Posts with no comments make me sad.
As I come to work early, I find the commenting day doesn't really begin until late morning.
I once hid in Grand Central Station Terminal from what appeared to be a monsoon. As it happened, I was also hungry at the time. I can with confidence recommend against eating there.
And what did you do with the five dollars you found?
7: With the five dollars I found I could not afford to eat there.
Did that make you sit down and weep?
I reserve my tears for the suffering of innocent children.
From what brief googling I've done, chris and M/tch are either making a Biblical reference or an Okkervil River one, and either way I have to go to a meeting now.
5: Sometimes I like the Oyster Bar.
12: Sure, because of reciprocity agreements and the easier test.
11: Reference to novel by Elizabeth Smart. Which I have started twice and like but can't quite get into. A five dollar bill makes a perfectly good bookmark, it turns out.
The Oyster Bar is great, but LOUD -- two people can talk if they're willing to shout into each other's ears, but a tableful, IME, can't have a conversation. But if people wanted to talk me out of this position, I love seafood.
But if people wanted to talk me out of this position, I love seafood.
WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU! IT'S TOO LOUD IN HERE!!
A five dollar bill makes a perfectly good bookmark, it turns out.
Sure, if you're profligate and a wastrel.
But if people wanted to talk me out of this position, I love seafood.
With a side of biscuits?
I love the oyster pan roast, but it's not a meetup location. I can do Wednesday or Thursday.
Actually, when people aren't arguing with me about how loud a restaurant is, I find fish distasteful.
If memory serves, I have found two twenty dollar bills, a ten and a few fives (at various times, not all at once).
Well if the answer isn't Grand Central Station, then it must be Nobu.
Subject to numbers, this little sushi place isn't far from Grand Central (or the Midtown Comics GC branch, it occurs to me), but people might prefer running down the 6 to Union Square.
Funny, I remember that conversation, but forgot the Nobu story that started it. Which is very funny. (And I, too, had my best ever summer associate lunch at Nobu.)
Nobu isn't the planet in the new Star Wars movies with that Rastafarian underwater creatures and Jimmy Smits?
Reference to novel by Elizabeth Smart.
Oh. I must not listen to enough Morrissey.
The novel's title is a foretaste of Smart's poetic techniques: it uses metre (it's largely anapaestic), contains words denoting exalted or intensified states (grandeur, centrality, weeping), and alludes to a canonical work (Psalm 137) with metaphorical import for the novel's subject matter. The book has gained a cult following, and has been referenced many times by the British singer Morrissey.
I must not listen to enough Morrissey.
Undoubtedly not. And it's very hurtful to him.
Allow me to be the first to suggest Fresh Salt.
Allow me to be the first to suggest Fresh Salt.
It's not wildly inconvenient from the 4-5, but not really close either.
Actually, right in Grand Central? It's not cheap, but I do like the Campbell Apartment. I think we'd need a reservation, though.
I like the Campbell Apartment, too, which isn't very noisy if you are in the inside bit (and the inside bit is the nice bit).
There's the Blarney Rock on W. 33rd
A truly cosmopolitan meetup could be had at the UN, which is sorta kinda nearby. Bonus points: a dip in the East River Tidal Strait!
The Algonquin is right by Grand Central but drinks are a fortune and the pressure to say something witty is almost unbearable.
Bonus points: a dip in the East River Tidal Strait!
Homophobe.
Somehwat relatedly, if memory serves, oudemia invented a cocktail named the East River. You could drink those.
The Algonquin is right by Grand Central but drinks are a fortune and the pressure to say something witty is almost unbearable.
Honestly, being witty at the Algonquin is pretty trite.
I was awkward and humorless at the Algonquin before it was cool.
Being drunk and witty is an accomplishment, though.
Sure, if you place no value on originality.
37: I think it was a Manhattan to which I had added a dash of cassis? Maybe it had lemon in it too? But *you* named it, good sir.
I'm finding the concept of wittiness without originality difficult to get my head around.
41: I'm pretty sure sober and stupid has been done, too. But! Maybe no one has ever held a Kantian dinner party there.
(Yeah, holding it at a public place falls outside his guidelines, but ole Kant was a reasonable man.)
Of course you would be original in your witty remarks, but the total witty situation—drunk at the Algonquin—would not be original. Really, nothing could mark you out as a yokel from the provinces more swiftly and more certainly than engaging there in sparkling exchanges.
Nosflow reveals himself as the ultimate yokel by failing to understand that being drunk and witty at the Algonquin, while perhaps once horribly passe, is now again completely acceptable.
Indeed, un-originality and provinciality are not the same thing -- except, perhaps, in the mind of the provincial!
45: Ironic yokel from the provinces is next up in the hipster-trend queue, I've heard tell.
You would have a point, Rob, except that my conception of yokelness is extension-determining.
45: Of course you could just go into the fucking place, have a drink(s), talk about whatever you fucking want to and quietly appreciate the history. But I guess that would be far too ingenuous.
No, it's ruined forever. It's like that thing about loving someone madly from the afterword to The Name of the Rose. There is no innocent Algonquin, anymore; we know too much, and one of the things we know is that we know.
How shall we ever be free again?
Or you could have a neb/Stormcrow throwdown!
I mean...on the occasions I've gone there, I hope you will not imagine I sat there, frantic, thinking "what barbed insinuation can I mutter that will make me seem most like Dottie?!" There's a certain amount of determined cleverness that happens at a meetup whether it's at the Algonquin or Grant's tomb, and that's all as it should be. Why should witty people not exercise their wits? I suppose I mostly said it about the Algonquin because its a place whose cultural resonances, trite or no, are dear to me.
You could have a meetup at the Algonquin with the precondition that none of the attendees speak or drink at all. Perhaps make mime makeup mandatory?
53: And at no point would anyone be allowed to sit in a circle.
But the pressure to mime something witty would be almost unbearable.
I mean...on the occasions I've gone there, I hope you will not imagine I sat there, frantic, thinking "what barbed insinuation can I mutter that will make me seem most like Dottie?!"
It's possible. Neb's taste is slash fiction is pretty esoteric, after all.
54: yes! Sober mimes in a motionless line. My goodness, you'd light the town afire.
55: Miming as if one is under pressure is right up there with "trapped in an invisible box" for triteness.
Or you could sit on the floor and make exlusively stupid, mindless puns. The Algonquin ground table!
58: trapped in an invisible box three miles beneath the surface of the ocean!
59: Miming shaggy-dog stories. "I get it! You're tipping a Rary!" "[Head nod and finger pistol point.]"
The puns are fun when slaughtered by Huns.
What is 1 million barrels of oil, Alex?
Not to derail things, but there are other hotels, presumably with bars, on the very same block as the Algonquin, if people are really intimidated by the sidecar-slurping shades of the alcoholics d'antan.
I stayed in the Algonquin once because it was cheap, but I didn't have a drink or exercise any wit there. I felt a little bad about not relishing the history more, but I didn't realize that I was just fulfilling my proper role as a yokel from the provinces.
Wherever you go, watch out for Little Mean Men.
I've made a decision. You're all going to the Algonquin. Date and time TBD.
['*shrug*; worked last time']
['*shrug*; worked last time']
Also worked when I totally did it first. You!
I would attend, but I'll still be out here in the provinces.
70: If we stay away from green beans and celery, we should be safe. Nothing can give you the rams like bad celery.
75: Although the idea of being attended to by a personal beaver doesn't sound so bad.
69: I thought "sipping" was the word that a second-rate freelancer for the NYT travel or one of those ghastly Slate travelogues would use.
Despite having been a huge Dorothy Parker fan in my youth (I suppose I still am, but there just isn't anything else of hers to read. I'll recite all four verses of "A Song Of Perfect Propriety" at the drop of a hat, and then drink heavily to forget the implicit evaluation of my life therein, though), I've never been to the Algonquin. So I'm just as happy.
If we can settle on Thursday, that's best for me.
Hi, all. I'm looking forward to meeting everyone. The Cambell Apartment is good on the location, but seems a bit strict on the dress code, and I don't know how flexible they would be on numbers if we need a reservation. Is there someplace a little more casual nearby that would work for a meetup? How does the Algoinquin stack up on these issues?
Since I'll be the stranger to the group, there's a picture of me on my web site linked to this comment, so you guys can recognize me while I'm wandering around wondering which group wants to sex Mutambo.
Right, I'd forgotten the Campbell Apartment was a no-sneaker zone. Dunno about the Algonquin.
I don't think that the Algonquin has a terribly strict dress code, but one would want to placate the shades of alcoholics d'antan by not looking, say, like one had wandered off the beach. That's about as formal as I remember it being, though.
The Algonquin excludes people not by dress code but by drink prices.
83: Their drinks are priced in some hard-to-find currency, like the Italian lira or something?
83: You mean expensive by NYC standards? I still remember how shocked I was in 1980-something by a vending machine in a nice NYC hotel. They wanted a whole dollar for a can of Coke.
Yes, expensive by NYC standards, although probably not by NYC hotel-bar standards. Probably double, at least, what you'd pay at normal places ("normal" meaning "where I'd drink" meaning "Fresh Salt.")
Fresh Salt is nice. We could go to Fresh Salt.
What's so great about Fresh Salt, anyway?
Also, salty. The freshness, that is.
I get that, but what's so great about that?
I got nothing. Look, it's a bar. It's not too loud, the drinks are drinks, the food isn't bad, and it's easy to get to. What do you want from me, blood?
We could also go someplace in the East Village near the 6. I wish I knew more bars, but I usually drink in Brooklyn these days.
Fresh Salt also seems reliably to keep a Sixpoint on tap, which is nice.
94: I just hardly go to bars at all these days. I was at 75 Wall last night with work people -- they mix a perfectly good Manhattan (although their standard is bourbon rather than rye, which seems wrong to me), but they're expensive and everyone else in bar appears to be a broker. Not that I can complain about the company given that I'm a lawyer, but one does try to maintain standards.
Fresh Salt is a very nice bar for conversation, unless it's too crowded, which it rarely is. It's a perfect small bar. No TV, good music not too loud. Other bars tend to have problems.
But seriously, I don't think there was any great enthusiasm for the Algonquin. Fresh Salt is three stops on the 4-5 (Broadway-Nassau/Fulton -- I think that's three stops) south of Grand Central, and then maybe four blocks walk, which seems reasonable for the location constraints. If there are no other objections, I say Fresh Salt after work next Thursday.
Anyone want to make trouble about it?
I don't think there was any great enthusiasm for the Algonquin
I was highly amused that anyone was running that ball down the field.
(Kobe.)
Beware!! New York and New Yorkers. Both are grossly infested and communicable.
"Many people are unaware they have the bugs, officials said, and end up spreading them by carrying them on their clothing or discarding personal items that have the bugs.
Travelers also need to be more vigilant, the city says. "
Ready to replace all your clothing and cloth items, rugs, curtains, furniture? Can you afford to take the chance of having contact with a New Yorker?
True. Dave, you might want to think twice about the meetup. You could catch anything in a city like this.
102:So is the strawman dead yet?
Not anything. But a significant chance of catching bedbugs.
Maybe, 1 in a million chances of catching HIV or pneumonia, and then only under very specific circumstances.
Bedbugs? 6-10% chance. High enough that the EPA is having an emergency summit.
No other cities are mentioned in the link at 100, which I recommend you read. Just read it.
Or you can listen to the New Yorker.
Absolutely, dude. Read the link. Bedbugs really are a problem in the city.
How much to you tip an exterminator?
We let them keep anything they kill.
25% of Hotels in Charlotte!
Once thought of as mainly afflicting the poor[citation needed], bedbug infestations have also affected the rich. Many of Manhattan's Upper East Side home owners have been afflicted, but they tend to be silent publicly in order not to ruin their property values and be seen as suffering a blight typically associated with the lower classes.[68]
So we have no idea how widespread the infestation is! No idea!
Bed bugs would seem to have all the prerequisites for passing diseases from one host to another, and at least twenty-seven known pathogens (some estimates are as high as forty-one) are capable of living inside a bed bug or on its mouthparts, yet there are no known cases of such transmission. Extensive laboratory testing indicates that bed bugs are unlikely to pass disease from one person to another.[34][35]
No known cases...yet! Watch Animal Planet Monsters Inside Me for updates, or visit their informative website.
Watch Animal Planet Monsters Inside Me for updates
This one is good. "Alien Invaders", not so much, but I did like the feral pigs.
So we have no idea how widespread the infestation is! No idea!
Also, some of us are unclean enough that one just doesn't notice a new set of infected insect bites in amongst the rat-bites and so on.
Those were rat bites? I assumed the New Yorkers were biting each other over who got the taxi or seat on the train.
You can tell the rat bites because they're less likely to be infected. People's mouths are filthy.
Of course, before Giuliani you'd have gotten shot before you could catch TB and die.
Can't you get special mattress and pillow covers that prevent bed bugs? Shouldn't NYC require that of its hotels? Wouldn't that take care of the problem?
Not if you won't let the maids into your room or tip them anything, Brock.
||
I realize that this is a bit of Liz-Lemon-esque but-there-are-rules! craziness, but I am getting ready to smack the jag two rows up and on the other side of the aisle from me on this train who feels he ought to watch tv shows on his laptop without the benefit of earphones. I can hear all the dialog perfectly -- it's the animated Clone Wars series, so lots of pew!pew! and exploding. Sheesh.
|>
113: You're right. Amazon has them and they don't seem very expensive. I've learned something today, despite my best efforts.
Smack. That's for making me learn something, Brock.
117: I hate him. He's constantly policing the volume up and down, so I hear his show (now the Star Trek movie) plus the loud Erp! Erp! Erp! of the Apple volume control.
A guy like that occasionally blared his youtube videos in a cafe I frequent. I share your hate, and focus the full weight of my disapproval upon him.
Oh god the loud Apple volume control. That is seriously a smacking offense.
Ok, I'm done. I only hate for two minutes at a time.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a hand toggling an Apple volume control up and down, forever.
101: I abandoned my cheap mattress when I left Allston, because the place is notorious for its bedbug infestation.
123: To be fair to Orwell, he couldn't have imagined they could make a "boot" so cool that you would pay for it of your own volition.
||
Tories (and Liberals) kill UK Film Council>/a> dead.
Link is to movies produced since 2003.
If you care, you can find the website for all the other activities.
Renaissance of UK Film. R.I.P.
My heart is broken, my rage unbounded.
|>
I just caught up on this thread. Relieved at the Fresh Salt turn of events. I just brought up the Algonquin as a pretext for silently reciting "The Red Dress" to myself. I like thinking about the Algonquin, but sometimes not so much paying $16 for a martini. So hooray.
What's good about Fresh Salt is that we like it.
101, 102: The line I love from that article was: "Bedbugs were nearly dormant for decades, and the recent comeback has experts scratching their heads." Perhaps the experts should check for lice as well...
Otherwise, sure, Fresh Salt on Thursday sounds good to me. What time would "after work" suggest starting?
129: I trust it is - I'm planning to meet you all at Fresh Salt Thursday night. Technically it's later today, but I still follow the opinion that it doesn't count as a new day until I've slept...
This guy hates New York City. Was a Wall Street quant for 3 years, now lives in techy North Cali.
Oh God, I love it. I may quote from it all day.
Counterpoint, bob: Silicon Valley is a sterile suburban hellscape.
I greatly enjoyed this link from that article.
I'll be there. This is probably my last NYC meetup for a while.
Oh hey, tonight! Well, sure, why not. I'll bring cards, just in case I get lucky.
You leave a calling card on your way out in the morning?
All I can say is that when Jack plays bridge, she plays for keeps.
I'm planning on coming.
141: You'll be the one waiting outside the door for a long long time, right?
What a shame AWB won't be there -- the "I'll have a... beer" joke works for both of you. And happy birthday, M/tch!
Has AWB found her way home? I saw this and I was afraid she 'd get lost.
"Look at this country of England -- a small island in West Africa. These people made weapons and ships; they attacked people; they subjugated India, whose area is ten times the size of England, whose population is tens of times larger!"
143: Thanks! What's the "I'll have a... beer" joke? Don't make me go to Standpipe's blog on my birthday.
...and the bartender says [to the bear], "Why the big pause?" Happy birthday.
146: Heh.
Too bad there's not a regular commenter with the pseud of "Grasshopper" attending, because then you could tell the "There's a drink named after you" joke.
Or a "Giraffe", to say "The highballs are on me!", though I guess any freakishly tall commenter would work.
Shame Labs isn't in NY, or posting anymore. I haven't met Flippanter, but isn't he Labs-class, in height at least?
150: Good. Then everyone can do the "Who's round is it? Oh yeah, it's his turn!" joke.
148: Yeah, I get that one a lot.
Oh yeah, it's his turn!" joke.
my = we
154: How about "Oh yeah, it's his lot's turn"?
Do I mistranslate "my", self? Very well then I mistranslate "my", self, (tkm is large, he contains multitudes.)
134: This is probably my last NYC meetup for a while.
Right. Makes me more sorry to have missed you at the February one. I will be in NYC in late October (20-22), but am sensitive to NYers not feeling the need to have a continual meetups just because they live in the most awesomest, bestest city evah and everyone goes there all the time.
These meetups are my social life, Stormcrow.
NYC meetups should keep happening regularly so that one of these days I can stop being such a lazy bum and make it up there for one of them.
The meetings will continue until morale approves. Wait, that's just something my boss says.
157, 158: If you insert 'non-family' in there, works for me too.
Anyone here yet? It's crowded, and the group with the most "meetup vibe" has denied being it. I'm the guy in a white print shirt with boats.
I'm the guy in a white print shirt with boats.
You're the guy with boats? Well, I certainly hope you brought enough boats for everyone, mister.
Drink up, meet-uppers. Discuss important things. Make bad puns. No knife fights (I'm looking at you, LB), 'cuz the Man is less tolerant of that sort of behavior these days.
When does the drunken liveblogging begin?
The liveblogging is so drunk, they're unable to find the "post" button.
Is it too much to ask to have one fucking knifefight liveblogged before I die?
"Woo, London! Okay, I'm stabbin-----------------------------------"
Is this the end of Stratford meetups?
Okay, that was a fun meetup. Dave W and Pause Endlessly were big hits. The conversation followed the logic of a comment thread to a tee, including a perfectly timed cry of "I miss Ogged!" (But you all knew this already.) And let me be the first to say that Fresh Salt is a surprisingly charming bar.
That was indeed a fun meetup. Many thanks to LB for organizing it. It was great to have a chance to put faces to many of the names I've been reading for years. And it turns out that I was the first one there, followed by Pause Endlessly and then a big rush of people all arriving fairly close to each other. Playing bridge with LB, JM and P.E. was fun. Fresh Salt was indeed a good location, although we were lucky to get a big enough table to accommodate everyone. The place was packed when I arrived around 6, and I managed to grab a table that opened up just before everyone else arrived.
Pause Endlessly
I am mildly shocked by the informality with which you are now addressing Unfoggetarian, Pause Endlessly and Then Go in (9). Does going to a meetup mean that you get to use the tu form?
The Honorable Mr. Halford, esq. will only say "et tu?" after being stabbed.
Also, my suggestion for "card games to play when you're too drunk to play bridge properly," was Fluxx. (Manufacturer's page here.) The game is random enough that being drunk isn't necessarily much of a disadvantage, and wild enough that it might add to the enjoyment of the game.
173: the Elsinore meetup had a good venue but ended up not going well at all.
"Whom do you meet, my Lord?"
"Lizards, lizards, lizards."
No more etc. to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
I am not finding the news. Are you sure TS is gone?
I did the same google, but I don't think that's what ajay meant -- it was just an R&S are dead joke.
187, 188: So did I! Kind of funny in a grim way!
As a representative of the Alliance, I suggest that in an excess of caution we refrain from all activities in relation to TS until we receive positive confirmation that he is still among the living. Thank you!
CAN YOU SUGGEST AN ALTERNATIVE CEREBRAL PLAYWRIGHT SO I CAN FINISH THIS THING OFF? DON'T LEAVE ME HANGING HERE, DUDE.
The Honorable Mr. Halford, esq. will only say "et tu?" after being stabbed.
It is the most intimate relationship in which two men can stand.
TOS: Tony Kushner is alive and well and would probably be flattered or at least a good sport about it.
||
Because I have the prudish heart of a Iranian Ayatollah, I have never really given Hung half a chance. But now that I understand it is all about the class war I may fire up my DVR
|>
I haven't met Flippanter, but isn't he Labs-class, in height at least?
I'm just kind of big-boned.
176: Well, that is the way he was introducing himself at the meetup, although I may have taken too much liberty in further abbreviating that to P.E. It's my understanding that one may adopt the tu form if the other party initiates it.
