Products I’m Boycotting Volume 1

Sometimes commercials are so bad that often times when I see them I make a solemn oath to boycott the products they advertise. This entry was spurred on by my viewing of this evening’s Monday night football match in which several commercials I loathe were aired. The one in particular that sparked was a Dr. Pepper soft drink ad that uses the Fountains of Wayne song, “Stacy’s Mom”. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that Fountains of Wayne write damn catchy pop songs that no doubt have great commercial potential. However, the content of this commercial seemed to run counter to the words in the song. You may be familiar with it. There are several young boys playing soccer or something and then they see a soccer mom in her minivan and she’s got Dr. Pepper and the lyrics “Stacy’s Mom has got it going on…” are heard. My first issue is that I doubt that any of those boys were named Stacy so it didn’t really fit because then they were going after some girl’s mom who happened to bring them Dr. Pepper. Maybe she brought that Dr. Pepper to seduce the young boys in the back of her minivan for a Mary Kay Letorneau-esque tryst. Everyone knows Dr. Pepper is to young boys playing soccer what candy is to trick or treaters or what methadone is to recovering heroin addicts. I mean it’s not entirely impossible that one of the boys is named Stacy. Lest we forget famed actor Stacy Keach and former New York Giants receiver Stacey Robinson (#81). Anyway, the next issue I have with the commercial is the shot to make the soccer mom look sexy. I mean I guess it would’ve been better if the Mom was actually attractive therefore making me think that Stacy’s mom might actually have it going on aside from having a minivan full of Dr. Pepper. For all we know she might decide that she likes Mr Pibb better next week and that would make her a lot less attractive. Anyway, because of that commercial, I boycott Dr. Pepper until they come out with a better ad campaign which they haven’t had in some time.

Here are some other things that I am boycotting because of their lame commercials

Capital One – seriously enough of these Viking pillaging commercials. It wasn’t that funny or interesting when it started a couple of years ago. I get the point, the Capital One card doesn’t have as many fees. So if we use the Capital One No Hassle Card we weon’t get robbed by other credit card companies who charge outrageous fees. I think it would be a lot more effective if these people were being robbed at gun point or in some actually likely scary situation but then they pull out their Capital One No Hassle Card and the problem as alleviated. Vikings pillaging houses in no way reflect my credit card fears.

Coors Light – My hate affair with Coors light began when they started doing those obnoxious football song commercials, which culminated in, “…AND TWINS!”. Now this year they’re another of the 500 companies to jump on that New England Patriots have won the Super Bowl bandwagon. I’m seriously sick of all of these Patriots commercials. I’ve sort of been rooting for the Pats in those Super Bowls but I can’t in good conscience root for them to be in any Super Bowls for the next few years if this commercial barrage continues.

Kay Jewelers – I just really hate most Christmas commercials on account of me being Jewish but this Santa Klaus at Kay Jewelers buying something special for Mrs. Claus commercial is really annoying. The part that gets to me most is when the guy behind the counter asks Santa if the person who the jewelry is for has been “naughty or nice”. There are just so many damned Christmas clichés. You think anyone writing a Christmas commercial just has a list of clichés to pick from instead of actually pulling anything from his or her own brain to write something. Anyway, it doesn’t make a difference to Kay Jewelers if I boycott them or not because I wasn’t going to buy jewelry for anyone anyway., unless you want to marry me. If you want to get married I’ll go shopping in the diamond district or at Zales or Tiffany’s or Fortunoff.

Sam Adams- Aside from never really understanding why anyone really likes Sam Adams beer to begin with I have every reason to hate those commercials where Samuel Adams shows up at the end and tells everyone what a good choice they made by drinking Sam Adams. He’s just in the fucking restaurant during a business lunch drinking his own beer but it’s the wrong century. I would like it more if there were a time machine and he went to other points in time and gave people who needed a beer Sam Adams. Maybe they should get Bill and Ted to pick up Sam Adams in the telephone booth and do that. That would make me like Sam Adams beer a whole lot more.

Okay, that’s it for volume one of that I think I’m done. Though I have this weird feeling I may have previously commented on the whole Sam Adams thing.

What if?

I was sitting on the couch several minutes ago thinking, “What if I didn’t write the normal weekend recap? Would anyone really miss the day by day, activity by activity or inactivity (as that is sometimes the case) that is my weekend? ” It was that thought that made me decide to forego my normal weekend recap today. Though I have to admit the main reason for shunning the recap format for this Sunday night’s posting is that it’s been about 5 and a half days and I don’t really feel like recounting all the important stuff or figuring out what I actually did. Another reason is that for once I’d like my weekend to remain somewhat shrouded in mystery. Sometimes its nice to tell someone how you spent your weekend instead of them telling you that they read about your weekend in the blog. Not that people are going to start jumping through hoops to find out what I’ve been up to the past few days or that it’s that important. I just decided that I’d be less of an open book this weekend. That being said, it was an eventful few days. There was that little thing we call Thanksgiving and a big meal with about 25 people and the night before that I went to the screening for some friends’ sketch comedy at Anthology Film Archives of which I made a cameo in one of the bits. All of those things were enjoyable.

The rest of my weekend was filled with location scouting, Brazilian bbq with my wonderful aunt Jill, uncle Danny and cousins Sam and Hannah, bowling,, drinking with good friends, awkward karaoke and some unnecessary late night drama. I also think I hurt my knee from sitting on the couch if that’s possible. Otherwise it was just a delayed effect from a Friday gym workout. Anyway, I’d be remiss to not mention the football I watched today and how the Giants lost after missing on 3 game winning field goals. That was just a terrible loss. Eli Manning led them back in yet another 4th quarter comeback only so the kicker could blow it. It was emotionally exhausting.

On another note, I have to take issue with HBO this month being completely awful. There are 6 HBO channels and at any time you can find at least one of the following 4 movies, Along Came Polly, Dodgeball, Envy, and Spanglish. I mean the fact that there is 6 HBO channels should give the folks at HBO a forum for showing as many different movies as possible but instead these 4 movies seem to be running on a loop. The first 3 are just a trifecta of annoyingly bad Ben Stiller movies and the latter is just completely horrendous. Every time I try to start watching it I’m appalled by how bad the acting is and how poorly written it is. The poor acting is mostly due to Adam Sandler’s inability to realize that he can’t use the funny stupid Billy Madison voice to get through a movie and he might actually have to portray an honest emotion when playing a character. I also couldn’t find a reason to want to pay attention to any of the story. It just seemed like a bunch of lines thrown together at some points. Anyway, I guess I’m glad that Adam Sandler can have millions of dollars and his own production company (I don’t know why I’m glad so maybe I’m not) but he should’ve stopped at Happy Gilmore, Actually that’s not fair, I kind of liked The Wedding Singer. His manchild act still works within the frame of that one. So to sum this up, I don’t like the 4 movies that HBO is playing on a loop. I realize this is a lazy excuse for a blog but I feel like I don’t have my wits about me tonight and I don’t really feel like typing a really long thing. Maybe I’ll get back on the horse tomorrow and actually talk about some things that happened this weekend.

Jackhammers Aren’t Quiet

It’s 3:32am and whoever is operating heavy machinery within the vicinity of my neighborhood should be familiar with the fact that jackhammers are not quiet.

Satisfaction

Over the last couple of days I’ve been bemoaning the fact that I’ve been sitting in my house at night watching TV and taking up space while all 3 of my roommates have been on dates with the opposite sex. This week the majority of my days have been following a general cycle. I wake up at around 11am and sit around for a bit. My next move is usually to head out to the gym for upwards of an hour to an hour and a half. That part is usually interchangeable with getting lunch. Then I’ve been generally sitting around until bedtime, though Tuesday evening did include a dinner at John’s pizza with the one and only Sean Maddison, as well as Matt Wood and Greg Kessler. I switched up the routine a bit today. Most of the sitting around and doing nothing happened in the early part of the day as I did a little script writing and ordering of the Strangers With Candy Season 2 DVD from Amazon. Unfortunately I had the shipping address on my order wrong so it’s going to VH1 office before it’ll end up in my hands. It was quite the unfortunate error on my part.

My sitting around today was rewarded when Jessica Smith and I made dinner plans over the instant messenger for this evening since our plans for last night fell through due to an unfortunate event requiring an hour wait for a locksmith. We met up tonight at 6:15 at Mo Pitkin’s house of Satisfaction. Both of us were almost perfectly on time, which doesn’t happen very often. I was really glad to see Jess. I don’t think I’d seen her since August where she went on trip to Peru for two weeks, with my brother. So we had a nice catching up meal with good conversation and good food. Mo Pitkin’s has quite the astounding array of cuisine. How different you ask? (Just admit that’s what you were asking, as opposed to “why do I care?”) My dinner consisted of Matzoh Ball soup and Brisket and Jess’s meal was Paella. So basically the restaurant is a mix of Cuban and Jewish food. I have to say, my meal was outstanding. I highly recommend it. I also had a He’brew with my meal. There’s nothing like a hip kosher meal. Plus, they also have a good bar area and a performance area. I should have at least stayed to catch some music but I was full and sleepy and in a food coma afterwards and called it an early evening at around 8:30pm. I’ve got to stop being such an old man. Who wants to party this weekend?

I Am A Real American

I took notice when the WWF superstars released an album and a hit song in the 80′s that stated “I am a real American. Fight for the rights of every man.” That’s why I went out to the polls today and voted my ass off. That being said, I wasn’t familiar with the majority of the people I was voting for. Although voting is a privilege of living in a democratic society I’d have to say while I’m technically doing my part, I’m not really doing my part. If I were doing my part I’d make it a point to know exactly where all of the candidates running for all of the offices stand on all of the issues. Instead, I suppose I’m like most Americans, voting for the big important office with barely sufficient knowledge and voting for the other offices based on party lines. I almost voted for former Subway shooter Bernard Goetz for Public Advocate or whatever position he was running for, for whatever party but I decided against it using my better judgement. He wasn’t going to win anyway. Though that’s exactly the kind of thinking that gets people accidentally elected.

Perhaps, I shouldn’t disclose so much about my voting practices. After all if I told you everyone I voted the idea of the secret ballot would be all for naught and my lever pulling may as well have been public announcement rather than behind a curtain. Sort of like during the 1984 presidential election when after my mom had voted for Walter Mondale I went over to Eric Wolk’s house and told him who my mom had voted for and my mom said that those ballots were secret and I shouldn’t tell anyone. I think that was also the same day she told me I could play in the car and I thought she said I could play on the car, so when she came out of the Wolk’s house I was sliding up and down the car’s front and rear windshield. I also remember thinking that my mom had made a mistake by not voting for Reagan because why wouldn’t you vote for the guy who’s already president? I remember tihinking it was funny that she had almost certainly voted for the loser. Yea, but I was a naïve child on both the political and car sliding fronts.

Anyway, it was a good day to be American and to take part in our tainted electoral system. It was the kind of day that makes you feel like you’ve really done something despite being unemployed and living off the taxpayers. I also involved America in protecting some of my intellectual property so I guess the day was doubly American for me from sea to shining sea.

Birthday-oke

I have to say, it was quite the stellar birthday weekend. I spent the majority of my birthday on Friday sitting at home and trying to download the version of Paula Abdul’s “Opposites Attract” with the MC Skat Kat rap (as previously predicted). I didn’t have much luck. Though I eventually found the video on a Paula Abdul Fan site. At around 7pm Matt Wood and I headed out for a little pre-party meal at Crif Dogs where we met up with Adam Starling, Betsy Van Stone, Noelle Stehman, Anna Mikelson, Deb Miran, and Mike Haigh. After a a couple of dogs and a beer our crew headed to the birthday festivities at Planet Rose on 13th and A in the East Village.

Matt Wood And Noelle Stehmann with the best karaoke performance ever.

I think Mike Haigh kicked off the singing with “Don’t Stop Believin’” though my memories of the evening are sort of fuzzy. Betsy surprised me with her rapping prowess on the Eve song she sung and Matt Wood and Noelle Stehman had did the best version of any karaoke song ever when they did a duet of “Islands In The Stream”. My first of many performances on the evening was Duran Duran’s “Rio”. I think I was a little bit annoying at some point in the evening because I think I joined in just about everyone’s song. Hopefully, I get a free pass on stepping on other people’s spotlight because it was my birthday, but if not, I apologize. Overall the turnout was outstanding. I couldn’t have been happier. It’s always fun to see who’s going to show up and plenty of folks were there, too many to name There’s always a few disappointments when certain people don’t make it but I think the surprises always outweighed the no shows.

“We come together cause opposites attract.”

Maureen Hoban does double her part for world peace.

My favorite moments of the evening I think were my duets with Jess Sabin on “Opposites Attract” and “Somewhere Out There”. Jess even got me a hat with Velcro letters that she had arranged to say “opposites attract” specifically for our performance. It was pretty kick ass. I’m going to have a lot of fun with that gift. Laura Renga also got me a USA for Africa shirt that I almost lost, which would have been tragic, and my brother’s friend Frauke got me an Eels CD, which seemed like an odd choice of a CD to give to someone but it’s a good album nonetheless and is much appreciated. Oh, my brother also got me a shirt that has a picture of a Yeti peeing his name in the snow. So, now I have two new shirts in the rotation, which is ideal since I’m going to have to retire a few soon. Anyway, there was plenty more singing, I performed Lisa Loeb’s “Stay” for the third time in the last several months as well as some songs I don’t remember performing, I think. Around 3am Arby, Jess Rash, and I went to Cheap Shots but I felt too drunk and got a cab. All of that was according to Rich anyway. Apparently, I got a slice of pizza and fell asleep on the couch.

“You Say, I only hear what I want to”

Brothers gonna belt it out.

Just A Couple of Former Ramapo Gryphons Hangin’ Out.

I woke up at 9:30AM Saturday, fully clothed on my couch, at which time I grabbed some green tea for recovery from across the street and then promptly went back to bed for the next 4 hours. When I finally reawakened, I decided to go on a trip to the Virgin Megastore and use a gift certificate I had received the night before. My original goal was to get the Strangers With Candy 1st season DVD and maybe one other DVD but I walked out of there with 4 New DVDs. The rest of my afternoon was spent being lazy and watching the 1st disc of the Strangers with Candy DVD which is seriously one of the most wonderfully politically incorrect shows ever.

At around 10:15pm I met up with Bess Sobota at Rodeo Bar and we took in about an hour and a half of Earl Pickens before heading over to Dip at 12:40 where Erika Greene was celebrating her birthday. we were joined by Joe Dworkin, Sulaiman Beg, Jen Ball, and Charlotte Klein amongst others for about another hour and a half of fun and beer drinking. It was a friendly and funny get together that was marred by a stolen birthday present. Erika had been given the Dawson’s Creek Season 5 dvd as a birthday gift and it was stolen from their table just before leaving. Oh the humanity! We were perplexed by who would want to steal a Dawson’s Creek DVD. Anyway, Saturday night was not as hectic as Friday but it was just the right amount of fun.

If you read this blog regularly you don’t really have to ask what I did today. That’s right I watched football. Though I had to call my family friend Bruce before the games started because we had to square away our weekly football picks. Bruce and I have been picking games against each other for probably about 15 years now. The loser each season has to buy the winner lunch. I owe him a dinner. The only reason I’m mentioning this arrangement is because he asked me to mention it in the blog. Anyway, despite a sloppy game the Giants won and I am happy. It was almost a perfect weekend. The only thing that could’ve made it better was to have a totally hot make out session with an attractive girl. I guess you can’t always have it all. Though I have to be honest, with the amount of liquor I imbibed on Friday I may not have remembered. I guess it’s a good thing that I have a lot of pictures of the weekend, though to be honest Arby and Janet Turley took way too many pictures of themselves for the 2nd straight weekend. Anyway, I’d like to thank everyone for coming out this weekend. I had a fantastic time. I’d love to name everyone one of you in this blog but I don’t want to forget anyone because none of you deserve to be left out. That makes no sense.

Just one of 90 pictures of Rich and Janet on my camera from the past 2 weekends.

28 Minutes to 27

That’s right, in 28, wait 27 minutes (the clock just changed) I’ll be turning 27 years old. Actually if we’re getting technical I think I was born at 11:30 in the morning so maybe I don’t turn 27 until then. This weekend will surely be full of celebration to an extent but I got a jumpstart on the festivities with a classy (and by classy I mean expensive) dinner with the family this evening at Blue Ribbon Bakery. Nothing tastes sweeter than a steak that you don’t have to pay for and for the 2nd straight time it was a civilized outing with the parents devoid of constant argument or hair comments. I have to say though it’s been a largely uneventful week aside from monitoring home repairs on account that I’ve wanted to have some energy left for the actual date of birth party. Though I did go out to dinner with the folks I’m working on the soap opera with after we had a read through with some of the actors. They also told me they were making me business cards. I don’t know why that’s so exciting, but for some reason I’m delighted at the prospect of having a business card for something I’m working on. I worked at VH1 for 3 and a half years and I didn’t have my own business cards. I once took generic VH1 cards and wrote my info on it but since I’m a lefty it smeared all over the card and looked unbelievably sloppy.

So that’s all it’s been for me this week, now I’m ready to let loose for a little karaoke birthday Friday fun. That being said, I’ll probably spend most of my birthday sitting alone in my apartment while everyone works waiting to go out to celebrate. While I wait, I’ll probably practice singing any number of karaoke performance possibilities throughout the house. I’ll probably even download Paula Abdul’s “Opposites Attract” because that’s sure fire top notch karaoke. Anyway, I just felt like posting, I don’t really have that much to say. I could write a meditation on the meaning of being 27 but that would be a waste of time because it would be ultimately meaningless one year later and it be some sort of forced pseudo deep commentary which I’m not interested in making. Ok, that’s it. Happy Birthday to me.

The Geneva Convention

Happy November everyone! Sorry for the delay in posting, but I have a good excuse. While everyone was whooping it up all weekend, and celebrating Halloween, I was away in Geneva, New York, enjoying a different kind of celebration, a celebration of the matrimonial bond between one Lacey Peck and one Scott Jackson. Lacey was one of the first friends I made at Syracuse University and also one of my seven female roommates from senior year. I hadn’t seen her in 2 years or so, though we had kept in touch but I had never met her fiancée, Scott. I received the invitation several months ago and Arby and I had been talking up this long weekend road trip ever since.

With the bride. Married chicks try to kiss me all the time.

Friday Morning at 11:30am Rich arrived at my apartment to begin the journey. We headed for the path train to Hoboken, New Jersey. From Hoboken we took New Jersey transit to Suffern, New York where we picked up my car, which my mom had left at the train station. From Suffern it was off to the highway. From the moment we hit route 17 it was all about the scenery. The drive could not have been easier and the scenic foliage made for a pleasant background to the winding mountainous terrain of Upstate New York. Rich and I were in disbelief that we were going to our friend Lacey’s wedding but were excited at the same time. There was a definite sense of relief about being out of the city in our natural surroundings.

Perhaps the thing Rich and I were most excited about on this trip was the potential for a stop in Syracuse. The trip directions called for us to basically drive straight up to Syracuse and make a left to get to Geneva, and depending on our schedule we were going to make a pit stop at our personal Mecca of Dinosaur Barbecue. Lucky for us, we made outstanding time and it took us 3 and a-half hours to make to Syracuse from Suffern. At 5:30 PM we rolled in to town and after taking a lap around the campus of our youth in the car, we navigated ourselves downtown. We got to our favorite Honky-tonk rib joint and there was only a half hour wait but we were in a race against time. Lacey and family were having a rehearsal dinner with soup and sandwiches between 7 and 9 and we were an hour away and we didn’t want risk being too late and completely missing it, but we also had been too long missing the sumptuous taste of Dinosaur BBQ mashed potatoes and therefore had our priorities in order. We would risk it all for the Dinosaur. Wouldn’t you know it, our gamble paid dividends. Rich and I sat down at our table, didn’t even glance at our menus and placed them at the edge of the table to alert our waitress of our immediate readiness to order. We both got a 1/4 rack of ribs and 2 sides. We were contemplating the half-rack but out of respect for the rehearsal dinner we figured we ought to leave some room in our stomachs. Also, I didn’t want to be in a food coma upon seeing some of my friends for the first time in years. That being said, our Dinosaur detour was like clock work. It was an easy in, easy out operation. Soon after, we hit the highway with the heavenly taste of the Dinosaur ribs and mashed potatoes fresh on our taste buds. Within, the hour, we were at Lacey’s parents’ house in North Rose, New York.

Upon entering their home I was greeted by Lacey, her sister Karley, and my former roommates, Lindsay, Jill, and Kim all of whom I hadn’t seen in at least 2 years. I was also introduced to Kim’s boyfriend Josh who she lives with in Vermont. I was extremely happy to see Lacey’s parents Lori and Gregory Peck; who are definitely high on the list for favorite friends’ parents ever. I also like saying, “I hung out with Gregory Peck this weekend”. Turns out our timing was perfect, Lacey had barely any time to talk to us as she was busy entertaining family and other friends, so about an hour after our arrival, Rich, Lindsay, Jill, Kim, Josh, and I took our respective cars towards Geneva and met up at the Ramada where most of us would be staying that evening.

After we were all checked in, we all met at the hotel bar, also joined by Amy Alsfeld, another senior year roommate of mine at the 211 Clarendon house. The 7 of us proceeded to drink lots of alcohol and catch up with one another. After a few beers it seemed as though no time had passed at all. We were all having a good time in each other’s company as we had 4 and half plus years prior. I can’t tell if the friendly bartenders Shawn and Alisha were annoyed or enamored with us. I would think they liked us, we were having a good time and we tipped well considering the fact that drinks were exponentially cheaper in Geneva than where we all live. One of the funniest parts of Friday evening was when Amy went up to her room to get some CD’s that had songs she wanted to hear. She made the bartender Shawn manually cycle through the CD’s until he got to the songs she liked. 8 beers or so later, I was pretty drunk and it was time to turn in.

I woke up the next morning with a decent hangover but the drive to gather the group together for some breakfast. At around Noon the 7 of us headed to the Waffle Works, after first getting some coffee and/or tea at the hotel, for Geneva’s finest breakfast. I had a Belgian waffle with some weird imitation strawberries but I think everyone else enjoyed their meal to the fullest. Then it was back to the hotel to get ready for the wedding.

Prior to leaving our group was joined by Janet Turley who came up from NYC on Saturday. We left the hotel at around 3:15pm in separate cars. Rich and I traveled together, and I think the majority of everyone else went in two cars. Halfway through our car ride to the church in North Rose, we got a message from Jill, Amy, Lindsay, and Janet saying that they were lost and they went the wrong way. I tried to give them directions but they just insisted on going a different way and said they’d meet us at the Church. Rich and I on the other hand were well on our way to the ceremony, though we were having trouble finding the church. I think we stopped at 3 churches within one block of each other in an absolutely minute sized town. Finally, we figured out where to go and made it two minutes before Lacey walked down the aisle. Kim and Josh arrived just as we did, and once inside we saw our friends Carrie and Monica. Jill, Amy, Lindsay, and Janet were nowhere in sight. Neither was our old roommate Heather, who was supposed to be coming in from Massachusetts (or Rhode Island?). The directionally challenged arrived 2 minutes into the vows and sat behind us for what was to be probably one of the quickest wedding ceremonies in history. I think it took 12 minutes. I think the actual piling out of the church took longer than the ceremony. I don’t know if I’ve ever been to a wedding where each row has to wait for the usher to dismiss it. Jews usually just get up in no organized manner after the couple and their immediate family have left the room and head straight for the cocktail hour. The gentiles run things differently as each row got to go through the receiving line and congratulate and then the next row would be dismissed when the line was short enough. I’m not criticizing, I just was used to getting up and heading to the cocktail hour and a longer ceremony in general. While in the receiving line, Lacey’s dad, told Rich and I that the ceremony and short and sweet just the way he likes it.

Having a dance with Amy Alsfeld.

After the ceremony it was back to the hotel for the reception, which meant more drunken fun with friends and my senior year roommate Heather and her fiancee Dennis showed up, nearly completing the 211 Clarendon cast from the 2000-2001 school year (one roommate Samantha couldn’t make it). The setup was a bit weird as there was an alternating open bar and cash bar. For an hour and a half there would be an open bar, then the next hour would be cash bar, and so on. When there was an open bar, nobody was in the ballroom, and when the cash bar was up, everyone was in the ballroom. That policy sort of backfired because all of the traditional wedding moments seemed to be during the open bar and I think a good majority of the guests missed them. I could be wrong, just us drunken lushes missed them. That being said, the party was a lot of fun, we were all dancing, drinking, and taking pictures with each other. Amy even went up to get her CD’s again so the DJ would play Kanye West’s Gold Digger. Apparently, Lindsay, a dental student was drunkenly lecturing everyone on the importance of flossing. After the party was over, a large portion of us went to the hotel bar to continue the evening. We all slowly dropped off one by one though until I was eventually left to foot the bill for the bottle of champagne we bought, which wasn’t a big deal anyway, as it was only an $18 bottle and if that’s all you’re spending on a weekend night, then you’ve had a relatively cheap night.

From left: Jill, Amy(hidden) Kim, Lacey, Lindsay, and Janet. 5 of these girls have seen me in pajamas.

After the bar, I had a beer with Janet in her room as her and Jill had gotten some beer for everyone to partake in after the wedding was over, but Janet and I were the only ones who partook. Janet promptly passed out after some good conversation and a beer and I was ready to fall down so I headed to my room.

The next morning we all woke up to get brunch in the hotel and ran across Lacey’s parents and thanked them for the weekend, as well as the happy couple. I have to say though, it’s weird when you don’t know the person that your friend is marrying. You don’t really know what to say to them. I must have repeatedly had the same awkward moment with Scott, Lacey’s husband. I kept saying, “Congratulations. It’s really nice meeting you. Good luck.” I wish there was a more natural situation in which we could’ve met so I can develop and honest liking towards him, though I have nothing against him from what I could tell he seemed like a nice guy. Maybe they’ll come down to the city soon.

Anyway, during breakfast Rich and I were formulating our escape from Geneva. The big plan was to high tail it out of the Ramada and make it to Syracuse in time to watch the Giants vs. Redskins at 1pm at a bar on campus. We nearly achieved this goal to complete satisfaction save for the fact that we spent 20 minutes looking for parking. Campus was pretty crowded due to it being parents weekend. Actually it wasn’t that bad. We only missed the first 11 minutes of the first quarter of play. I didn’t mind though, I got to see the majority of the Giants 36-0 thrashing of the Washington Redskins. I’m beginning to think that my favorite team has a fighting chance to be one of the better teams in the National Football League this year.

When the game ended Rich and I were at a loss for things to do on a Sunday in Syracuse so we resorted to our original Plan A…Dinosuar BBQ. After all, what’s better than one trip to heaven? How about 2 trips to Heaven? This time we had all the time in the world so we could get what we wanted. Our friends Paul and Lydia met us at Dinosaur for dinner. It was really great to see them. It had been a few years, and to be honest I haven’t thought of them that much but I was really glad that Rich called them. We had a spunky waitress named Annie who gave us extra chili and wanted to Jager shots with us at the end of our meal but alas we had settled into a food coma after a half rack of ribs and various sides. We parted with Paul and Lydia after the meal and went to rest a bit at hour hotel room before completing our tour of favorite Syracuse spots.

I fell asleep in my unbelievably soft hotel bed at the Sheraton during the 3rd quarter of the Eagles-Broncos game and when I woke up it was over. At about 8pm Rich and I ventured out to the Marshall street area to get an early start on Senior Sunday at Faegan’s. Unfortunately, when we arrived there it was an hour until it opened. So we went back to the Regatta bar in the Sheraton which had been renamed Rachel’s or something. We watched the beginning of the Pats-Bills game there and when 9pm struck we headed towards Faegan’s. There were about 4 people in the bar that were actual patrons and there were seemingly 10 people working there. There was one familiar face in Ted the bartender who had been my trivial pursuit partner during a party at Terra Harper’s house senior year. I think we may have won that game. I had 3 or 4 drinks in 3 and a- half hours give or take as all of the good food I had eaten over the weekend left precious little room in my stomach for beer. I was fighting the urge to just go to the hotel and go to bed for most of those three and a half hours. Rich kept me afloat by saying that we were at Faegan’s and when was the next time we would be at Faegan’s. Touche, Rich. Touche. That being said, Ted had told us that the crowd’s at Faegan’s weren’t as good as they used to be. Especially, for senior Sundays, which was really sad seeing as we frequented that bar on all nights except for maybe Monday. Oh how the times have changed.

This morning we woke up with three things to do before leaving. The first thing we had to do was get Syracuse bottle openers at Manny’s. The second must on our list was to take a quick stroll to the quad and Newhouse, and third and certainly the most important to see if longtime supermarket employee and former floor mate Mark Cohen still worked at the local supermarket Peter’s (is for people). The first two were taken care of with ease but when we pulled up to the site of Peter’s (is for people). We were amazed to see a change. Peter’s(is for people) was no longer Peter’s(is for people) but now a P&C Foods (not for people). This cast doubt on my prediction of Cohen’s lifetime fate of Supermarket worker and my doubt was proven when I did not see him behind the fabled glass counter, for there was no glass counter to stand behind. My trip to Syracuse was complete and it was time to come home.

The drive home was relatively painless. Though we must’ve driven by eight cops and my caution level was increased causing a slight decline in my driving speed. That being said, save for the stop at Wendy’s in Deposit, New York we still made pretty good time. We hopped on the 4:18 train from Suffern to Hoboken and I was back in my apartment by 5:30pm where I found out that my hot water isn’t working. It’s good to be home.