I Scream for Ice Cream (but only if it's Organic)

Tonight was my friend's birthday and the plans kept rearranging themselves. 

The evening was originally supposed to be a trip to the Medieval Times in New Jersey to eat chicken drumsticks and drink mead and get served by a woman you're allowed to call "wench".  I know irony is dead, or at least it should be (someone please send a memo to Urban Outfitters, Williamsburg and anyone drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon), but I thought it would be fun. I never went to a Renaissance Fest in high school, and I kind of love excuses to get out of the city. Whenever I get in a NYC funk, the best way to like NYC again is to travel anywhere within a 25 mile radius of Manhattan. Not only do you get the novelty of leaving the city, but you also see what the neighboring inhabitants are really like and remember that you actually like living in NYC where there are few children and people don't wear sweatpants outside the house. A prime example of this phenomenon is making a weekend trip to IKEA in Elizabeth, New Jersey. But I digress. Medieval Times fell through due to lack of interest - who knew. The runner up plan was a sushi/karaoke party.

This, in my mind, was a brilliant idea. Number one, I love all things Japanese, so sushi and karaoke definitely fit the bill. Number two, I love singing karaoke with my friends. A lot of people think singing karaoke would be a terrifying and embarrassing experience, but that's just because they think you have to sing like Whitney Houston or make an ass of yourself to some lame middle school party song like "Baby Got Back". Those people have it all wrong. I've realized that the two bands I can actually get away with doing karaoke to are the Smiths and Weezer. With the Smiths, people will all think "Wow, I forgot how much I love the Smiths, it's fun singing melancholy but upbeat pop songs about unrequited love and being a closeted homosexual." With Weezer, people will all think "Wow, I love Weezer, this reminds me of good memories of high school, and the 90s are totally the new 80s, what a good choice." Also, it helps that both bands have a singer with a relatively monotone voice and no embarrassing lyrics. But alas. Sushi/Karaoke also fell through...

This left us with a final option that required almost no planning or initiative. A relaxed night in the East Village. Obviously, the path of least resistance, but a fun choice nonetheless. And since I hate planning social events, I was happy to just go with the flow. One of my friends is housesitting another friend's palatial apartment, which is conveniently located at 3rd and A, and inconveniently filled with four cats and lots of cat hair. He invited us over and after hugging the birthday girl we went out to a yummy dinner, followed by digesting at home while watching bad cable TV. Then we decided to go find some ice cream to complete the evening.  This is where I have to confess to you that secretly (Shhhh! Don't tell!) I'm an old man. There is nothing that I enjoy more than a night with friends involving eating dinner, watching bad cable TV and then eating ice cream. So, after our second episode of The Soup we set out to find ice cream. Of course within a block of our friend's apartment in the "gritty" East Village we found a brand new gourmet market selling ten different brands of organic / soy / exotic-flavored ice creams / sorbets / gelatos for the reasonable price of $6.99 a pint. And to think that a few years ago this building was probably a vacant hovel where homeless people would squat and do heroin like a scene from "Rent"! Oh the good old days before gentrification.... Sigh.... 

Anyway, the point is - do you know how hard it is to choose between "Organic Super Premium Moroccan Vanilla Bean Ice Cream", "White Chocolate Sorbet with Organic Raspberry", and "Belgian Chocolate and Hazelnut Gelato"? Trust me, its a hard choice. Growing up, I was lucky if we had a brick of Roundy's brand Neapolitan ice cream with strawberry, chocolate and vanilla in the freezer. Well, we decided to avoid having to decide and just got all three, then spent the rest of the night eating out of the tubs and watching clips of the Spaghetti Cat on Youtube. (If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend looking it up.) We said our adieus, and walking home I realized that while I may not have had the hippest evening in the city, I definitely had one of the most fulfilling evenings I could have had helping a friend ring in her special day. Three cheers for friends, TV and ice cream!

Justify Your Existence

Oh hai everyone! 

So, this is my first blog posting here. I've thought long and hard about what to write since its the post that's gonna get the ball rolling on this thing. I kind of feel (irrationally) like people are gonna read it with a justify your existence mentality, so there's a lot of pressure to give a succinct, catchy and clear mission statement. But really I'm hoping that no one will even read this post after I start writing a bit more and this will just be the space filler. I guess every blog needs to have a first post, right?

Otay. To start things off, I guess I should tell you why I'm writing a blog. I guess I kind of wanted a creative outlet for myself since I work at a desk all day doing Excel spreadsheets and talking about numbers and decimals and profit margins. I've got all these close friends from college who I see making video art or designing magazine layouts or sewing their own clothes from vintage embroidered handkerchiefs... and every few months I come home from work and feel like I'm in a Dilbert comic strip, so I make a resolution to do something mildly creative with my spare time. In the past I've explored my inner artiste by taking a class on silk screening (total output: 4 tee shirts), learning to knit (total output: a few brown and grey rectangles that are supposed to be scarves) and taking swing dancing lessons (classes attended: three). I guess my track record is pretty spotty for follow through, but at least these brief forays into creativity give me the ability to rationalize and say to myself "Hey - I've still got those knitting needles in that box under my bed. I could totally whip up a one-by-one ribbed cashmere-merino blend scarf if I really wanted to... but its just so much easier to buy one from Marc Jacobs..."

Also, I should let you know that this isn't my first time blogging. No sirree. When I was a sophomore in college and feeling particularly angsty one day, I started an online blog. I didn't tell anyone about it, and I wrote about the ever-so-pressing issues of being 19: dissecting the mixed signals I was receiving from the boys I was dating, figuring out what mixed signals I should give the boys I was dating, typing out lyrics from mediocre pop songs I was unhealthily obsessed with, and letting all of my devoted readers know that I had a really hard statistics exam coming up that I was studying for - and could anyone hook me up with some adderall? I recently re-read it (no, I will not be posting a link) and I was kind of stunned to realize that it is perhaps the most banal piece of writing ever, and almost as thought provoking as a transcript from an episode of Laguna Beach. 

So I decided to re-join the blogorific blogosphere as my creative outlet for the latter half of 2008. And I wondered "Hmmms, what should I even write about?" I mean I absolutely love a few blogs... Among them: Stuff White People Like, 20-nothings, the Sartorialist, and Go Fug Yourself. Check them out. All of them kind of have a theme that holds them together - and a self descriptive / killer name. So I've already got the killer name down - Airplanes and Puppies. I mean, c'mon. Everyone loves airplanes and puppies, don't they? Well you're not my friend if you don't. Don't even get me started on "cat people". But, I don't know if I'm gonna be blogging specifically about airplanes or puppies. In fact, I'm still figuring out what I'm gonna be writing about. Let's just assume that it'll probably involve the following unrelated topics: quirky minutiae about being in the midst of a quarter life crisis in the middle of New York, observations on things that I either really like (examples: airplanes and puppies) or find really annoying (examples: people who have never taken an airplane and "cat people"), and thoughtful recommendations for movies/tv shows/music. 

Wow - I guess I've just given you a few pretty good reasons why this blog is set up to be a mediocre fail-fest, huh? Well. I can promise you that this time I won't give up on my creative pursuit. You'll just have to take my word for it. And I promise that I'll limit the uninteresting, self-involved storytelling of my dating life to a minimum (although particularly mortifying and embarrassing moments are fair game). And I'll bake cookies and mail them to you if you're an avid reader. 

Hmmm, I guess it wasn't so painful or awkward to write my first blog posting. Let's hope I can make it to post number two! Fresh baked chocolate chip cookies to anyone who sticks around!