New York notes

Here are some short points, and then some progressively longer ones.

-USA needed to beat Egypt by 3 and for Italy to lose by 3 in order to advance in the Confederations Cup in South Africa. It was a pretty ridiculous task, and somehow they did it. Charlie Davies scored the opening goal, demonstrating the quick footwork that helped him win Graves-Kelsey 4 times.

-I'm so addicted to my iPod it's awful.

-If I ever have kids, I expect that there will be a point where they go to school and learn US history. And they may study the historic 2008 election, and they may read about Sarah Palin. And they may just ask, "what the fuck?" I'm going to spend the next 30 odd years thinking of an adequate answer.

-The weather here has been Dublinesque. I may overreference places that I've been, but basically I mean that it's been raining a lot and kinda ruining the experience actually.

-Went to dinner with Sarah whom I met in Belfast. She ended up going to Zimbabwe the following semester so that was pretty cool. Found great cheap Indian food, then sweet Irish bar with people trying to play Irish music and a bartender from Derry. Good craic. There are tons of Irish pubs in New York City, which shouldn't be news, but there are surprisingly a lot of Irish bartenders behind them.

-The New York subway has some informational signs in 7 languages: English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Russian, Arabic and one language in the Roman script that I really just couldn't recognize. Outside of airports, you don't even see signs with that many languages even in Europe.

-Been to Chinatown a lot here. Really I've been going to the New York Chinatown for all my life because I doubt my parents have ever taken me to New York without stopping by this neighborhood. In additon I've taken the Chinatown bus, from both Boston and DC, at least half a dozen times, and I still can't fully navigate that numberless maze. But I really like it and I think I'll find myself there a lot this summer. It gives me a great opportunity to practice Cantonese and Mandarin - it's kinda amazing how much of a different country it feels like when you get there. It's actually an extremely multilingual area, with tons of people from Fujian and Toisan and wherever else and I can't make out a word of what they're saying. So many seem to know Cantonese though and nearly everyone some Mandarin, which really makes me feel terrible about my language capabilities. But I can stick to English.

-Went to a comedy show on Friday. This all evolved very quickly with me texting Lissy's roommate Steph asking what she was doing and her inviting me to this show. at the East Ville Comedy Club, the normal $20 entrance fee was waived if you get some promotional codes from freenyc.com, which Steph's other roommate Holly found out about. So I got into this club with nothing but a two drink minimum and heard a bunch of really good comedians. The only other comedy show I think I had ever been to was in senior year of high school at this sketchy bar near the Arlington T stop to see Matt Grzecki perfrom. That was a good but amateur show where a fight had nearly broken out. This club was small and still sketchy looking, all of which made the incredible show even more surprising. Everyone was a professional comedian and all seemed to have bouts with fame. The first guy appeared on Law & Order, another guy is a regular on 30 Rock, and the last act has lots of gigs on Comedy Central. The host was seemingly the only guy without an imdb page and he might have been the funniest, joking about how much of a guido he was and how he walks into clubs in New York and sees people who look exactly like him.

-The last act was absolutely hilarious although he played the race card a bit too much. But he kept making slightly educated jokes and then thanked the "smartest 2% of the club" for getting them. The most educated one of these was a quip about returning the Louisiana Purchase to the French, which I'm pretty sure I learned in 5th grade. I think this implies that only the top 2% of New York passed 5th grade.

-New York City seems to be one of the most unique places in the world to grow up. I don't say this lightly or with that educated a viewpoint, so feel free to disagree. But I think going through the playful runaround-and-skin-your-knees period of childhood in this crowded hyperactive metropolis permanently puts you on a different path than those of us who grew up in the suburbs or the country. Granted, lots of Americans probably overrate New York and assume it to be the biggest and most important city in the world. By population, New York only ranks anywhere from 3rd to 12th depending on what you define a city, and I'm undecided on whether I think Beijing felt more populous or no (it's certainly close). London is arguably a more international city, and plenty of cities have better subways (Seoul), cuisine (Paris), arts (Vienna) or skyscrapers (Hong Kong). Nonetheless, the mixture of all these qualities in the most powerful country in the world truly makes New York special. It might not be as international as London, or it might be its hard to tell (whatever that means), but its definitely more diverse. And New York has the only 24 hour subway in the world, which I honestly believe says light years about the city's makeup. However, this combines to make New York a very difficult city to leave. I can totally understand how a New Yorker would feel visiting Boston - they'd think there was nothing to do there, and even though every Bostonian knows that's bullshit, they'd be right. You simply can't live the way you live in New York, anywhere else in the world. So many of my office coworkers are New York born and raised and after a year of globetrotting, this just seems really unusual to me. Even more common are people raised just outside the city, whether in the Northern suburbs are in Dirty Jersey, and then find their ways in upon adulthood. I want to talk more about this in another post.

-I haven't really blogged about where I live have I? Well I'm on 37th & 6th, near Herald Square. The subway is about 2 blocks away, and work is a quick 4 blocks, which once again shows how charmed a life I live. The area's expensive though, more streamlined for the office day crowd, and as a result we haven't even once spent a real night out nearby. Mostly I've gotten to know the NYU area downtown very well. It's so expensive, even the corner grocery market rips you off. A sixpack of canned Coors Light is $10, and the same of bottled Heineken is an outrageous $15.50. How do I know? Gotta plead the 5th. Speaking of the 5th, that's a cool avenue too. Anyways, I learned recently that Herald Square is actually named after the New York Herald, a defunct newspaper that didn't need the internet to go out of business. There's a small park where the diagonal Broadway hits 6th avenue, and in the park there's a small monument to this New York Herald. I think it is really weird that they would name an area after a newspaper, but I do hope that Boston copies this trend. Cross your fingers and hope the Globe stays in business, but if it doesn't, I think they should create a cinema in its honor. Then when New Yorkers visit Boston and complain, we can say that they should have gone to the Globe Theater. Thank you the top 2% of my blog readers for getting that joke.