten more minutes he said, “Well, all your signals are good. I still can’t get into the main box for the building, so there’s not much else I can do. Try your cable now and let’s make sure it’s working.” I was all too happy to oblige. I clicked the tv on, hit the power button for the cable and everything worked fine.

He sighed and said, “Well, looks good to me.” “Not so fast, Boomer,” I thought. “Wait,” I said, “let me try the dvr.” I chose a show at random, this time The Colbert Report, selected it and hit play. The little progress bar at the bottom of the tv showed up, the show LOOKED like it was about to start, and then…nothing. Success! I had finally repeated the problem for someone else! It was not all in my mind! Boomer looked non-plussed. I’m a bit of a mind reader in my spare time (yes I am, damnit) and I could see exactly what he was thinking; “This’ll fix itself soon.” A full forty seconds ticked by ever so slowly, as absolutely nothing happened.

In Freshman English at FSU, I was told to go out and do something I had never done before and then write a paper about it. I went and got really drunk at a frat party and slept with a sorority girl. Before you judge, I had never done it before (slept with a sorority girl that is), and anyway, you’re supposed to experiment in college. The following week, the professor handed me my paper with an A on top, and said, “Hunh.” There were probably a lot of things he wanted to say to me, but in the end, he was stymied, just as I’m sure Boomer was when he peered into the bowels of my tv and said “Hunh.” After a few seconds he said, “It ain’t supposed to do that.”

When the cacophonous applause from the audience finally died down, I handed Boomer his Most Obvious Statement of The Year Award. (George Bush came in a close second with “War is hard.”) But much to my chagrin, Boomie was still perplexed. He rattled around for a bit, shook a few things, and then replaced the cable box. I had to think, as I watched him forlornly pack his cable guy tools, that he really did want to solve this problem, he just couldn’t. He muttered something about calling them again if this doesn’t fix it, and sheepishly made his exit. I will of course keep you in the know about all the Time Warner developments, so stay near by.

All that writing (and reading on your part) and still the weekly installment hasn’t even started. Not to worry tired readers, this one is pretty short. But it’s a knock out. (You’ll get that in a second.)

As some of you may know, I’ve been on a bit of a health kick for the past, oh, four years. At the ripe age of 28 I gave myself a double hernia carrying a room air conditioner up a flight of stairs. Let me tell you, you don’t know pain until you’ve ridden a subway with staples where your pubes used to be tearing at your skin upon every lurch and rock of the train. Childbirth? Please. After walking like a constipated old man for two weeks, the staples were removed and I made a solemn vow that I would never put myself through that again. I joined a gym, hired a personal trainer, quit smoking and started eating things that weren’t frozen in a box. I have a few stories about my personal trainer, Craig, but for now just rest safe in the knowledge that a large portion of my credit card debt is due in no small part to his steel blue eyes. Anyway, it’s four years later and I am happy to report that I am still fairly disciplined when it comes to my body. I haven’t even touched a cigarette; they actually repulse me now.

But my routine has been shattered lately, due to an unfortunate incident with George Foreman. As I’m sure you all know by now, in addition to naming all of his children (even his daughter) George, Mr. Foreman also endorsed a line of grills that cook just about anything you can imagine in a way that allows all the fat to drip right off the food into a handy plastic “fat collector.” (There’s a Kirstie Alley joke here somewhere.) For those of you who have never experienced the Foreman Grill, it really is a great little gadget for a bachelor like myself. You can cook as much or as little as you like, and it’s relatively easy to clean up. When I moved to Astoria I upgraded to a newer Foreman grill that has removable grill plates, so now it’s even easier to clean. Apparently, those removable grills are problematic.

About two months ago I pulled out the Foreman to do my cooking for the month. After you stop laughing, believe me when I tell you that it’s much easier to eat properly when you cook everything in advance. 28 turkey burgers, 8 hamburgers and lots of veggies later and I’m good to go for the whole four weeks. It’s such a relief to not have to open the refrigerator and stare in it blank-faced for five minutes trying to decide what to make. That sad evening, I was especially excited because I was trying something new; asparagus. I usually stay away from the stinky-pee veggie, but I figured what the heck, what could go wrong? Oh Shawn, when will you learn.

I’ve been doing this routine for about three years, so I am not exaggerating when I say I’m a turkey-burger grilling machine. I knead out all 28 patties first, fill the sink with soapy water so that I can wash my hands easily, heat up the grill and throw four on at a time. I usually put on some upbeat tunes and go to town. On Asparagus night, I was on burgers 13 – 17 when I noticed something a little out of the ordinary. One would expect a little smoke when you’re grilling four burgers at a time, but this smoke was thicker than normal. I popped open the window, put the smoke out of my mind and continued shakin my booty to “Hung Up.” Time does go by so slowly Madonna, it really does.

At first I thought the popping I heard was coming from my cd, and I was about to be extremely angry, but when I hit pause, the noise persisted. I snuck a quick look at the speaker wires to make sure all was well, which it was, then turned back into the kitchen just in time to see a big, gloppy piece of fat fall from the side of the Foreman to the counter. “Hm, that sucks,” I thought, “but better the counter than my love handles.” I grabbed a paper towel to sop up the unusual spill, leaned in to wipe it up and saw, quick as a flash, three sparks fly out the back of the Foreman.

"Self," I thought, “this is not going to end well.” My first thought was to unplug the Foreman. I leaned around the right side of the grill to where the cord was draped over the counter just as a few sparks shot out that side as well. In addition to being darned cute, I am really good in emergencies. Something about the way my mind works allows me to completely divorce my emotions from what is happening at the moment and focus solely on doing what needs to be done in that second. I’d be a great e.r. doctor, save for the whole “grossed out by organs” thing. I knew that if I let this continue, I’d be calling 911 in about a minute or so (if I could get a signal on my cell phone). I pushed the grill to the back of the counter where the gleaming white, fireproof tile was, and gave the plug a big tug to free it from the extension cord. Thankfully that went off without a hitch. The fat collector, however, had a mind of its own and chose to go in the exact opposite direction of the grill and tipped over, spilling its vile collection of turkey fatness all over the counter, and down into the cabinets. The grill meanwhile was none too pleased to have its removable plates jarred out of whack and was spitting out venomous pellets of hot, liquid turkey fat.

Did I mention I was in my underwear? (That part of my system has since been revised). Showers of grease were now darting out both sides of the Foreman and my forearms, stomach and chest were absorbing the brunt of their fury. If ever presented with this scenario, I defy you to think anything but “FUCK!” Like Spock saving Captain Kirk, I grabbed Sparky Foreman and dunked it into the sink of soapy water, half cooked turkey burgers and all. A quick glance at my body confirmed that I was not on fire, and not seriously injured, but I was a bit freaked out, and more than a little upset at the mess. Grease, water, and greasy water were everywhere, not to mention little balled up pieces of half cooked ground turkey. Tasty!

The customer service representative at Toast Master, Lucy, said the following, and this is a direct quote. “It did what? Sparked out the side? That’s shocking.” I mean, come on Lucy. She told me they would send me a box for to ship the now useless grill back to them, so that they could “fully investigate the problem,” which I’m sure is code for “cover our asses from a lawsuit.” I wasn’t really injured, and other than the mess there was no real damage, so I’m not even bothering to pursue any sort of legal recourse, but I’ve been without a Foreman ever since, and my eating habits have gone downhill. I started off well, cooking my turkey burgers in a skillet, but really, I can’t cook, why pretend? They end up burned, or in pieces, or half cooked and usually just plain gross. I would order in, but there is one remotely healthy place near here, and how much grilled chicken and pita can a person eat? I’ve come to rely on steamed chicken and broccoli from the local Chinese place, Sun Wok. (Actually, it’s spelled Sun Lok, they just pronounce it Sun Wok.) And trust me, when the Chinese food delivery guy becomes familiar enough with you to tell you that he likes your apartment, he’s been there enough.

Supposedly a new Foreman grill has been shipped, and I did get a little note from UPS on my door Friday, so we’ll see. Cross your fingers. I’m not holding my breath. I am, however, in the market for an apron.

Until next time guys. Be well, and leave your comments!

What an ass

2006-10-24T00:52:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone. I hope you all are enjoying what’s left of our amazing fall. New York’s weather has been pretty damn sublime. A few bizarre storms here and there, but other than that sunny and cool. I adore this time of year. The leaves are changing color, the funk of sweat is finally gone from my fellow subway riders and most importantly, my birthday’s coming up!

This year will be a little weird because it’s the first time in six years I won’t be celebrating with Hal. His birthday is the 2nd of November so we would usually have a really fantastic dinner in addition to whatever we did with friends. This year I’m not sure what I’m doing. Who really cares about turning 33 anyway? I mean, I’m happy I’m turning 33, as opposed to the alternative, but what does one do to celebrate mid-life? Before you say “mid-life?” I say to you; how many men do you know who live beyond their 60’s? So this could very well be my mid-life! Guess it’s time to go buy a Porsche.

OK, so a quick update because I know you want to hear about everything. Last night I went out with some friends to a bar called Vlada (rhymes with Prada!) and got a little drunker than I thought I would. They really make some strong ass drinks there. I woke up at about 11 today, still in my clothes from last night, which means I must have passed out without even getting ready for bed. That was a lovely taste in my mouth, let me tell you. I hobbled out to the living room in a bit of a stupor and decided that this hangover called for some serious vegetating in front of the tv with the shows that I’ve been recording all week. I’m caught up on the important shows, Lost and Housewives, but I’m also recording The Nine, Six Degrees, Brothers and Sisters and Heroes. I’m not hooked on the four new shows yet; I’m just watching to see if any of them get interesting. Right now, I could take them or leave them, which as it turns out, is a good thing.

I decided to go with Heroes, arguably the most cheese filled of the four and therefore the easiest to digest, hit select on my remote, hit play and…. poof. No picture. You guessed it. My dvr has frozen. AGAIN. Up-to-date readers know I just had a technician out here last weekend, but I guess we can safely say he did not fix the problem. So I’ve called Time Warner (I spend more time on the phone with them than with any of my friends or family) and they’re sending a new technician out next weekend. They’ve also put me on some customer relations track so that now I will have “individualized attention” until the problem is resolved. I’m sure that means someone in India will be calling me tomorrow to find out if I am satisfied with what little Time Warner has done to address my problems. Until then, I am missing Housewives and Brothers and Sisters tonight, and who knows what else until it’s fixed… if ever.

There are some new technical woes on the home front as well. Saturday I grabbed my Ipod and went to the gym for a quick abs/chest workout. I wasn’t planning any cardio, but it was so pristine out I decided to go for a run in the lovely borough of Queens (which you may be surprised to learn is not a borough full of queens). I stop home, drop off my “gear,” rip my shirt off (shut it) and hightail it outside. I start running at a nice pace, get halfway down my block and notice that my once strident Ipod is now completely silent. I look at the screen and find that my battery has died, which I simply cannot believe because I took it off the charger directly before I went to the gym. Unfortunately, dear readers, it’s true. The battery lasted less than an hour. When I charged it today it lasted for about an hour and when it would play songs, which was rare, it didn’t work very well. The songs would stop and start, or rewind and fast forward, completely at random.

It appears my Ipod is now I-dead. Much like Paris Hilton, it’s had a good life but it’s time has come. Three years, countless drops and several splashes later I can’t say I’m at all surprised, but the timing really is a bitch. Looks like Visa will be buying me an early Christmas present. Now I’m faced with a tough choice; black or white? My friend Ted will no doubt leave a comment extolling the virtues of the Zen, the Zune or whatever Ipod-killer MSNBC is choosing to shill this week, but as a man of discerning tastes I choose only the cutest gadgets available so it’s definitely an Ipod for me. Sorry Ted.

If these things keep happening I’m never going to make it to present day in my blog. I know my legions of fans (thanks, mom) are dying to be caught up. Thus on with the show.

Today’s entry is about Verizon Wireless. This story shouldn’t be too long, but I did want to share it because it’s one of the most aggravating things I’ve ever had to deal with. As you’re devouring my story, keep in mind that while the entire cellular nightmare is going on, I was also in the very worst part of the Great Time Warner Debacle, so this was quite a trying time.

Shortly after I moved in it became apparent I got less than a stellar signal. Inside my apartment, I consider myself blessed if I get three bars, but more often than not, it’s one or two. I have found a pocket or two in my apartment where I sometimes get four, but they’re fleeting, and I have never seen five in the entire time I’ve lived here. Right now, I only have a cell phone. (I am hoping to get the whole Time Warner thing sorted out so I can get internet phone, but until then it’s just my cell.) Around June or July, my cell service in my apartment went from “mediocre” to “unbelievably bad.” Like Rush Limbaugh without his Viagria, I couldn’t maintain a call for more than two or three minutes before it would drop. I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it again, but this did not happen in Chelsea.

So I called Verizon, who informed me that I was experiencing problems because I lived in… wait for it… a rural area! I think… I’m not positive… but I think my block has A tree. One. Uno. Collectively, there are more people in Queens than in most major cities in the country, so it causes one to wonder; what exactly qualifies an area as rural? I mean, the last time I saw livestock, it was a donkey that was being led through Times Square by a man dressed as Juan Valdez promoting the new sign you see below.

This is actually my office building. I swear. My office is the window next to the right front hoof. I’m so proud.

Anyway, turns out, “rural” is code for “not in Manhattan.” There are ten times the number of those ugly square cellular receivers in Manhattan than there are in Brooklyn and Queens. Combined. One could argue that, yes, the “important” things that happen in this city happen in Manhattan, i.e. the stock exchange, the UN, the terrorist attacks, but the people who make all of those things happen (including the terrorist attacks) often live in the outer boroughs. Don’t the people who keep the machine running deserve the same level of service that the people who own the machine enjoy? In America, no. As it turns out, of the three…THREE… receivers in my rural neighborhood, two were “damaged.” But no one at Verizon could tell me this; I had to find that out from a friend who had T-Mobile. Verizon just kept telling me it was because the area I lived in was considered rural. No one could explain how I mysteriously had mediocre service for five months, and then suddenly didn’t. It seems to me, that’s a sure indicator that something is afoot, but hey, I only broker multi-million dollar deals all day long, what do I know about logic?

After about 20 phone calls (to Abib, his cousin Rashih, his mother Azad and their neighbor “Ben”) I actually got connected to an English speaking person who was called a “Section Leader.” He apparently “led” my “section” and concurred that it was ludicrous that Queens is considered rural, and that clearly something had gone wrong because I didn’t have a problem with dropped calls when I first moved in. He put a work order out on the two receivers that were broken. (It must have been easy to find them, because hey, there are only three.) Three days after that, my calls stopped dropping. Praise Valdez. Or whomever. I still get a crappy signal, but at least it’s constant.

Now, let’s insert the Time Warner Debacle in here so you can get the complete picture; I couldn’t call them from the office because they needed me at my computer, and they couldn’t call me back if my call was dropped at home, so for weeks it was just a litany of dropped calls and frustrated moans. And yes, even a few swear words. The absolute worst was when my internet went out, my dvr was frozen, my calls kept getting dropped and… oh, I can’t mention that part yet. It would have ruined my next entry! Suffice it to say, though, I felt like I was living in a third world country. Of course, I practically am.

So campers, that’s my Verizon story. It doesn’t sound like much, but it was the umpteenth layer of stress when all I really needed was a helping hand from the universe.

Thanks for listening gentle readers, and cross your fingers that in three weeks we’ll have replaced a bunch of corrupt, war-hungry Republicans with a bunch of corrupt, moronic Democrats. I’ll take stupid over evil any day, thanks. Until next time, love to you all and a special shout out to my friend Vern who is going through a really rough patch right now.

The House of Prada

2006-10-17T00:14:00.000-04:00

Hi all. A brief update, and then on with the show. Time Warner Cable came back again to figure out what is going with my internet and dvr. This guy at least was honest and said he had no clue, but that if I wanted it solved the best thing to do would be to request a “re-run.” I had visions of a fat guy in orange pants jumping up and down waving his hands, but it turns out a “re-rerun” is when they take all the cable out of your apartment and put new cable in. Surprisingly, re-runs aren’t free. So now I have to decide if I want to spend the $30 for something that even the technician said would have a 50/50 chance of working, or suck it up. Given the history in my little apartment so far, I don’t think I’m willing to take the odds. Oh speaking of odds, start kissing up to me now because I’m winning the lottery tomorrow. Which is a good thing because now that it’s chilly the curry factory has gone into overdrive.

SO. Where was I when I left off? Ah yes; Verizon Wireless, Xbox, Prada and George Foreman. Now before you sigh and say “Shawn, what could these seemingly unrelated items possibly have in common with each other,” (and shame on you for using such a stilted question), I’ll tell you. For the most part I’ve moved on, but in order for you to get the complete picture of the last 8 months of my life I feel I must share. I see you shiver with antici…pation.

I’ll start with the biggie. Prada. For those of you who don’t know, The House of Prada is a clothing and accessories line that was founded in 1913 by Mario Prada in (where else) Italy. Mario was mostly famous for his leather luggage, but the company never really took off. In 1978 Miuccia Prada, Mario’s grand-daughter, took over the design elements of the company and her husband, Patrizio (I love that name) took over the business side. They introduced the Prada Bag, a series of streamlined black purses made of Pocone, a waterproof nylon, and New York exploded. Even the most influential people were put on a year-long waiting list to buy a $600 purse. Now, Prada is recognized worldwide for its simple and elegant creations.

When I whine about credit card debt, please remind me that Miuccia is responsible for a nice chunk of that. Their shoes are… expensive. Anyway, last year for Christmas Hal got it right and got me a rather large gift card for Prada. He had such a knack for getting bad gifts that it had become a joke between us, so I welcomed this stroke of genius wholeheartedly. Shortly after Christmas (ok, the day after) I hightailed it to the Prada 5th Avenue store. I could have gone to the flagship store in Soho, pictured below, but I find the crowds there to be a little too “sceney” for me. (Must be the fitting room doors that frost and defrost at the touch of a button.)

The people at the 5th Avenue location are much more civilized when dropping ridiculous bank. Anyway, I found what I like to call The Perfect Pair Of Sunglasses (henceforth referred to as PPOS). You can see the PPOS in the photo in my profile, and as you can tell they looked, well, perfect.

After buying the PPOS I had a little left over so I was able to pick up the Coolest Keychain Ever (CKE). A part of me does shudder at the fact that I spent $125 (well, Hal did) on this little symbol of style, but I kid you not when I say it was designed by Miuccia for me alone. The CKE was a sterling silver rectangle bar with Prada inscribed on it. Attached at either side of the rectangle were two keyrings. The simplicity of it was stunning, but when I saw that you could detach the rings and have a “going out” set of keys and a “full set” of keys I was hooked.

Flash forward to about four months ago. It was the hottest day of the year here in balmy New York. In fact, we broke a heat record that day. 103 I think. Oh yeah, and a lot of humidity. On my lunch break I had to run a quick errand to get my brother Derek a birthday card. I will forever associate his birthday with my tragic loss. While paying for the card, I put my sunglasses down on the counter for a second… a split second... to get my wallet out of my non-Prada bag, and the PPOS were gone. Faster than you could blink. Even the cashier was amazed at how fast the woman next to me had grabbed them and took off. As it was so hot I was a bit sluggish and my normal reaction time was off, or else I would have been out the door and after her. But sadly, I honestly didn’t notice until she was long gone.

I was horrified. Not only were the PPOS gone, which is bad enough, but I’d have to walk around all day sans sunglasses. In New York sunglasses are not only practical, they are a necessity; they’re the best way to maintain that veneer of cool indifference required of all New Yorkers. Nothing says “I really love you darling, but you bore me” better than talking to them with sunglasses on. The only time I ever walk around without sunnies is when I’m leaving a club after daybreak. So they were gone; it was a $175 birthday card for Derek this year. At least I still had my CKE.

About three days later I woke up incredibly late for work. We open at 10, but my boss thinks (and I agree) that it’s better to get there at 9:30 and map out the day. But I woke up at 9:45. Shouting the typical expletives associated with running this late, I sprang to action and was out the door. I got all the way to the subway when I realized I didn’t have my wallet (also Prada!). I turned around and went back home, pulled the CKE out of my bag and noticed something… different. It registered slightly, but I ran upstairs, opened my apartment, grabbed my wallet and hightailed it to the train.

While on the train, I pulled out CKE to find out what was causing this unsettled feeling I had. To my utter dismay, one of the rings was missing. I was fairly convinced that it had just fallen off somewhere at home, so when I left work that day I was optimistic about my chances of finding it and returning it to its proper groove. Optimism is for suckers I say. That ring is long gone, and the whole point of the CKE – to have a bar with two separate rings that pop on and off – is moot. I now have a bar and a ring that hook up. Ooooh.

In case you’re wondering, these are not items I can run over to Prada and replace easily. Obviously the cost is prohibitive, and they’re last season anyway so they’re no longer being made. I thank you in advance for the tears you shed for my PPOS and CKE. At least I still have my wallet. Jesus, knock on some wood.

Well this turned out to be a long entry. See how I share?

Up next, Verizon Wireless. “We never stop working for you-oooh hoo hee hee ha ha.”

New York, New York

2006-10-09T23:14:00.000-04:00

Hope everyone in blog reading land is doing great. A quick update and then I'll dive right in.

For those of you who are not Blogger members, if you want to leave a message, scroll to the bottom of the latest entry and click on where it says the number of comments that have been left. A little window will pop up. Click on the “anonymous” bullet, and when you’re done just click Login and Publish. You won’t actually have to log in; it will just publish it. Make sure you say who you are though, or I’ll never know.

I had another appointment with The Devil Saturday morning. Those of you who have done your homework will recall that The Devil is Time Warner, that my dvr was freezing and that my internet kept disconnecting. Sometime between the lovely hours of 8am and Noon on Saturday the guy was going to come over and fix everything. (I love how you have to block out half of your day just to get your cable fixed.) So at 10:30 Mr. D shows up to look at my equipment, so to speak. First he looked at my box. (Wow, who knew cable tv was riddled with sexual innuendo!) Once again, I explained the problems to him. He started by unplugging the cable box, staring intently at the back for about twenty seconds and then saying “Hmmm.” As you can imagine, that inspired great confidence in his abilities to get the kinks out of my box. (Really, I’m that good.)

Then he asked if I had Verizon Wireless. "What the..." I thought, "…he's here to fix my cable, not my cell phone." (Which by the way doesn’t work either, but that’s another story.) I told him yes, I do in fact have Verizon Wireless, and guess what? Turns out, Verizon's signal causes The Devil's signal to jam up. I find this A) hard to believe because I never had this problem in Chelsea and there were TWO of us in the apartment with Verizon and B) incredibly frustrating because although my cell phone barely gets a signal in my apartment it is apparently strong enough to freeze my cable.

So I asked the hirsute cable guy if a new box would help. (There's a joke about hairy boxes here somewhere.) He said a new box might help, but that he didn’t have one. (Too easy.) So I stared at him for twenty seconds and said “Hmmm. You came to fix my cable and didn't bring a new box?” He concurred, and said that if I wanted a new one I would have to take the old one to the Time Warner office in the city. We all know how that went last time (well, the more dedicated Shawn Stories fans do anyway) so I’m not so keen on going through all of that again, but I will trudge down there and let you know how it goes. On the bright side, my internet seems to be worki

Today I have a treat for you. A story that happened less than five months ago! I promise I’ll get to Prada, etc. soon but for now, sit back and enjoy.

It's no news that New York is a challenging place to live, but there are times when the city envelopes you in its timeless grasp and everything goes... better than right. Ask any New Yorker to tell you about how hard it is to live here, and you'll be regaled with stories of woe and despair. Rude people, smelly streets, dirty surroundings, crime, so on and so on. But I bet if you ask the same people to tell you why they stay, you'll hear a story or two that proves that what is good about the city eclipses most of the bad.

A week ago my office received notice that our building's power would be shut off from 1am to 6am on Monday morning so that they could do elevator maintenance. My boss has a tendency to be a bit over protective when it comes to our server. (I guess if I spent $10,000 on a computer I'd want to protect it too.) Anyway, he decided it, and everything else in the office, should be shut down to protect it all from the surge of the power coming back on at 6. He wanted it turned off at the last possible minute though, so that the backup would happen and so we would still receive faxes.

After listening to him whine about how he was going to have to come all the way back to the office on Sunday night to shut everything down, I told him that since I was ushering on Sunday and would be in the neighborhood anyway I could come in and shut everything down. (I know, there’s a place in heaven for people just like me.) He was wary of trusting me with something so important, but his desire to have a lazy Sunday evening was stronger than his nerves. I told him not to worry, I would take care of everything.

At 11:30 on Sunday night, as I was settling into a post-Housewives stupor, an A-bomb went off in my tummy when I realized I had completely forgotten to go to the office. All the computers were still on AND I couldn't remember what time the power was being cut off. I was convinced it was midnight, which gave me a half hour to get to the office. On a good day, it's a minimum of 35 minutes to the office by subway. A $23 cab ride to the office may take a little less time, but I prefer to take the trains rather than put my faith in the traffic gods. (Yes, there is traffic going into the city at 11:30 on a Sunday night.)

I threw on my shoes and ran to the train. That makes me sound somewhat calm; to the contrary, I was torn between blubbering like a baby and vomiting. Not only would the server inevitably die when the power came back on, but my boss would never put faith in me again. This is when New York kicks in, for those of you keeping track.

The N train miraculously pulled in about a minute after I got to the station. It was an angst ridden minute, but only a minute nonetheless. I scooted nervously onto the train just as the conductor slammed the door. This was good; he was one of those conductors that gave you a split second to get on board before he told the driver to go. That could shave precious seconds off my commute. During the trip I am literally crawling out of my skin, begging the train to go faster. Every stop brings with it the relief of being that much closer, and the dread of actually arriving there and finding I was too late.

And then inexplicably I started tearing up. I didn't feel THAT upset I thought, but looking back, it had been a really hard week and I guess this kind of put me over. New Yorkers are great at ignoring people freaking out on the subway; it's practically an art to notice but to PRETEND not to notice. I wasn’t really concerned about making a scene, but as my friend Anthony says I didn’t want to be one of those people walking through Times Square crying. So as I'm trying to calm down and just breathe, the doors open and this Rastafarian guy with a guitar gets on board. "Great," I thought, "now I have to hear some shitty singer ply his trade and ask for money."

His dreads and beads jangle as he aimlessly shuffles down the length of the train, and as he comes to about a foot away from me, stops. I guess I looked like hell, because after a pause, he says in his best Rasta-man voice "It look like dis guy here need a song tonight." "Of course" I thought, "so much for being inconspicuous." He begins strumming on his guitar, and starts singing that damn song "Baby don’t worry… bout a thing…." Of all the songs he could play, he chooses the most predictable. And yet, the sub-par singing voice aside, his gesture really struck me. He could have been a dick, or he could have ignored me like everyone else, but in the best way he knew how, he was offering a helping hand.

Well that was all it took; the damn tears were really flowing now. But I wasn't sad so much as relieved. Relieved because for some stupid reason, which I can laugh about now, I really believed him. So much so that I gave him a dollar, which I think might be the first time in ten years that I’ve given someone on the subway money. I am a stingy bastard after all.

The subway entrance by my office is literally in the heart of Times Square. I was going to put a very dramatic picture of Times Square here, but once again this stupid blogger service won't load pictures. I may soon have a new blog address if this continues.

Anywa, it was 11:55. The lights were still on! Being that this is Times Square, there were tons of people everywhere and it was pretty much impossible to run, but I definitely did the “pants-on-fire-walk-run-thing.” When I got to the building and read the sign saying that the power was being shut off at 1am it felt like the bones in my body melted with relaxation. I got to the office and shut everything down without a problem, although our internet has been strangely slow ever since. I think I exude some bio-rays that fry modems. The best part is that as I was leaving, contemplating how long it was going to take me to get home, the security guard made a point of telling me that the power was being shut off at 1 and that I’d better shut everything down in my office. I thanked her and told her that’s what I was here doing. She smiled and said “There gowna be some ticked off people tomorrow.” And I’m sure there were.

So there it is. My first happy story! The train came right away, I got home at 12:40 and was in bed (well, on the couch…yet again, another story) early enough to get a decent night’s sleep. And my boss, until now, was none the wiser that a meltdown almost happened in the office, and in my head.

Hope you are well. If not, baby don’t worry…

At Least You Have TiVo

2006-10-02T23:39:00.000-04:00

Wow, it’s been about a week since I’ve written my last installment. I wasn’t kidding when I said I was busy. I can post pictures again, so scroll all the way down to see a picture of what was under my bathtub.

Thanks to all of you who are keeping tabs with what’s going on in my little corner of the world. I can’t believe I still haven’t made it to the present day yet! I’m sure you can’t either. So without further ado…

My hot friend Ted Rybka whose blog you can visit at http://veryapeaz.blogspot.com left a comment after my last installment that said “At least you have TiVo.” Coincidentally, that is the perfect segue-way into my new chapter. How lucky for him.

When I moved out on my own, Time Warner Cable (henceforth referred to as T.D., as in The Devil) had just begun a “triple play promotion” wherein one receives high speed internet, basic cable and internet phone for $99. A steal. A cheaper version of that was available also, where you get two of the three, so I chose the $69 high speed internet and basic cable package. First of all, they aren’t kidding when they say “basic.” If it’s remotely interesting, I don’t get it. Unfortunately, that includes ESPN and YES, so I never get to see my beloved Yankees trounce foe after pitiful foe. (That includes the sweep in Boston. I missed all of it.) And of course, no HBO, Showtime, etc. Surprisingly though, the internet speed is ok. It’s not your standard high speed, but what they call “High Speed Lite.” It serves its purpose; I can email, im, surf the web and download porn. Works for me. Or does it?

Day 1 of the T.D. nightmare begins literally on Day 1. My appointment was between 12 and 4 on a Friday afternoon. It was either that, or wait for three weeks. So I took some time off work and prayed that the cable dude would come on the 12 side of that window. At 12:30 I looked out my window and there was a Time Warner truck sitting outside with a driver inside. I was thrilled; I would be done with this and back at work by 2:00! At 1:00 he still hadn’t left the truck. Or woken up from his nap. At 2:00 he was still asleep. At 2:30 I called Time Warner and asked for an update. The operator, T.D.’s apprentice, told me that the technician was on another job but that I was next in line. I told her to call him and ask him where he is, because I was staring right at him asleep in his truck. She put me on hold, and I looked out the window just in time to see the guy jump at the sound of his phone ringing. Five minutes later he was in my apartment. Other than the mess he made putting everything together, he was in and out pretty quickly. (Story of my life.) He tested everything, showed me how it all worked (oooh a REMOTE) and left.

I thought it would be a good idea to check my work email to see if any disasters had occurred in my absence, and logged in. I slogged through the 50 or so emails, found one I needed to reply to right away, clicked on “respond” and… got an internet connection error. “That’s odd,” I thought. “my internet is connected. Isn’t it?” Lo and behold, those four glowing goddesses of light that indicate a complete connection to the internet were neither glowing nor twinkling, but flashing ominously. I unplugged it, waited, plugged it back in and it worked fine. For five minutes. “Self” I thought, “It’s best not to get into this now. Go to work, come home and it will be fine.” Oh the young and naïve. I came home that evening eagerly awaiting the gigs of porn I was going to download, and to my surprise… I still had no internet connection. I reset it several times, etc, but to no avail. I should point out here that I had been without cable/internet for two weeks so I was really jonesing. This new development was not a happy one. I got on the phone to Time Warner (which is rather difficult because of my cell phone, a whole OTHER story), got a few dropped calls, and finally got through. T.D.’s apprentice told me that she was getting no signal from my modem. My brand new modem. I had two options; wait for a tech to come out a week from Monday, or take the box to Time Warner myself. Well, tomorrow was a Saturday and I did have the day off, so I figured I would take care of it myself.

Over night, a water main broke near the train I take into the city. Little did I know, though I will readily admit I should have turned on NY1 before I left the house. But I didn’t. So I got to the train and saw the pink tape of death across the turnstiles that meant “no trains to Manhattan.” Ah, delightful. So I decided it was a nice enough day, I would walk to the R train. The R train was skipping the stop nearest my house (and by nearest I mean a 20 minute walk away) and I had to take a train in the opposite direction to catch an express going into the city. I left my house at 10. It was 11:00 and I was farther away from Time Warner than I was when I first left my house, but I finally made it by 12. The funny thing about the Time Warner location is that it is the one… ONE… Time Warner location in New York City. There are 9 million people that live here, and I think it’s a safe bet to say that more than half of those have cable. So I waited in line for an hour, got a new modem, took the train home, plugged it in and… it worked! (Pause.) Temporarily.

I’ve since had three technicians out to determine why I STILL cannot maintain an internet connection, and every one of them has a different answer but no one has found the solution. It isn’t a huge crisis, but it is annoying when you’re chatting, doing your banking or downloading something (porn) and the connection dies. I do know it’s not my computer, because it of course worked fine when I lived in Chelsea. I’ll let you know if it’s ever fixed, but don’t hold your breath.

“But Shawn” you’re saying, “you titled this entry At Least You Have TiVo. What’s up with that?” Funny you should ask. When my cable was installed, I spent hours searching for interesting things to DVR so that I would not be beholden to the Basic-Ass cable. Season finales were coming up, as well as some summer premieres so I figured there was plenty of stuff I could save for later. I set it to record my shows and went on about my business. The following weekend, I had some time to kill and decided it was a good chance to watch one of the ten episodes of Good Times I had dvr’d. (Don’t judge, people, you have your guilty pleasures, I have mine.) I bring up the list, select the episode (JJ moves out after a fight with James!) and push play. And the screen goes blank. About thirty seconds later, the screen flashes a bright blue, the cable box freaks out, and everything reboots itself. “Self” I think, “this is not the way DVR is supposed to work.” I know this because it worked fine in Chelsea.

So I call T.D., (after having two technicians out to look at the internet) and tell them about this NEW problem. They send a technician out (a week later) who replaces the box and ALSO decides to go off on a tangent about how George Bush has destroyed this country by letting all of the Mexicans in who are taking all the jobs from decent Americans. I told him that I agreed, George Bush HAD destroyed our country, but only because we’ve pretty much lost all of our civil rights (hello, you and I can now be jailed indefinitely for no reason) and he scoffed and said “that’s how you catch the muslim bastards.” I shuddered at how loud he said that, given the curry cooking population in my building. Anyway, he replaced my cable box and went on his disgruntled way.

The great thing about getting a new cable box is that you lose everything you’ve recorded! Sweet! So I got to start the whole process over. Flash forward, if you will, to last Friday evening. After a crazy week at work, and after ushering at my least favorite show ever I was thrilled to come home and watch some season premieres I had recorded. I come home, turn on the tv and… nothing. No picture. No signal. Hm. I call T.D., whose pre-recorded message practically tells me the exact street address and apartment numbers of the places in Manhattan where there are service outages, and then says “There are also service outages in: Queens.” For you non-New Yorkers, that’s like saying “There are also service outages in: Chicago.” I get T.D’s apprentice, who tells me that it won’t be long before the service is restored. Surprisingly, she was right.

I pop open a Corona, pick a series premiere I want to watch (“Six Degrees”) push play and I watched the best hour of television of my life. Nah, just kidding. The screen goes blank then flashes a bright blue, the cable box freaks out and everything reboots itself. And as of today I am unable to watch anything I’ve recorded, including several movies I snagged during a free trial period of HBO and Showtime. The service guy is coming on Saturday. I’m going to have some curry waiting for him.

So, no Ted, sadly, I don’t have TiVo and let me tell you, watching tv when things are actually on really bites. Thank god a lot of these shows are available online, but I am seriously freaking out about the Lost premiere. I know not how I’m going to handle that, because I have to work that evening. So if anyone out there is planning on recording it, please don’t erase it until you check with me and for god’s sake no one tell me what happens!

Hope you are well and that your internet is working fine so you can read all this! Don’t worry about me; I've managed to download enough porn to keep me entertained (in five minute intervals) until Saturday when my new cable box arrives.

Up next in Shawn Stories, Verizon Wireless, Prada, George Foreman and Xbox. It’s a strange, strange land, this place called “Astoria.”

The Motorcycle Diaries

2006-09-25T23:19:00.000-04:00

A quick update. I still can’t upload pictures. Not sure what that’s about. Also, an eagle-eyed reader pointed out to me that you had to be a member of Blogger to comment on my blog. I thought I changed that setting, but I guess it was one too many beers that night. All is fixed now, and you are free to comment away.

Ok. When last we left the story, I had just spent my first night in my new apartment. I wish I could say everything was smooth sailing after that. I know it was a huge transition to make, breaking up with Hal and leaving the city and so on, but I really was hoping that I would slide easily into my new life. I couldn’t wait for my home to feel like a sanctuary and a place of peace. While I can truthfully say I am happy when I look at the cute little home I’ve made for myself, it is not a peaceful place. I know I’ve already mentioned the curry, but I have to emphasize this point; it is absolutely overpowering when you walk into the building, and it is as ripe in my bedroom as it is in any middle eastern restaurant. I have nothing against curry dishes (or cookers for all you pc folks out there) but it is truly a horrible smell to wake up to every morning.

Of course, a smell alone does not destroy ones serenity. That is best left to what I call the “motorcycle brigade.” This is a crew of 15 to 20 guys of unknown European descent who own either souped up, big ass Harleys or tiny, raucous crotch rocket bikes. I’ve never been a huge fan of motorcycles ever since I rode one with our neighbor Rick when I was a kid and got a burn on my ankle from the muffler. (Come to think of it, Rick was a little more than helpful while tending to that wound. A conversation for my therapist I think.) Anyway, the motorcycle brigade drives up and down the streets of Astoria at insane speeds and decibels, leaving ear drums and car alarms in their wakes. Time of day is no matter to them, so I’m guessing they don’t have jobs. Sometimes they don’t even bother slowing down for pedestrians, they just weave in and out like little sperm aiming blindly for a target, any target, in which to drop their hazardous dna. One of the things I was most excited about when I first moved here was that a very cute, trendy little bar on my block called Avenue was opening. I welcome those types of places because everyone is safer when there are lots of people mulling about. What I didn’t know was that Avenue was going to become the destination for the motorcycle brigade. Every day when I come home from work, their motorcycles are lined up, one gleaming bike after another (there’s a waxing metaphor here somewhere), and I’m so tempted to just give the first one a nudge and watch them all tumble like dominoes (again, name that movie) and then run like hell before the brigade comes after me. But here’s the weird thing about the brigade. They are the biggest bunch of pussies I’ve ever seen. They’re all skinny Gotti-boy wannabes, complete with the shellacked hair, fake tans and skin-tight shirts over their scrawny frames. If they were walking in Chelsea you would say “hey gurl.” The closest I’ve ever come to being in a fight was 25 years ago when my brothers paid me to fight my neighbor’s cousin, and I could STILL take some of these guys. (By the way, I split Rodney’s lip and then he and I took my brothers’ money and went to the arcade. Good times.) This begs the question then; why do they really ride these motorcycles? Is it to feel the wind blowing through their gel? Or to take on the open road in a nod to their ancestors who bravely came to a foreign land? Or is it to flaunt their alpha-maleness like the insecure lions on a discovery channel show? I’ll leave you to your own conclusion, but I know which direction I’m leaning in.

In an attempt to block all this nonsense out, I decided it was time to use my new, improved bathtub. In April I went to see my good friend Frank in West Palm, and while I was gone the landlord had arranged to fix the wall behind the tub. (You’ll recall the wall was no longer there.) This apparently involved removing the tub, clearing out the debris, putting up some drywall and putting the tub back. I’m sure this was no easy feat, but I was thrilled that it was conveniently taking place while I would be gone for a few days. I prepped my apartment, knowing full well that whatever day laborers my landlord hired to fix the tub weren’t going to care too much about the mess they left behind. I moved most everything into my bedroom and shut the door and tried to cover everything else as best I could. Luckily there wasn’t much plaster left, so there wasn’t much dust to go around. As it turns out, I should have arranged to be here. Upon returning from sunny West Palm to rainy New York, on a flight that was a little stressful (I hate children), I could think of nothing better than lying in my newly repaired tub for a little respite to cap off my mini-vacation. When I take a bath, I like to sit in the tub while it fills so that there isn’t that drastic temperature change that causes your boys to scurry up to your intestines. I was especially looking forward to this because my old tub in Chelsea wasn’t large enough to accommodate even my petite frame, but this tub is mad long and there is room enough for two (albeit skinny) people. So I got comfy in the tub, found a decent temperature, squeezed out a healthy dose of Mr. Bubbles and reveled in anticipation of the glory to come. As the water level rose, I noticed something a little… off. The right side of my body was completely covered, but the left side of my body was dry as a bone. Hmm. Something was amiss. I leaned over the edge of the tub to confirm my fear… they had indeed reinstalled the tub crooked. How this is possible I have no idea, but I now have a tub that looks like there is an uneven stack of books holding it up. This creates two interesting dilemmas. The first is, obviously, that no two parts of my body are covered by the same amount of water at any given time. Secondly, the drain in the front of the tub that prevents over flowing is now dramatically lower than it should be. The glorious water and the delicious bubbles get just high enough to cover my aforementioned boys before the water starts heading out the emergency drain. So if you want a bath… a real, deep all encompassing bath, you have to turn the water on full blast and leave it on the entire time. I’m far too concerned about our planet to do that, so I have resigned myself to having no more baths while living in Astoria. I know you weep with me.

So there is no peace and quiet, no fresh air and no bathtub. It’s like living in the antithesis of suburban heaven, and I don’t even get a Target to compensate for all of it. And yet, dear readers, impossibly there is more. “More” you ask? Oh yes. The best is yet to come. Until then, be well and think of me every time you submerge yourself into a blissful pool of bubbly water. As if you didn’t already.

Installment One

2006-09-23T12:06:00.000-04:00

This first post may be a little lengthy, but I think it will be useful to give you some perspective about where I am in my life right now. That way when the Shawn Stories start poring in you can empathize that much more.

As most of you know, Hal and I broke up in February. I left our diminutive Chelsea apartment, tucked between the pj’s and the gay ghetto, and moved to Astoria, the most ethnically diverse zip code in the country. I do not brag about that. Being skinny, blond and gay, I tend to stick out in the land of over weight immigrants who drive cabs and eat… god knows what. I know, I sound racist, but you all know when you’re in a neighborhood where the other people don’t look like you, you get weirded out. So do I . Anyway, I found this apartment through a broker and when he showed it to me, it was in my price range, close to the neighborhood I wanted (could afford) and it seemed to get good light. So I took it. And thus the Shawn Stories begin.

Hal used to tell me that he didn’t believe in bad luck, and I tend to agree, but let me tell you there must be some bad ass karma in this apartment. Seriously.

The first thing I noticed upon moving in was that it was filthy. No apartment is ever clean enough for you when you first move in… you scrub the cabinets, disinfect the fridge and the toilet and so on, but until it’s your undies on the floor, it’s someone else’s filth and that’s gross. So I cleaned like a madman, and in doing so I discovered one travesty after another. First off, the hair. Everywhere. Of every ilk. Multi-colored cat hair. Human short and curlies. Beard hair. The list goes on and on. In their haste to rent the apartment, they not only failed to sweep or vacuum, but in fact painted over the hair so that it is literally embedded in my walls. (I keep thinking of Craig T. Nelson in Poltergeist screaming “You moved the headstones, but you LEFT THE BODIES!”) The worst was when I went to clean the fridge and found pubes in it. I don’t even know how one gets pubes in their refrigerator, but there they were. OK, so I could deal with that, right? Suck it up with the dust buster and move on.

Then I discovered the stove. Most stoves have four burners on top, surrounded by a piece of metal we’ll call a “range” for lack of a better word. This “range” lifts up so that one can “clean” underneath. Apparently, the previous tenants didn’t get that message. I knew something was amiss when I started scrubbing said range and it bounced. No range should bounce; it should drop clumsily into place with a satisfying clang. But this bounced. So I lifted it up. Mistake number 1. To my surprise, there were several inches… inches… of food detritus. Grease, chicken, peas and noodles are usually not a bad combination, but not here. I touched it. Mistake number 2. My finger literally sank. Mistake number 3. I stayed. So I don the rubber gloves and get to work. Several hours, three toothbrushes and a can of comet later you could give birth on that range. Actually, I think someone had.

I left that night (still living with Hal at this point…comfy!) and began to think I may have stumbled upon a disaster in the making. Little did I know. When I left the new apartment rain was in the forecast so I closed the windows. Upon returning the next day I discovered that my neighbors (and by neighbors I mean everyone else in the 60 unit building) cook with curry. Yummy, spicy, can’t get the smell out of your nose hairs curry. This was cleverly hidden by the broker when he showed me the place. The bastard opened the windows! The floors, doors and walls permeated with it and I sank to the floor in fear. I would be that guy… that guy on the train that smells like curry at 9 in the morning. Seven months in and I still haven’t effectively covered the smell. If anyone has any ideas, I welcome them. I’ve tried candles, incense, oils, bad air sponges, tears and sweat. Nada. It’s curry all day, curry all night and curry in between. Alu Motu Gobi anyone?

I decided at this point to just continue my cleaning so that I could quickly get out of what was slowly turning into an Israel v. Palestine type environment in the Chelsea apartment. When I first saw the bathroom, I thought… “sink, toilet, tub…yep, it’s a bathroom.” It has black tile on the floor and brown tile on the walls, which reveals questionable taste but a practical sensibility. Tile is easier to clean after all. I did shudder at the sight of the tiny sink, but one takes what one can get. So I start the scrubbing. The toilet was surprisingly new, albeit insanely uncomfortable. Rather than perching ever so delicately while doing my business, I sit on what feels like a slab of cement with a hole in it. And my feet don’t touch the floor. But it was clean and christened. I moved on to the sink/vanity where I discovered that the vanity was wasting away to nothing. Years of water damage had finally done the pressboard beauty in and it was crumbling faster than my sanity. I scrubbed it as thoroughly as I could without destroying it and made a mental note to ask the landlord about replacing it. I moved on to the tub. The tub was honestly one of the selling points of the apartment. It is a narrow, but deep, bear claw tub and I happily thought of all the bubble baths I would sink myself (and countless boys) into. I threw some Comet in there and started scrubbing. Next, the black tile. I was looking forward to seeing what the black beauties would look like when clean so I saved this until the end. I grab the broom, start at the back and realize I should probably sweep under the tub too. I’d never had a bear claw tub before, so this was a first. I stick the broom under the tub expecting to hear the gentle “whish” of the broom when I hear… “kcccchhlllk.” “Kcccchhlllk?” I think to myself. I get on my hands and knees to see what is under there. Mistake number 4, if you’re keeping count. Apparently, the water damage spread to the wall behind and underneath the tub, to the point where the wall… fell apart. Literally, you could see straight to the wooden support slats that were probably older than me. The tub is only about two inches off the floor, so I thought “Well, if the wall has disintegrated, where did the plaster go?” So I stick my hand under tub. Mistake number… oh, you get the idea. I touched… something… and quickly removed my hand, took a deep breath, and laid down on the floor to get a closer glimpse. As my head collapsed to the floor in disgust, I let out a whimper and closed my eyes. Surely I couldn’t be seeing what I was seeing. Could I? I opened my eyes and yes, there it was… a pile of dust and debris so ancient and so voluminous it was likely to contain the remains of Jimmy Hoffa. I wasn’t really sure what horrified me more… the fact that it was there, or the fact that it had obviously been there for so long. Who on earth could live in this filth? There were toys buried in the dust (and of course a condom) so whoever it was had a kid around at some point, probably accidental. So given everything that was going on in my rapidly dissolving relationship, and what I had encountered in the apartment thus far, I cried. I admit it, I broke down in tears and cursed god for bringing this upon me. I cried for a while, then put back on the rubber gloves and went to work. Something is wrong with blogger at the moment so it won't upload the picture of what I found underneath my tub, but when things are working again I'll post it.

I left Queens that night in despair. I trudged to the N train, which seemed to be further away than I remember (and still feels that way to this day) and waited. And waited. One of the glorious things about my area of Astoria is that the subways are actually elevated. This is great on those scorching hot days, because at least you get some fresh air. But you can imagine winters, and I’m so not looking forward to it. The more painful aspect of the elevated trains is that the brilliant design team who put them in place failed to connect any sort of audio line from one station to another, so if there’s something wrong with the train and you’re on the platform you have no way of ever finding out. I waited for forty minutes, went downstairs to the token booth where a freshly written dry erase sign said “NO TRAINS TO MANHATTAN.” Delightful. I now had to walk a long ass way to the nearest train to get back to a tense apartment after having dug through piles of pubic hair filled plaster dust. This did not put me in a good mood, and it was not a fun evening.

Upon my return the next day, I was hopeful that I had finally conquered the demons in this apartment and that I was slowly moving towards a peaceful domicile. Then I went to the bathroom to see the fruits of my labor from the night before when I noticed that something was… different. Where there used to be a window was now just a gaping hole in the wall of my bathroom. Sometime during the previous night’s storm my bathroom window blew out, fell onto the bathtub and shattered into James Frey’s book. (A Million Little Pieces…stay with me.) The hours I had spent sweeping and mopping the black tile goodness and carting away debris was all in vain. Not only was there glass everywhere, but it had rained into the bathroom and all sorts of fun stuff found its way in. I’m lucky no bird decided to take residence in my absence. I called my super Hilmy (nuff said) who said that he would be out the next day to fix it. I swept up the mess, and decided it wasn’t worth mopping again until Hilmy had come in and put a window where there ought to be. (Extra credit if you name that movie.)

Moving day. It’s pointless trying to describe the flurry of stuff going on that day, and I get tired even thinking about it. The move itself went surprisingly well, and my friend Gary is a superhero for coming to my rescue in an emotionally bleak moment despite being an hour away and entrenched in a movie. The movers were polite and even assured me that I would be happy in my new apartment. Sadly, the top left leg of my desk was broken (but useable) and I see that as a perfect metaphor for this apartment. Nice to look at, but there’s always the possibility that it will fall apart. (Why that’s a perfect metaphor for me!)

First night. I went to a poker party with Gary, just to be out and about and feel somewhat ok, but of course you can’t run forever. I came home, prepped for bed and stared at the insanity of my life in boxes once again, this time each box packed with memories of a lifetime with someone. I unpacked our – my – sheets, made the bed and tried to sleep. I am a light sleeper, and I admittedly am very sensitive to noise and light. I quickly discovered that there were going to be some sound issues in this apartment. My upstairs neighbor had apparently learned to walk on hot sand because he used his heels at every opportunity, and he was not a small fellow. In all honesty, my lighting fixtures shook when he walked. (He has since moved out. More on that later.) My downstairs neighbor, on the other hand, has an affinity for video games. Hey, I’m not one to criticize, I’m a huge video game fan. At a decent hour. At a reasonable volume. So we’ve got Stompy McStomper upstairs and Bangladeshi downstairs. I’ve taken to calling him that because his tricked out Dodge Neon (replete with spoilers) has that lovely moniker written on the windshield. I felt like I was the meat in a hell sandwich. (Stompy has left. Bangladeshi has honored my request to keep it down. There is good in the world.)

As you can imagine, there is much more to come, but this is absurdly long already. It’s amazing how all these memories come back so readily. Please comment! I would love to hear your reactions to all this stuff.

Check back in soon for Installment Number 2.

Now it gets interesting.

The beginning...

2006-09-23T12:05:00.000-04:00

I've decided to start a blog. I have so little time as it is I can't even imagine why I would want to start a hobby that would occupy even more of it, but I find myself with precious few opportunities to update my friends on what is going on in my life and I think this might be a great way to start sharing more. I welcome your comments, snide or polite, and look forward to hearing more about what is going in with you!