cussin'

"anyway, Luca loves kindergarten... so far and already
has two best friends four stars by her name. When she gets five stars
she gets to pick something out of the treasure chest and there are
rings in there and she needs a new ring, because hers in broken, and
there are lots of things to tell... and they were saying potty words on
the playground so she told miss Rosen that the kids we saying potty
words and that she did too. they were saying "I'm going to suck your
blood" and suck your nose and suck your ear and she said only suck your
blood and didn't like too say it but she did. She only said that once
and also "suck your nose" but then she said she didn't want to say it
anymore. and she didn't pick chocolate milk at lunch time because it
isn't healthy. So I bought her a soda for dinner."

this was part of an email sent to me today by a good friend who was sharing pictures of his daughter's first day of kindergarten. it reminded me of the first time that i consciously swore:

i was in second grade and we were in the middle of a game of dodgeball. as we were lined up against the brick wall of the warming house of our outdoor hockey rink (in north dakota every public school pretty much has both a hockey AND figure skating rink for use in the winter time), my friend jake decided that he was going to swear. i decided that maybe it was time for me to make that leap as well. so, in between dodging those red rubber balls that were pinging off of the wall only inches from our heads, and after a few rounds of, "well, i don't know...should we? YOU do it first!", it happened. the most forced "shit!" ever was uttered. then it was said a few more times, just to work on different variations...

on the guilt-wracked walk back to class after gym was over, i remember thinking that it was painfully obvious that i was going straight to Hell and that mom and dad were going to be so mad about that.

apocalypse now


this huge poster is hanging on a church on havemeyer street in brooklyn. it's totally, totally insane.

it's a bit hard to see in this photo, but it's crazy...there are ballistic missles, suv's, fighter jets,and a tombstone floating in the new york harbor while everything on land is blowing up, including the UN building, which somehow has cracked in half and is falling into the water too.

it's so, so creepy.

that is all.

beach! beach! beach!

ok, ok! i'm back already!

here's a story about going to the beach last week:

so, one day last week, my friend nancy and i decided to go to the beach.


here's some graffitti that i saw while we were waiting for the bus to take us to the beach. someone had a beef with PETA it seems. get it? a beef. ha ha ha...

it costs $16 roundtrip to take the train to Babylon, including the quick bus ride that takes you to Robert Moses beach itself. it's a pretty great deal if you ask me.


our timing was a little off that day so we had to wait for a while for our bus to show up. luckily we weren't in a hurry and we only waited for about 20 minutes. that seems like an eternity though when you know the ocean is there waiting for you to come and swim in it.


hey look! it's us riding the beach bus! it takes about 9 minutes to arrive at the final destination.


as you can see, it was beautiful out. and maybe it was a weekday so there weren't that many people there.

we found this really great part of the beach that had the most amazingly great sand . it wasn't too long before this happened:


and then this happened:


i haven't been buried in the sand since i was a wee small child. at first, i thought it wouldn't be so great. let me now go on record, however, to say that it is one of the most fun things to do ever.


that's nancy's head. awesome.


here's some fancy camera work of her escape.

soon it was 6:15 and we had to rush to get the last bus that for some dumb, annoying reason, leaves at a waaaaay-too-early 6:30. on the way to the bus, we saw three deer eating and looking at us. every time that i go to Robert Moses, i see deer. it's pretty great.


here, sadly, is the view as we left, heading back towards the city.

it was a really perfect beach day. i mean it.

also, i went back two days later with adam and min. that makes 4 beach visits so far this summer. i have 6 more to go to meet my quota.

your fortune told




"very doubtful"

aww, nuts...

friday delights



i just ate this.
it's my own invention.

half coconut + half chocolate glazed = oh my god.

here we go again...

it's soon to be my most wonderful time of the year...



that's right everybody, my all-time favorite show is coming back again (but not for another month!!).

let me just go on record now with my very early prediction of this cycle's winner:



without much to go on at this point, i am picking nicole to win based solely on the fact that she is from Grand Forks, North Dakota. go home state! oh, and her favorite food is shrimp!! this is going to be so awesome.

there's even some footage of what i think is the NDSU dorms or something on her little video.

boy, North Dakota seems to have a strangle-hold this show. this is the second time that a girl from the Peace Garden State has made it on. that's some incredibly high per-capita percentage.

in case you forget, this girl from my home town was on season...sorry, "cycle" three. ha, i just realized that her name is nicole, too. AND her favorite food is shrimp! well, shrimp scampi, but that counts.

are they the same person? these odds are beginning to make me dizzy.

i was initially going to go with Kyle as the winner based on the fact that she is the manager of a Dairy Queen in Wisconsin, but her video was so impossibly annoying ("i just love the beach!") that she had to be cut.

there's also a minneapolis girl, but she has a bad walk and a six pack stomach.

oh, ANTM...how i missed thee.

now with movies!

happy monday lovers!

i just put a little thingy up on the right that you can click on to go and watch some little bitty movie clips of some very random things.

just so you know.

let me know if there are any problems with the whole enterprise?

moments of grandeur



for all the ferociousness of the move that followed this photograph, adam and i still lost the foosball championship this night.

but we did have an amazing late night dinner/breakfast at the Kellogg diner to make up for it.

libby libby libby



today i am going to try to use flickr to host my photos here...i just noticed that i am quickly running out of room on my photobucket account.

if anyone has any troubles with this new technique, please report in from the field.

thanks.

double feature



last night i went to the new IFC Center in the west village to see a double feature that the badass director David Gordon Green was presenting.

every month, this theater is going to have someone come in and play whatever films they want for a night. last night's films were "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot" and "Jeremiah Johnson".

if you don't know D. Gordon Green's films, you should check them out ('All The Real Girls' is one of my favorite films ever). it was pretty easy to see how these two films influenced his work and hearing him talk about it was pretty interesting. the only thing that i hate about him is the fact that he's only 30 years old.

anyways, "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot" is a great movie. click on the poster above to see the trailer and things. you should rent it for sure.

"Jeremiah Johnson" was ok, but i was getting sleepy by the end. the film also broke twice and had to be fixed. it was an old print i guess...

it takes some serious dedication to watch two films back to back, and i don't think that i drank enough coffee beforehand, but it was pretty fun. i'll definitely try to check out next month's installment if it's anything interesting.

the hottest of heatwaves

this weekend was so ridiculous.

on saturday it was 99 degrees. Sam Champion said that the "real feel" was somewhere around 290 degrees.

maybe if i had an industrial air conditioner or a meat locker, i wouldn't have minded so much. having neither of these two things, though, on sunday morning i headed out to the beach with my friend nancy and her friend katie who was visiting from washington d.c.

we went to Robert Moses beach out on long island.

after a quick train ride and short bus ride, we were at the beach.





the weather was perfect and it wasn't too crowded.

we set up our spot and then it was time to swim in the ocean.



except, that, for the third straight time in a row, we couldn't swim in the stupid ocean.



there is this tropical storm/baby hurricane waaaay out in the atlantic somewhere, that is causing these insane, big, person killing waves.

so instead of swimming, you can only go in to your waist and then let the ocean try to murder you. it was fun, and the water was warm, but still, it was no oceanic swimming.

nuts.

all that said, it was still a terrific day. i think that i have even gotten the hang of applying sunblock. as of this morning, i don't have a sunburn at all. huzzah!

one of the nice things about Robert Moses is this great old lighthouse:


it makes for pretty pictures. if you look close, you can see our beach-base there on the left.

here's some things that we ate while laying in the sun:
bagel with cream cheese
pistachios
mike and ike's
pringles
french fries
cookies
melted power bar

all in all, it was a very successful day....

until...

the moment that we got back into our neighborhood and realized that the weather was radically different than it was at the beach.

two seconds after we got out of the subway, we were drenched with rain. it was like one of those old bible story-type rains. and it was cold.

i debated for a moment about whether to ride my bike home or not, ultimately deciding that it might be fun since i couldn't possibly get more wet.

after about 5 minutes, i began to rethink my decision after a million cars splashed me from head to toe as they passed. it was raining so ridiculously hard, and it was so absurd of me to be out in it, that i couldn't stop laughing. luckily i made it home safely.


(one for the ladies)

the only casuality was my phone, whose buttons no longer work. hopefully after it dries out, it will come back to life.

after i dried off and got all of the sand out of my ears, i fell asleep while watching Chinatown.

ahh, sundays...

birthday antix

who here likes really crappy heavy metal?

well prepare yourselves for the awesome internetness of the mighty ANTIX!

the videos are hilariously awesome.

oh, by the way...in case you aren't keeping track, today is my last friday while in my twenties.

get ready for keg stands!!

oh, and come to my party on saturday at enid's if you know whats good for you.

love,
anthony the young

guess what i did last night?

cold springs

i took last monday off to go to the beach with my friend nancy.

when i woke up though, it was crappy and cloudy and only 74 degrees. since that's not really the best beach weather, we decided that it would be better to go hiking instead.

so...it was off to grand central to catch a train to cold springs.



after we got our tickets, the ticket lady told us that we had literally one minute to make it to our train. we ran full speed and jumped aboard just as the doors were closing. it was just like in the movies.


here we are cruising along on the metro north railroad listening to a great bunch of songs that nancy provided.

few things are better than a lovely train ride on a monday when you should be at work.

once we got to cold springs, we wandered around a bit before heading up into the hills. it was at this time that we realized that it was going to be a really hot day and not rainy/cloudy at all.



we found the trail and soon we were surrounded by plants and trees. it was great great great to be out of the city. plus, there weren't any other hikers at all.

we did, however, come across a family (a flock? a gaggle?) of wild turkeys!

oh, and my face kept running into these giant spider webs that were stretched across the trail. yuck. i really hate that a lot. it just makes me freak out.


here we are about halfway up. right before this, we came across a deer eating an afternoon snack.

by now, it was genuinely hot outside. in the 90's.

it was a sweaty hike.

finally though, we made it to the top.



the view was amazing and the breeze up there felt perfect. i took a small nap on this giant rock in the hot sun. it was so relaxing and great.

on the way down the trail, once you were in the tree canopy, it was like a jungle. super humid and hot. all that i could think about was this place that i saw in town that was selling slush puppies.

so naturally, once we finished our hike and made it back to town...

it was cherry slush puppy time. nancy got a lemon/lime that sort of tasted like window cleaner.

then we had a slice of pizza and headed back to the train.

and again, we had to do an incredible last minute sprint to get on board...

once the train started back towards the city, it wasn't long before we both fell into naptime.

all in all, a pretty great monday.

now if i could only make it to the beach again...

this is it

ok, here we are....

my last monday as a twenty-something.

sha-zaaaaam!