Friday, May 14, 2010

Some of this. Some of that. Some of Toohey's New.


In my opinion, this blog is better when I'm crankier, grumpier, and slightly surly. So I've been waiting for those moments in the past weeks in order to turn those feelings into a post…but they never came. Wait, am I complaining that I have nothing to complain about? Yeah, that pretty much sounds right. And since my hours at work have been great, and I've been seeing friends, hanging out, working out, eating well, and learning how to tie a bowtie properly I'm just going to write about all the good stuff and just hope that it's all palatable and not overwhelmingly saccharine.


As for my bowtie, I learned how to tie it in preparation of becoming, for the first time in my life, a groomsman. A quick story before I move onto the incredibly fun and lovely wedding of Kim and Old Greg…the first time I had to do a bowtie by myself in a pressure situation was 2005. I had put on all my tux gear and all I had left was the bowtie. In the approximately 30 minutes it took me to get it right I had sweat through my shirt so hard that it looked like I'd gone to another wedding prior to one I was about to go to. My shoulders burned from holding my arms up for 30 minutes straight and I had fogged up the bathroom mirror and could barely see what I was doing. James Bond be damned if I was going to let that happen again. It didn’t. I've only been to a handful of weddings, and only have been married once myself (it was in Laos, there wasn't much English, I wasn't sure what was happening, my dowry was four goats and a tin drum of rice wine, whatever, it happens sometimes), but I think the following is universal when determining how to make a wedding great: 1) Good band, 2) Good music, 3) Bar next to the dancefloor. It's the triumvirate of awesomeness, and you'd think it wouldn't be that difficult to pull off, but it's not a given, and it this wedding, they nailed it. The wedding was in Columbus, OH and both bride and groom were from the midwest which means one thing…everyone is so damn nice. Like not "cordial" nice, but like "hey, for real, for real, we really like you and we are genuinely happy to share this occasion with you, friend". Let's all raise our glasses and toast true midwestern values. They exist. Anyway, it was great to have a lot of my good friends in one place for an entire weekend. It was by far the classiest we've acted as a group, I think ever. I think part of it was that we had dates and toned it down (slightly) and part of it we were dressed nicely an nobody really wants to clean jagermeister off a white tux shirt. Of course our classiness ended in about 2 hours when we sequestered the videographer and made him film a pretend beer commercial that we made up. Wow, how I miss College Part II. Toohey's New! And again, congrats to the bride and groom who are somewhere in the Pacific living out ABC's Lost for real.



The Old Stag. Toohey's New.


During my trips to the Caribbean it was almost never a question what I was going to eat for dinner…"fish and sauce, and fish and rice and sauce". Last night I took one step closer towards my next Caribbean voyage, a wedding in Turks and Caicos in November. I am in that wedding as well and the groomsmen went to try on the suits we will be wearing for the wedding. On the way to the store I noticed a large number of girls, fashionably dressed (read: most in black tights with long-ish plaid shirt dresses giving off that "I'm not trying-but I am-but I'm not-but I kinda am" look) scurrying around 5th Avenue in the 20s. It seemed like an awfully high concentration for the area, and then I realized the reason after I passed a sample sale. Forget consuming fish and sauce, and fish and rice and sauce, these girls were consuming baygs and baygs, and baygs and baygs and baygs. It was a bag sample sale. It looked like a colony of ants, rifling through leaves (bags), bumping into other ants as they went back and forth sorting, sifting, clawing. It was quite a sight for a Thursday afternoon. I guess walking back from midtown to the 60s with all the other suits and tourists I'm not privy to such NY activities, but I was glad that while millions of gallons of oil pour out from under the Earth, and not several blocks away an entire area was being shut down, these ants kept their eyes on the prize. Nobody has the determination New Yorkers have.


And while I'm talking about New Yorkers and their determination I want to give my pitch for Lebron James to come to NY. You know, because he reads my blog sometimes.


Dear Lebron,

I can't give you much. You can't even stay in my apartment, because you wouldn't fit in my Murphy bed. Sorry. Not even if you slept diagonally. I don't know a ton of girls to introduce you to either, because most either have boyfriends, are engaged, married, or are looking for a Jewish guy. If you are willing to convert though I might be able to help. I can't get you into the clubs. In fact I showed up at Marquee once wearing a full leg cast and was summarily laughed out of line. But what I will tell you is this, in this city you can make ANYTHING happen. Anything. You can sit on a stoop with a fish taco and beer, or you can be the absolute fanciest you can possibly be. This is a city with everything imaginable, tangible, non-tangible, and everything in between. It is the best city in the world and you can be the King of it…and maybe win a couple games too. Come join the party.

Sincerely,

Finger:TheBlog


Ok, I just needed to do my part in the wooing process. Lebron's official announcement is going to be crazy. I'm thinking primetime on every newschannel. I can see it being rivaled by only one event that I can remember in recent memory…The OJ verdict. When OJ was found guilty I couldn't even…wait, what? He wasn't? Are you serious. He was found not guilty? Wow. Are you sure? But he murdered those two people, did he not?


Anyway, my stint in Corporate Treasury will be coming to a close soon. Next stop, the Investment Bank, where people "stop being nice, and start being real". Or was that the Real World? Either way, I fully expect that everything I've been able to do in paragraph one, I'll be doing less of, which means in turn this blog will get better. But until then I'm going soak it up as much as I can, eat sleeves of girl scout cookies in single sittings, and run aimlessly through the streets of this city, preferably with Lebron James. Enjoy the weekend.

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