Spinning

I'm off to another wedding tomorrow. Pittsburgh here I come. But before I get on that plane I needed to tell you about my maiden spinning voyage last Sunday. Yeah, I went spinning. Like stationary bike riding spinning. In the Hamptons. On a Sunday morning. Bayg.

I wasn't at all hesitant to go but I did wonder how serious a workout I could get in an hour of pedaling...and 4 days later I'm still feeling the answer. First of all, let me just say that the crowd was, I don't know, kind of MILFy. Everyone was good looking and seemed to know one another. Supermom Kelly Ripa was in the class before me, but I missed seeing her because, surprise, I was peeing. Do I have "going problem or a growing problem"? I don't know anymore. First it's Kelly Ripa, then I'll be kayaking with my buddies and I'll have to pull over on the side of the bank to pee. But likely I'd just pee right there in the kayak, you know, because I'm in the water anyway.

But Kelly Ripa or not, I walked into the barn and took my place on my bike. First impression: why is the seat made of barbed wire and bamboo. Like seriously. On a scale from 1 to 10 with 1 being Frette sheets on a pillow top mattress and 10 being this

I think the bike seats were about a 12 or 13. What I quickly learned was a lot of spinning is about controlling your abs and your torso, and apparently not slamming your nether-regions down on the seat every time you go from position 1 to position 2. I learned the hard way. I really still don't feel it so much in my tush, but moreso in my small intestine and ego. Bruises are deep my friends, bruise are deep. I can see how these lithe, skinny little things seemed to be so at ease on the bikes. It was because how hard is it to simulate a climb when you have no body mass to hold up as you climb. Skinny bitches and their damn skinny lattes and skinny jeans.

So that was really the only negative, the lasting scars and possible infertility, but you know, sometimes you gotta sacrifice for a good sweat. I thought the music was great. A lot of it was keeping the beat and if you have any sense of rhythm you can really find a groove. It was kind of like dancing and all the songs were all the club songs I would want to hear if I was out. But there are instructions to, barked out by the instructor who urged the masses, "to make this day the first day of changing your life" and "channel your energy to make a change" and other stuff she learned in The Dalai Lama Comes to New York 101. Was it inspirational? Eh, I don't know. I think I'm a sucker for some of that stuff sometimes. You can't "win" at spinning, but by God I was trying to "win" so I was kind of buying what she was selling. And as a result I was sweating, like a pig, in the kitchen of The Breslin Bar.

Profuse sweating is not what I would call a recessive gene in my family. I was dripping so much that I thought that after the workout instead of wiping down my bike they'd find me in the crowd and tell me that the sweat damage was irreparable and I'd simply have to buy the damn thing. It was like there was a faucet coming out of my chin, and part of it was me, and part of it was because they had 100 people elbow to elbow, forehead to ass, in a barn built for Barbaro and only Barbaro. I hope they hose that place down like they do at the end of the night at Rick's in Ann Arbor.

So how was the workout itself you ask. Well, there certainly was enough eye candy to keep me focused, and the back row is certainly the catbird as far as I'm concerned. The workout was great though. At one point towards the end I felt a little vomititious. It reminded me of basketball camp back in the day. The first drills were always after breakfast, so after you'd loaded up on pancakes and chemically enhanced OJ they took you out on the court and had you do plyometric drills for hours. You didn't even touch a ball in the first few hours. You basically would go on doing kangaroo jumps until the fat kid at the end threw up breakfast and then they'd stop the drills and say, "see, you think you can just come here out of shape? You think this is some kind of joke?" etc etc as they set the tone for the week. It was basically just go go go until vomiting occurred and you just prayed to God it wouldn't be you. Well, with five minutes left in the workout, with my triceps on...

Fi-yah?

Yeah, with my triceps on Fi-yah and my quads barking at me, I thought to myself, what are the chances I'd be the first one to throw up in here? Of course I didn't, but the moral of the story was that I was S.P.E.N.T. Gracias to Bret and Amanda for showing me the light. Spinning really did hurt so good. I can totally see how people get really addicted to it, and how it can tone the shit out of your body if you do it enough and do it correctly.

I will return to icing my rear end though. I need to be able to Harlem Shake my face off this weekend. Enjoy.

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.

You scratch my creepy back…

Back in the day at Michigan I used to give a lot of advice. Was I qualified to give advice? Probably not, but people kept asking. My toughest decisions centered around whether to go Pad See Ew beef or Pad See Ew chicken, and even then I had a hard time deciding. A Supreme Court justice I am not.

To the undergraduate girls I was friends with I became what I sometimes liked to call Sketchy Uncle Finger. I often found myself walking a fine line between “I’m interested” and “I’m your guidance counselor”. I advised on everything from boy issues to career issues. I mean, this wasn’t exactly Albert Camus insight I was giving here but sometimes things just had to be said.

-Why is my boyfriend so immature and why does he think it’s okay to call me at 3am?

-Because he’s 21 and on drugs and you’re wearing a bandana as a dress and you live in Michigan and it’s February.

-Do you think I need to go back to business school?

-It really just depends on how much you like being hit on by guys with buttondowns and facial hair?

It was both an art and a science. Office hours were held from 10pm to 11pm at the back tables at Scorekeepers, and then afterwards you could probably find me on the dance floor. I jest of course…kind of.

In addition to Sketchy Uncle Finger, I also was pretty involved in more wholesome endeavors, namely helping out other MBAs in the Corporate Finance Club. (Insert nerd joke here). Basically, I found the second year MBAs to have been incredibly helpful when I was going through the process so I wanted to give back, and since there was no chance in hell that I was going to give up my Sunday evenings which was when the meetings took place, I decided I’d just meet with other MBAs to review resumes, or to prep for interviews, or to take someone out for an ice cream cone if they needed cheering up. I had managed to wrangle a summer internship and then turn that into a full-time job, and de facto I became someone people thought “knew it all”. “Knew it all” to me meant I knew how to talk to recruiters, how to not cut myself shaving, and how to throw beanbags through a circular hole in a wooden box-ish thingy on the weekends. What more to life really was there?

CORNHOLE!

So yeah, I knew it all, whatever that meant. The students I used to meet with would usually come to me wound up like a jack-in-the-box and for whatever reason I did a good job calming them down. I told everyone that everything would work out. Right off the bat their shoulders would just relax and they’d stop talking to me like some pre-programmed robot. Sometimes people needed to hear that. Shit, sometimes, I need to hear that. As I look back I think people might’ve confused my gravelly “advice voice” with a Marlo Brando Godfather-esque voice and perhaps they thought I was dispensing good advice because I literally sounded like Don Corleone…when the more likely scenario was that I’d probably been belting out the lyrics to every single rap song the night before and was simply hoarse. Either way, for whatever reason, these MBAs seemed to hang on my every word and looked at me like a dog does a TV.

oh yes you are. oh yes you are.

In fact, after one one-on-one session the girl I was speaking with asked if I’d talk to her husband, and I said sure. To this day I’m still not sure whether he was a Michigan student or just a lazy husband who needed a pep talk and a slap on the tush. Either way I was happy to help. It was the least I could do. I always felt that the vibe inside the walls of the school could sometimes be a little toxic, so if I could just get someone to talk about recruiting without having to make it so formal or so pressure-filled I would because the people who were relaxed were always the ones who got the jobs.

But I’m a suit now and “greed is good” or something like that. I still speak to Michigan students who are in the recruiting process and offer advice but now I wear my corporate hat and it's not as fun but it’s good to be involved. Truly. However, the other day I get this email from a guy who graduated in 2008. He starts off by saying that he saw my profile on the business school directory, and that while we never met, my face looks very familiar….and I start filling out the restraining order. Next he says he came across a posting for a job at my company…okay…in Houston, TX. Now, for a second I’m going to pretend that perhaps he has me confused with the famous furniture Finger family from Houston and perhaps thought I had some pull down there because of my name, although I know this is not where he’s going. Next he says that he has someone he wants to recommend for this position. A fine candidate he says (excellent), a Michigan graduate he says (excellent), a woman who has won not one, not two, but yes, three “formal recognition awards” (excellent although unclear), a woman who has outstanding references from all of her past employers (excellent), a woman who is none other than…his wife (huh?).

His wife. His wife who apparently has no hands because she cannot type an email to me herself? His wife who is too busy knitting/churning butter/tending the rabbits to write me an email herself. In 2010 I thought nobody puts Baby in the corner. I guess I’m wrong. But like all Finger: The Blog tales, this gets better. He closes with the following:

“Can you please forward her resume to the right people for her consideration for an interview opportunity. I will greatly appreciate it. In [the] future it will be my pleasure to reciprocate this favor of yours if you need”.

This works out great for me because I know that when I’m ready to lock up my wife in a subterranean dungeon in about 15 years I’ll know exactly who to call to help me built it. Part of me wanted to write back “Two words. Happy. Ending.” But I thought better of it. It’s one thing to meet someone in person, and even talk on the phone, but it’s another thing to bend over backwards for a woman with three “formal recognition awards” who has to rely on her creepy husband to tell you via email that "you have a real purty mouth”. Suddenly Sketchy Uncle Finger is looking a whole lot more wholesome.

Spring Ad Infinitum

Spring. Ad Infinitum...until, of course, summer rolls around, but until then...Spring. Live it. Love it. Rent the movie. Twice.

Perhaps you've joined the mass exodus and headed outside of your house/apartment/office/opium den to shed a layer or two and enjoy the sun. Perhaps you've taken it one step further and have gone out and up. Up as in elevation. I alluded to this back during the days of my glorious travel, but there's something about climbing up that Y-axis that really lifts people's spirits, both literally and figuratively. There's something about Spring that makes a person say, "hey, I know where we can drink..."...pause...look both ways...come in a little closer...whisper..."outside on a roof". Having been hostage to snow and sleet for so long, it seems like people aren't content with going to a bar that can simply have the windows open and some fresh air. The beginning of Spring brings out the classic "go hard or go home" attitude in many New Yorkers. It's all about patios and rooftops. But as excited as we all are let's just remember, it's not even May, people. Girl in the sundress...when the sun goes down it's going to be 40 degrees, and nobody is going to want to hear you complaining about being cold. Hipster dude with the beard in the cut-off shorts...when the sun goes down you better hope your legs can grow a beard too because you and your plaid shirt are going to be freezing. But that said, you have to love Spring in New York because there's no wading in, there's simply... "cannonball!"

"I'[m] trying this new fad called uh, jogging. I believe it's jogging or yogging. It might be a soft j. I'm not sure but apparently you just run for an extended period of time. It's supposed to be wild."

Grab a spot on your favorite roofdeck. Hunker down with a cocktail or beer and some good company, and get that 60 degree sunburn you've been thinking about since January. It's not just the humans who have caught Spring fever, it's the animal kingdom as well. What, like a coyote can't enjoy a jog or yog down the West Side Highway too. If you don't think coyotes want to look good for the beach this summer as well you are sorely mistaken.

Correctly running against the traffic, kinda...

And speaking of running down the West Side Highway...wow, who knew how awesome that is? Today was the first day I've ever run down there. A lot of grass, surprisingly, basketball courts overlooking the river, the Statue of Liberty cheering you on...still, to me, Central Park is the cat's meow, but it's just another reason why New York in the Spring cannot be beat.

But what if your thing isn't running, rooftop drinking, or petting wild coyotes. What if your thing is trying new Spring-y recipes. The market in Union Square has moved past its grey/brown/beige/boring tubers, bread, and quiche phase and is now offering stuff that has...wait for it...texture and color. You'll start to see all kinds red tomatoes and an awesome diversity of greens. Unfortunately, diversity in food can sometimes be taken a little too far.

"An Australian publisher has had to pulp and reprint a cook-book after one recipe listed "salt and freshly ground black people" instead of black pepper.

Penguin Group Australia had to reprint 7,000 copies of Pasta Bible last week, the Sydney Morning Herald has reported.

The reprint cost A$20,000 ($18,000; £12,000), but stock in bookshops will not be recalled as it is "extremely hard" to do so, Penguin said.

The recipe was for spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto.

"We're mortified that this has become an issue of any kind, and why anyone would be offended, we don't know," head of publishing Bob Sessions is quoted as saying by the Sydney newspaper.

Really Bob Sessions? Really? Do you really wonder why would someone might be offended? Personally, I prefer my food without freshly ground black people. Come to think of it, there weren't a whole lot of non-Caucasians in Australia when I was there last year and now I guess I know why. As far as I'm concerned, the first mistake was including a recipe for spelt tagliatelle with sardines. What, is this post-WWII Czechoslovakia? What's the appetizer to that dish, Stone Soup? I think I'd rather have a cardboard sandwich with melted cardboard on top, with a side of chipotle cardboard sauce. Somewhere Chef Boyardee is turning over in his beef ravioli-filled grave.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is Spring...yeah, get on the bandwagon, because this is when it starts to get good. Now where's my effing umbrella.

Viva Lost Wages

Alex Trebek: Dangerous liaisons with Cubans. Sleep deprivation. Waterboarding. Brinkmanship.

You: What is The Cuban Missile Crisis, Alex?

Alex Trebek: No, I'm sorry

Me: The answer is What is Las Vegas…to…the…FACE.

I finally arrived at my apartment just shy of midnight on Sunday night. A mere shell of the man who so naively boarded a plane last Thursday evening with a nice little wad of crisp hundreds. I'd never been to Las Vegas, and now I'm wondering I'll ever go back. As a sportsman I'll give you this analogy, "leave it all on the court". Suffice to say, I just witnessed ten guys (it was ten, I think, I sometimes had trouble counting) just leave it all on the proverbial court. In fact, I think the best example of literally leaving it all on the court occurred at the club on Saturday, where a big-boned, high-heeled, strong-willed woman projectile vomited about an oil drum worth of Welch's Grape Juice and Hennessey on her way to rush the stage to get as close to Snoop Dogg as possible, since he was performing for some reason. She literally didn't even break stride. If I didn't have a drink in my hand I would've clapped. It was simultaneously the most inspiring yet disgusting thing I think I've ever seen. Welcome to Vegas.

Before I recount the glories of the weekend it's only fair to share the inglorious aftermath. At work on Monday I was, how you say, less than efficient, mostly due to severe dehydration and a bout of sleep apnea. At one point I was texting with the bachelor (the reason we went to Vegas) that when I'd gotten home I'd emptied my bag of its contents and then burned my computer. He wrote back, "why did you burn your computer", to which I wrote back, "I meant my clothing". Clearly I was not firing on all cylinders. But why did I want to burn my clothing…because it smelled like Las Vegas. More on that later. I'm still recovering I think. Primarily because of I've been downing the sweetest nectar on this planet…water, not eating Denny's at 6am, and doing this thing called sleeping. It's amazing by the way. Try it.

So what of the rest of the weekend? As you know…what happens in Vegas blah blah, so I'll honor that and just paint some broad strokes. Let me first describe the all-day bacchanalia at the pool/club/awesomeness at the MGM on Saturday. You know how if you wrap anything in bacon it makes it exponentially better. Bacon-wrapped scallops. Bacon-wrapped dates. Etc. Well if you had to dumb down the description of what went on at the MGM that gorgeous day, I think you'd have to basically say it was bacon-wrapped Spring Break 2010. Yeah, let that marinate for a minute. I think we gave a new definition to the word gluttony, but little did I know we'd continue to give a new definition to the word gluttony every subsequent evening. For shame Finger:TheBlog, for shame. Well as you can possibly imagine, after we finished up at the pool eight hours later I wasn't quite in shape to operate heavy machinery so I took a nap. I woke up to the phone buzzing at around 11:45pm. It was my friend, we'll call him Liev Schreiber, and he was saying that I had 15 minutes to get downstairs because he'd just won a serious four-game parlay of the Sweet 16 games that day, and then had thrown those winning on red and won that too and we were going out. In a near zombie-like state I took the coldest shower of my life, smacked my face a few times and headed downstairs to the lobby. At this point I was cold and shaking and hungry and in need of a hug. It was off to a Gentlemen's club.

I expected to go somewhere to learn how to better open doors for ladies, and how to properly ballroom dance. You know, gentlemanly pursuits and such. Well well well. I had been tricked because when I showed up at this "gentlemanly establishment", the most gentlemanly pursuit taking place was that a…um…actually there was nothing particularly gentlemanly going on. There's something magical about strippers and by "magical" I mean "grossed out by their c-section scars", but magically grossed out I suppose. And what of that smell? What of that smell? All weekend I was trying to put my finger on what that omnipresent smell was. In the elevator. In the lobby. In Denny's. In the cab. In the airport. I'm not scientist, but I'm pretty sure it's a combination of strawberries, Lysol, crushed up Marlboro Reds, and leather. I'm actually in talks with a major manufacturer to get this turned into a perfume. It's going to be called "Slots". I'm looking for some VC money so let me know if you're at all interested. Typical me, I was interested in the back stories of these wonderfully-talented women. I imagined they'd grown up in the Eastern Bloc, nibbling small rations of stale bread and potatoes in the depths winter just to stay nourished. They'd come to Vegas in pursuit of their lifelong dream of becoming a biochemist. They attended UNLV where they had just applied for a Marshall Scholarship to continue their studies, and stripping was just a way to pay the bills for school. Listen, I know it's not likely, but it's possible. In fact, the closest these girls would ever get to becoming a biochemist would probably be working in a meth lab to pay off their pimps. I'm not going to get into details of the evening, because they were pretty normal, given the circumstances of course. Get your mind out of the gutter people. This was clean, wholesome, American fun.

I'm not even going to try to describe the events at the club the next evening. Something about a giraffe, a 7-month pregnant woman, cocktail dresses the size of washcloths, our gracious and kind and caring club hostess Amber, shenanigans, shenanigans.com, www.shenanigans.com, follow me on twitter @shenaniganstotheface, Snoop Dogg, anger, redemption, pseudo-Cuban Bulgarians from Henderson Nevada, making assessments, drinking Baileys from a shoe, and the man of the weekend who was responsible for the tsunami of events that almost ended the lives of ten strapping young gents…Old Greggggggg.

I sum up Las Vegas like this…the city simultaneous embodies every reason why America is the greatest country on Earth and every reason why so many people on Earth hate America. From the mouth of the former self-proclaimed Most Disciplined Man in Media Services, I must say that Vegas is a true battle of the mind versus the body versus the wallet, and in some inexplicable way even though we all lost, we all won...big…and this, my friends, is why we go to Vegas.

Duende

I didn't know what the word duende meant. In fact, I hadn't even heard it until Thursday when I read this article about David Simon and his new HBO show Treme. David Simon is the man, and I'm pretty jazzed, pun intended, for the premiere of this show. If you don't feel like reading the entire article, just sample this passage.

“THERE’S A THING about being capable of a great moment,” Simon told me on a break from shooting. “This city is capable of moments unlike any moments you’ll ever experience in life. To see an Indian come down the street in full regalia on St. Joseph’s Night on an unlit street of messed-up shotgun houses and one burned-out car, and he’s the most beautiful thing on the planet, and everything around him is falling down. It’s a glorious instant of human endeavor. It’s duende from the Spanish, chills on the back of your neck, and then the next minute it’s gone. Lots of American places used to make things. Detroit used to make cars. Baltimore used to make steel and ships. New Orleans still makes something. It makes moments. I don’t mean that to sound flippant, and I don’t mean it to sound more or less than what it is, but they’re artists with a moment, they can take a moment and make it into something so transcendent that you’re not quite sure that it happened or that you were a part of it.”

And you wonder why the writing on The Wire was so damn good. But back to duende, defined as the ability to attract others through personal magnetism and charm. So about two hours after reading the article on Thursday I'm walking from my office, through Grand Central, to the subway, and there's this huge painting on the wall in one of the buildings that connects to Grand Central that says "Duende". Coincidence...I suppose. Blog fodder...fo' sho'.

Duende sounds like a very appropriately seasonal word. Very "Spring-like". Warm, but not oppressively so. Flirty, but no overwhelmingly so. Now that I know what duende is, I want it. But alas, duende is most certainly a quality that's going to be elusive for a good percentage of people, and one person who does not have duende was a nice young lady I became acquainted with on the 6 train this past week.

It was a crowded downtown train but I had a seat. As the car I was in got increasingly crowded, people were getting jostled as they tried to exit at each stop. At one particular stop, I think maybe Union Square, this small elderly white woman tried to push her way through to exit the train. Her path was blocked by an extraordinarily tall black woman. The white woman couldn't make it out, missing her stop. The black woman then went on a rant saying how all white people were ignorant and didn't have the courtesy to say "excuse me" and that all the small white grandma had to do was say "excuse me" and she could've gotten out at her stop but now, because she was ignorant, she had missed her stop. Things got awkward for a second and then slightly more awkward when the charming black woman got in the white woman's face and said, and I paraphrase, but barely, "I'm 8 months pregnant. I'm from Brooklyn and I'll knock that ass out and leave you in the gutter because that's how we do". Now, I'm no doctor but I'm pretty sure a woman who is 8 months pregnant should avoid knocking anyone out and leaving anyone in the gutter. I'm just saying. I'm sure this woman's child will end up being as non-confrontational as her mother. The story ends well though, because at Astor Place as the train pulled into the station I believe every single white person in the entire subway car said "excuse me" whether they were getting off or not. I know I did. What, you think I'm trying to end up in a gutter? This woman certainly gave me, as David Simon says, "chills on the back of my neck", but obviously for all the wrong reasons. Sadly, there was no duende on the 6 train that afternoon.

But if I can't find duende on the 6 train, where in the world can I find it? Las Vegas perhaps. Yes, that sounds about right. I'll be venturing out to Sin City for the first time this Thursday evening. I've been told there are some incredibly sweet and charming young ladies who just like hanging out and doting on you and rubbing your shoulders as you gamble. How sweet and innocent sounding. From what I've heard, after 3 nights in Vegas I'll be so cooked and over it that I'll welcome an old fashioned Brooklyn beatdown from a pregnant woman.

Walk That Earth

Watching Michael Lewis on 60 Minutes talk about bonuses and Wall Street makes me recall several conversations I had this past weekend. This question was posed to me this weekend, "how much money would you need right now, liquid, to leave your job and walk the earth?"

Hmm. Think about it. Now, I'm not saying that you would never work again. In fact, you might decide to travel for a month and then come back and get back into the workplace. But the point is, how much money would you need to leave, taking everything into account, such as the state of the economy and the uncertainty of job prospects upon returning home. There are a million and one variables. The answer I gave when posed this question was about $10 million different than the answer a friend gave not 30 minutes later. I thought this was pretty funny actually and as we talked about the rationale behind our numbers I figured I had to throw this out to the readers.

Maybe it's because I did some earth-walking last summer and that I know how far a good ol' greenback can go in Southeast Asia, that my number was much lower than several of my friends' numbers. I think once you've tasted the freedom it's hard to get that taste out of your mouth and you're willing to do more with less, or at least try to do more with less. While I was on the road for only six weeks we definitely came across people who had been walking the earth for a long time. These folks, very often couples, were "next level" travelers and it was pretty apparent. They traveled very minimally. Just the small packs on their back, often hoofing it on the beach with full gear which seemed to suggest that they'd camped out under the stars all night, or perhaps just swam up Navy SEAL-style right onto the shore from some undisclosed prior location. They wore versatile clothing that to me said, "hey, may look like a sari but it's also a headwrap/hammock/towel/parachute/flaming jumprope". These folks also maybe wore a puka shell necklace or two, and had tans so irreversibly deep that even Snooki would blush. Despite their quirky fashion sense and apparent need for a good dermatological once-over, these folks by and large looked extremely happy and you could just tell that they looked at all the junior varsity travelers like myself with a sense of, I don't want to say arrogance, but knowingness. Is that even a word? Yeah, apparently it. So yeah, with a sense of knowingness that at some point my trip was going to come to an end and I'd have to do the single most dreaded thing post-warm climate vacation...put on socks. And then of course head back to Responsibilityland. But getting back to the question at hand...how much would you need in the bank to set off on your own adventure, knowing full well you would or could come back whenever. How much would you need to be able to draw down on and set off with your main squeeze, like the aforementioned earth walkers, on an adventure like that? Or forget a companion. How much to just going it alone?

Since I'm pretty sure I'll never get this opportunity, or more accurately, take this opportunity, until I'm retired that is, it's at least fun (read: kind of depressing) to think about it. Feel free to share your number in the comments section. It's anonymous. Nobody's judging. It's much better getting actual real people comments instead of Taiwanese spam.

This could be you and your new, cool, hungry, earth-walking friends. Look how happy they all are playing in the sand. Walk the earth, people. Walk. The. Earth.