MKP-Hearts-NYC

Background:

1. At some point in the distant past, he called me early in the morning on a Sunday (i.e. 10:30) and the conversation listed towards dating philosophies. I apparently told Gigantor "You have to lift a lot of frogs to find a lemon."

2. He has a superhero alterego named Chameleoman who has a goatee, a messenger bag, goggles and lives in Prague. And if you ask him about Chameleoman, he'll say "What?" and pin himself against the wall convinced you can't see him.

3. Since Gigantor is, to all intents and purposes, a boy, I ask him questions like:

Question - on a scale of 1 to lemon, how undate-able do you think I should consider all former Philosophy majors?

His reponse:

Godot

He then asks what specifically led to my query (general prejudice), and we had the following conversation:

Gigantor: Okay, moving right along. I don't think you should write off philosophy in total
en masse, as it were. ad infinitum, oerhaos. Perhaps. die toten. even. well
MKP: but everyone's annoying.
Everyone.
Gigantor: then you shouldn't date them until you find a non-obnoxious person
MKP: There /aren't/ any. Also, do your sister a favor. Never have questionable facial hair.
Gigantor: okay. what about my unquestionably AWESOME Chameleoman gotee? in PRAGUE
MKP....I question it.
Gigantor: CAN'T- SEE ABOVE DESCRIPTION OF SAID GOTEE
MKP: QUESTION
Gigantor: DENIED
MKP: TOO LATE.
Gigantor: PRAGUE
MKP: Trust me on this one. TRUST.
Gigantor: P{
Whoops…wait

MKP: ...is that a pirate? with a mustache?
Gigantor: that looks like an evil genius emoticon
MKP: and you were going for..?
Gigantor: admittedly, just Prague again
MKP: In that case, epic fail.
Gigantor: P{ Evil genius emoticon begs to differ. unintended success. SUCCESS

Last weekend Gigantor finally made it to the big city. He was put on a bus in NoVA with the expectation that it would drop him at Penn Station after a brief stop in Chinatown. Because he is Gigantor, and because the universe finds him amusing, his approach to this great city was heralded by calls such as these:

Me: T, where are you?
T: We're in Manhattan, I think.
M: You can't possibly be. It's only 11:30.
T: But I can see it. It's right there.
M: ....If you can see all of Manhattan's skyline, you are probably not /in/ Manhattan.
T: Oh. Then I have no idea where I am.

*shock*

And once he was abandoned on the corner of Allen and Canal, I had to talk him to a subway to bring him uptown (since I'd bought us tickets to Spring Awakening at 2 and was in the process of freaking out that once /again/ I had bought tickets and wasn't going to be able to use them) which meant doing the unthinkable -- I told him to ask someone which way the Bowery was, and then head in that direction. It was the only way to be sure he wasn't heading deeper into Chinatown! Gigantor being Gigantor, he had no compunction about asking for directions, but gave me a mild heart attack when he was unable to verify that he was crossing over Bowery and going towards the 6 train. I asked him if he saw the Manhattan Bridge arch, a big grey monument that looks like the Arc d'Triomphe, and he said he had no idea what I was talking about. Yes, he was walking around a traffic circle, yes it was the corner of Bowery and Canal.....Was he looking at this?:




"No, Miranda, I don't see any arches!" The world may never know. At any rate, I stayed on the phone with him until I was sure he'd found the R-W station (the steps of which he almost fell down while protesting "Miranda, I don't see any entrance to any subway."). You'll note he never lies...

Anyway, he made it uptown with 20 minutes to spare, we enjoyed the show very much, had dinner, watched the Mets lose an excruciating 14-inning game, watched a little MST3K and overslept Sunday morning. A visit to my cathedral, where they've now closed off the east end, the one with all the chapels in it, and breakfast at Tom's Restaurant (aka the Seinfeld diner aka do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do), and we headed to the Apple store and wandered across a few blocks of a midtown street fair.

It occurred to me while we were browsing at the Apple store that I hadn't made him a reservation for the trip home, and a search on the complementary internet turned up 4 sold-out busses. So we decided to make the effort to get him on standby...but midway through the street fair realized he might just as well go home Monday morning. So we saw Hellboy 2. Which was disappointing. We went home, got takeout, watched MST3K with my roommate, and called it a night.

Dropped him off the next morning after what turned out to be a very serendipitous visit. We talked, we walked, we carried on, and a good time was had by all.

* * * * *

This week I got to go to a fancypants restaurant called Aspen with my roommate as part of Restaurant Week -- $35 prix fixe meal of crabcakes, salmon and a chocolate caramel flan. Mmmmmmmmmm. Aspen is also a great example of how NYC expects its theme restaurants to be executed. There were frosted glass deer heads over the bar, frosted impressions of tree trunks and wooden beams...it was very ski-lodge-meets-Chelsea. Which was appropriate. Because it was in Chelsea.

(Also, I'd like to reassure the Aged P and P the Younger that the Flatiron building is unadorned by a giant ad. Reports of its defacement were greatly exaggerated.)

Tuesday I had Thai food and Tastee-D-Lite with a friend from college who works for the MLB and has actually stepped right up to greet most of the Mets (*envy*), Wednesday I went to see a coworker in a comedy show at Broadway Comedy Club (more on that later. Expect a rant) where we were treated to the delight of Jim Gaffigan, a shining star in the comedic firmamint. [sic].

Last night my moviegoing Mtastic roommate and I saw "American Teen," a documentary about 5 Indiana teens finishing their senior year of high school and preparing for college. The indisputable star was Hannah, the alterna-indie girl who battled depression after a breakup before landing on her feet at least to pursue her dreams of filmmaking. She lives in New York now, so my roommate and I desperately want to find her and make her be our friend. The nerd of course reminded me of..a certain species of male with which I was extremely familiar in high school. They have a bunch of female friends, but any time they try to date one of them, the girl outgrows them extremely quickly. Also, popular girls are mean. Oh high school. What I liked about the film was the way it treated all the kids' tribulations with a little bit of weight, and a little bit of broader perspective. It's that latter part that is borderline impossible for any of these kids, but inescapable for anyone coming at it with even a few years of distance.

If I could do high school over again, I think I'd be much more independent of my peers. Because I got along with my family, and could easily recognize my enemies (um, they were the ones singing the Jenny Craig theme song at me), I sort of took everyone else as a friend, with all the assimilation and adaptation and desperation to fit in that entails. Looking back, I covered up too much to suit the preferences of people who would have just taken me as I was....had I ever just.. been that person.

In hopes of securing a band reunion tour when I go home this weekend, I'm beginning the cycle of healing, VH1-style.

See, once there was a band. They called themselves Jude Happ and they dominated the Guitar Hero airwaves with four-star performance after three-star performance, usually following their less-four-starr-y performances with killer encores and generally being awesome.

Then one of the band members moved away. Both members of this groundbreaking ensemble worked with other people, found new instruments.... and began making band meeting jokes.

The first one began simply:
"Hey, guys, bandmeeting. No, not you."

The second one has become rather epic, assuming ginormous and we may say hurtful proportions and consisting mostly of lashing out over perceived abandonment issues, shredding across the pages of Facebook in blow after blow. To elicit your sympathy and compassion, I recount it below:

Miranda: Um, sorry, but we're already in a band meeting... you weren't invited? Huh.

Gigantor: Well that's weird that you're in a band meeting already, as all of the people who are IN the band are just now going to the band meeting. I guess if you're not coming, you must not be in the band. I guess. Shame. Really.

Miranda: I wish you'd stop pulling me out of these band meetings just to natter at me. We're designing our new logo and I really can't take any more interruptions from non-band members.

Gigantor: Well, neither can I take time out of my band meetings to listen to your logo ideas for your nonexistant band. I have a tour to plan, you know, and we don't need people who aren't band members, i.e. you, cluttering up our bus.

Miranda: This....this is awkward... I'm typing this from Milwaukee, where we're just starting the midwestern leg of our cross-country tour. All our favorite venue managers from the northeast said to say hello to you. We, uh, told them you were out on a heroin binge....

Gigantor: Jeez...we should have coordinated more when you were still in the band. See, I already told all of our venue owneres that you were out /selling/ heroin, and I know that they believe me. I'd call you, but this New York rooftop where we're holding an impromptu and fantastically memorable concert has really bad reception. Alright, I have to go. We finished our setlist a few minutes ago, but the screaming crowd below was willing to wait for the drummer to run to the bus to get more music.

Miranda: Man, you think of that one time we let you jam with us as a band? /Our/ drummer graciously volunteered to bail you out of your desperate rooftop gig, so he's actually driving /our/ bus back over here with the rest of /our/ music. Good luck with your acoustic encore..

Gigantor: Wait...You thought I was jamming with you guys that one time? I hate to break it to you, but I was just helping out for a set because the bar owner said he'd kick you out if someone with talent didn't start playing.

...sometime later...

News-flash! Thanks for getting the drummer out of there, that helped me a lot. I've been meaning to kick him out of my band for a few weeks because of his gross incompetence, but I couldn't work up the heart. Also, a few minutes after he left, the police showed up and arrested him for drug possession and also impounded your bus. A real shame, that. Maybe you can use my band's bus in the off season. Anyhoo, the accoustic encore was such a sucess that our joint record label dropped your contract in order to extend my band to a three-year, five-record deal. Well, I hope you can achieve similar success in the new genre of accoustic rock I just started.

Miranda: Man, where to start.... First off, that bar owner heard about your bout of manic depression and staged an intervention in the hopes of keeping you from the edge, and we volunteered to let you play with us. Also, I don't know where you heard our bus got "impounded." Your bassist left his drugs on our bus, and when the police found out who our drummer was, they gave us an escort back to the Plaza Hotel where we set up for our strictly a-list gig. Also, management called -- your single was doing so atrociously on the rock charts they decided to offstream it into the acoustic genre, and since it'll take 3 years for it to earn back the advance they gave you, they boosted us up to the mainstream chart so as not to clutter up their regular band list. Listen, I'd love to stay and explain the nuances of the music industry to you, but we've got a photo shoot for our next album cover.

....We're thinking of having the whole band (and the back up ensemble, and boy are our singers cute this year) breaking your records in half while symbolically burning your album covers to indicate what we think of your desperate "new direction." Then we have a series of rehearsals to get ready to host the next Rock Hall of Fame initiation ceremony -- they've never had a band host the same year they're getting inducted /and/ going triple platinum, but what I can I say, we break the mold.

Gigantor: So, check it out- that single you were talking about that didn't do so well in America, but it did wonders in Europe! I'm writing this from my exclusive Swedish hotel where we're doing our latest show before we head into south France, and also this a totally legitimate gig with a real record label that isn't going to randomly drop our contract for your band at the last minute. And Ted the actual drummer won the lottery, so we paid off our advance and bought a yacht that doesn't have drugs on it and wasn't procured/built/crewed by any incompetent/crooked/mafia people types at all.

I think seeing as we've reached our respective pinnacles (me) and deep, deep valleys of shadow and death (him), it's time to renew the bond that has been rent asunder by ambition and the insistence on always having the last word.

I mean, my band, the real band, has officially won all the awards. Gigantor's motley assemblage has been exiled to Sweden, and their "drummer" Ted is only moments away from explosion, which will surely sink their hijacked rowboat (which in Swedish, is "yacht"..but only in Swedish.), and you can bet their last duct-taped amp cable they never paid taxes on those lotto winnings...

Let the healing begin.