the nightmare before christmas

 i've previously mentioned that i love christmas. adore it. this time of year is magical. you watch movies like home alone 2, elf, miracle on 34th street, and they all make nyc look perfect during christmas. and ive subscribed to this for years.

yes you expect nyc to be a certain kind of crowded. you are never going to be standing in rockefeller center alone like kevin, talking to the tree. however, what i experienced on saturday was something like i never imagined. it was less home alone 2, more titanic.

women and children first to see the tree!

phil hates the city. and ive been mentioning that all i wanted to do was see the tree with him at least once and do a christmassy themed day. he surprised me by saying he was up for it and we could do whatever i wanted (score)!

we started our adventure on 34th street by macys. there was a crowd by the window that made it impossible to fully appreciate the story the windows were telling. but the small glimpses i saw were pretty magical. maybe saks 5th ave is on to something by creating an actual line to view the windows? or maybe thats just ridiculous too.

we walked over to bryant park next. you could barely weave through the crowds and around the shoppes lined up. as usual the free skating line was about a 4 hour wait. phil saw the tree there and i told him to just wait until we got to rockefeller, it was so much better.

we ventured up 5th avenue towards the tree and i decided that i didnt want to stop and look at the tree because it was still day light, so it better that we eat first. we ate on 51st street between 5th and 6th (only 2.5 blocks from the tree). when we were done, we walked outside and headed towards the tree. this is when my life became titanic (and there was no leonardo dicaprio to save me).

what do you mean the tree is still a block away?

the crowd was something like ive never seen. thousands of people squished onto the sidewalk. women with strollers and newborns, fathers with toddlers on their shoulders, foreigners trying to lead groups of people in both directions. it was awful, but we eventually got close enough to the tree to ask someone to take a decent picture. on our way out of the madness is when it got, quite frankly, horrifying.

our first, and probably only picture with this tree.

there was this one woman wheeling her daughter (and honestly, strollers should be banned by the tree during christmas week, it is not only dangerous, but really impossible to move around and your 3 month old does not need to see the tree), the kid couldn't have been more than 4 months old. and the crowd started pushing (the type of push that happens at a general admission concert when you have to plant your feet and stick your ass out so no one topples over you). this woman lost it. she said, and i quote "if anyone of ya'll hit my daughter i'm gonna fucking punch you in the face. but if i punch you i'll be considered ghetto, right? fuck you all just back the fuck up! and i lost my god damn man too!" i knew we were headed for trouble.

this picture doesn't do the crowd justice.

next, a woman literally body checks phil (lady the rangers are playing a few blocks over, this is not a hockey game). i had to refocus him and tell him that we needed to get out of the crowd. kids were literally crying, telling their parents they were scared. i saw a girl on her dads shoulders just crying saying she hated the tree. i heard a women yell "i have a child" (similar to billy zane when he tries to get on the women and children only life boat). cursing, crying, screaming, hate for all man kind - the things christmas movies are based off of, right?

after we saw the saks 5th ave light display about 10 times, we were finally ONE BLOCK further. we cut up a side street to try and avoid some crowds, and it sorta worked. but they eventually caught up to us again. i looked across the street and saw a police officer on HORSEBACK. as if this situation wasn't dangerous enough, let's throw a horse into the mix.

fucking horse.

we obviously made it home safe, but it was a christmas nightmare. my recommendation would be to not go on a weekend, maybe avoid nighttime altogether, maybe just watch it on tv. the tree is lit for 24 hours on christmas. maybe if you go at 3am to see the tree you can have your kevin mccallister moment. thats my next plan anyway.

he is alone. this is a lie.

merry christmas ya filthy animals!

http://prollytrue.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-nightmare-before-christmas.html

am i too old for this shit?

start of the night

i am not a party'er. wait, let me re-phrase that. i do not party every weekend, so when i do go out with the intent to party, i really just go for it. balls to the wall. this past saturday was my sisters 21st birthday. apparently car services are afraid of 4 inches of snow, so we had to wait nearly 45 minutes for a minivan to fit 9 people. tight ride.

we ate some apps, drank some drinks, and sang happy birthday at the first bar on our stop. when said sister got 'bored' we decided to skip the second bar and head straight for the third bar on our list.

8 beers and 3 glasses of champagne later, im standing in, what is now freezing rain, trying to hail a cab to get to some grungy lower east side hookah bar. literally walking across three lanes of traffic, stopping buses, cursing at 2 people who got into a ford escape (we were 5 people and the fucking prius wouldnt take us, so we NEEDED that truck) and yelling at a guy in an elf costume to help his santa friend who had fallen down drunk in front of the bar, all while holding onto my champagne glass that i had snuck out of the bar. FINALLY, we get into two cabs (where i rode shotgun for no reason because it was just me and one other person in the cab, everyone else hopped in the 2nd one).

i walk up to the hookah bar and the woman asked me, "what are you doing here?". im sorry, do i know you? like are you surprised to see me out? am i really that much of a homebody that strangers are shocked to see me out after midnight? but alas, she was just checking to see if we had a table reserved.

we ordered two hookahs, some more drinks, danced to some middle eastern music (until it turned hip hop as per my r&b loving sister), and had a really good time. at around 3am  i ventured back outside in the rain to hail my final cab for the night. after some failed attempts (that my mother claims was because i looked like a lunatic and cabbies didnt want to stop, this is nyc, everyone is a lunatic), we were on our way home. our driver, traiforum from west africa, was super nice. he showed me pics of his 3 sons and wife. i told him if i hit the $550 mega mil, id give him $3mil. 

i got home and something came over me, something that comes over a lot of us after a night of super drinking. you become ravenous, youd eat your kitchen table with a little salt if nothing else was available. i stood in my kitchen and ate cold chicken and broccoli, cold lo mein, popcorn, and a bagel flat with butter, and washed it down with a bottle of water and 2 advil. go ahead, judge me, but we've alllllllll been there.

all in all it was a successful birthday night. but i have 2 small bruises and a killer back ache. i also slept until about 1:30 on sunday (which isnt too unusual). it's monday now, two days later and im still achy. i am either too old for this shit or just need to get out more often to stretch my limbs.

end of the night.

wHaT's bEeF?

this past weekend i had an epiphany about internet beef, and how it basically sucks now.  i'd like to give you a brief internet beef history lesson to prove my point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1UY7eDRXrs

(keep in mind i started using the internet around 1997, height of AOL glory days)

AOL Chat Rooms: this is where my internet beef knowledge was born and formed. you would randomly select a chat room to enter, most of the time not from the kids only section like you promised your parents. many times it was really inappropriate and you were setting yourself up for trolling predators. either way, this is where you can unleash - basically say whatever you wanted. the left side of the screen would have the users name and you'd wait to see someone type something that you could work with and just go at them. if the beef got to be too much or you got bored, you could simply leave the room. leaving that stranger schooled. forever. they would never find you again.

E-Mail: before there was any sort of instant messaging, e-mail was the popular way to communicate. naturally instead of fighting in school, you take to a strongly worded e-mail. the beauty of this was, if you ever got 'told on' everything was documented. so it rarely happened as chances are, you both were in the wrong. you don't have to respond to an email which is awesome because the beef basically ends when you don't reply. you didn't have emails sent to your phone, so you wouldn't see a response for a few hours, maybe days. and if it did take that long to respond, it was probably deaded already. (deaded is so a word by the way)

AOL Away Messages/Profiles: this is basically the old school status. you had your friends divided into categories- giRLSsSs4E or b0y$$$ or La FamiLiAa RidE 0R diE(all perfect examples). if you saw someone online that you wanted to get a message across to but didn't have the balls to actually just tell them, you'd make an away message (probably some song lyric). the main thing to remember though, is it had to be cryptic, but not to the point where it wasn't obvious to the person it was aimed at. you could also do the ol' IM them, then immediately put on your away message so they had no choice but to fall into your away message beef. (i know i'm not  the only crazy who did this) the person would see the message, know it had to be for them and had a choice to either answer or ignore. if they chose to answer, refer to AIM below.

this rule was also applied to the black font, black background profile. you would generally write something like ' people need to close their mouths or watch their backs' in black font, then make your profile background black. the only way this message was ever seen is if someone took the time to clear the background (which we all did). the bfbb (black font black background) also took a positive spin once in a while when it was used for love purposes ' jEsSiCa <3s pHiL aAf 515<3'. 

AIM: this is where beef really started to take a life of its own.(you could even practice your beef with the IM Bots like SmarterChild!) unlike email, AIM was INSTANT. you would hear the door opening sound come from your buddy list, check who it was, and if it was your opponent - game on. the beef would be a back and forth battle, maybe caps lock was used, maybe fonts highlighted in unreadable impact, or maybe just your basic size 10 arial. either way, it was a one on one battle. whether your friends were behind you telling you what to type, you were at the helm, controlling the conversation. once you hit sent, enter or ctrl+enter, you couldn't take back what you had said. it was final. no deleting. the real winner was whoever got their point across, and signed off. the sound of that door closing from your buddy list was the sound of defeat. they basically dropped the mic on your ass. walked out of the room and said suck it.(see 5-7 seconds:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxVQ9rhjyTY)

Facebook: this is where beef goes to die. if you make a cryptic status, anyone (including your 5th cousins bff that your friends with) can comment on it, kind of taking away its power. you write "i hope you die" and your aunt writes "feel better honey". the person who the status is meant for NEVER comments, and if they do, they have an entire army ready to defend their honor. it is never a one on one, hand to hand combat anymore. this form of beef is even more instant than AIM because you probably are getting the alerts on your phone allowing you to answer whenever from wherever you are. their friends will comment and your friends will comment. points will never be made and the focus of the beef will get tossed aside for tangent conversations. there is no winner as you can indefinitely post on someones status and they can delete whatever comments they have made.

i miss the old internet beef. where words were final and conversations actually had an end point. no one brought up the same topic from an instant message 2 days later - but today, someone will comment on a status from a week ago. i guess what im trying to say is , if you'd like to beef with me on the internet, try to IM me (even though i cant remember the last time i signed onto aim) or at the very least write me an e-mail. damn.

people let me tell you 'bout my best friend

i am literally just coming out of my food coma from thanksgiving - and decided to share what im thankful for.

today i was having a really rough day. whatever the reasons may be, it was rough. and believe it or not, i wasn't my usual cheerful self (sarcasm). but it was more than just a funk.

i was on g.chat as per my usual daily routine, and as per my usual daily routine i was messaging my best friend. 

today (as most days) she listened, like really listened. she even comforted me by telling me she was literally going through the same funky forest (we often live the same lives, just separately).

there is never any judgement or shock between us. there is never any pettiness or competition. there is just a true, solid foundation of mutual love and respect. the things great friendships are made  of. without sounding to lez-be-honest, i truly believe she is my soul mate (as they often come in many forms, more than once throughout your life).

so today, on a day where im sure rage is just below the surface in my body, thank you to my best friend, K.L.V.F.. you da bomb!