star sightings.

last friday at penn station: renée zellweger

she was putting her mom on the train i was boarding to go to boston. it took me about 20 minutes and three clusters of people alluding a celebrity being in the vicinity, and then finally her blatantly standing in front of me, to notice.

yesterday at joe’s pub: john hodgman

i was invited to a show – which was awesome, and john h here agreed because he gave the only standing ovation at the end – by gloria deluxe. amazing. the website’s a disaster, but if you click on “sounds” you can hear some of her stuff.

celebrity sighting-by-proxy at whole foods: whoopi goldberg

technically este saw her, but it counts.

btw, renee z and john h both wear really dorky glasses in real life.
no, i did not talk to either of them.

things i wish i had my camera for today…

76th st and broadway: woman carrying her enormous cat like a baby. the cat was also wearing a leash.

BALLS TO THE WALL.

YES! yes. i did it. i won. i fought comcast and i WON! i love it. okay here’s the story, in brief:

once upon a time, i lived in massachusetts with two friends. since i already had a comcast account, i kept it under my name after we moved in together. two years later, i moved out of said apartment. however, i was leaving a month before the end of the lease. one of my roommates was staying in the apartment, so a new person was taking over my part of the lease, essentially. instead of having to change accounts a million times, i kept mine open until this new girl moved in, then promptly cancelled and forgot all about it.

two months later (this is november, ‘07 now) i get a bill in brooklyn for $210 for an unreturned cable box. hm, i think to myself, that’s odd, because i could’ve sworn ross said it got picked up. so i call ross to confirm. yup, a comcast tech guy came to set up the new stuff for the new account, and took the old stuff with him. so i obviously call comcast to see what’s the dilly, because i don’t want to pay for something i shouldn’t have to. after a few phone calls, we finally get it settled. cool.

fast forward to two weeks ago (september ‘08). i get another bill. from comcast, a company i haven’t used in over a year. this one is for $210 for an unreturned cable box. but there is a credit for $80 attached to it, so now i owe them $130. um, hello? so i call them the next day, but it’s after normal business hours so i end up talking to some customer service guy instead of someone in the billing & research department like i should. anyway, he tells me that sometimes the techs forget to fully disengage (or whatever) pieces of equipment, so maybe someone new just got my old cable box, turned it on, and it was still registered to me so i got a bill for it. he tells me he’ll put a note in the file, and i should expect a check for the $80 credit in the mail. uh, negative.

i get a phone call on monday from a billing & research guy who – in sum – told me that the guy from last week was totally wrong, ross is proooobably just lying about the tech, and that i’m going to get charged because it’s my name on the account. he didn’t say it as fresh as that, but the condescending tone got the message across just fine. i asked him a series of well thought-out and important questions (like… if this wasn’t resolved last year, why didn’t a receive a whole series of other bills threatening to send goons to beat me up if i don’t pay?) which this guy could not give concise answers to.

so finally i’m like… it’s time for some action. so i go to consumerist.com (and you should, too, because it’ll change your life) and look up “comcast”. one of, if not THE, first article is a list of about 80 comcast exec’s email addresses, and a few tips on how to write an “eecb”, or “executive email carpet bomb” without being a total douche. how it works is you write to many MANY of the most important people at a company (for example, comcast), explaining (nicely!) that their employees are relatively incompetent and are not doing anything to help a crappy situation that they caused. basically it’s meant to be a last resort, but a very very effective one.

and so it was. i wrote out a polite, thought out message about four other people’s incompetence and why i felt like it was unfair that i should have to pay such an extreme amount of money for their mistakes. AND IT WORKED. i got three emails within about two hours, all with apologies for my inconvenience. granted, they were kind of generic, but it paid off! because one of them said he’d call, and he did. i got a phone call from one of the exec peeps (or one of their cronies) today telling me that they were wiping out the bill and i can expect my $80 credit in the mail shortly.

that’s right! suck it, comcast!

read me a bedtime story?

oh, okay…

Chapter 1: P-E-P-E

It was early on a Thursday morning when Pepe arrived at our door. He came accompanied by, of course, Megan, as she was the one who made it possible for him to ride the Path and then a taxi to our building. She came bearing bags of goodies: one with Pepe’s leash and a comfortable spot for him to be carried on the subway, and the other with food and his favorite blanket. He was with us for four short days; just enough time to remember why we love him so dearly, but not enough to satisfy our desire to have him around always. We’ll miss you, dear Pepe, and having to sprint in and out of the building with you because dogs are not allowed here.

Chapter 2: Ciao, Little Italy!

so there was a festival going on in little italy last week so i dragged a bunch of people down there to check it out. it ended up being really fun! we decided to go to one of the restaurants on mulberry st (where all the action was), which, in retrospect, might have been kind of silly since there were about 4,453,692,485 street vendors that were carrying delicious (and far cheaper) food and snacks. oh well. regardless, we had a good time.

Chapter 3: Pot Luck

sorry i don’t have a clever title for this part. or pictures. but it was fun! we all hauled out to bed-stuy to see ross’ new apartment and eat delicious food. mission accomplished.

Chapter 4: ‘23, bitches…’

it was alex “let’s do a shot!” w’s birthday last weekend, so she had a rockin’ birthday party at the three jolly pigeons in bay ridge (for those of you who live in or are familiar with brooklyn: yes, we went from bed-stuy to bay ridge. yes, we took a cab because, as you know, that’s practically impossible to do in under 1.5 hours).

it was SUPER fun. i asked mariel to take some pictures while ross and i were playing pool, which ended up with her nearly crashing my camera because of all the pictures (not really), but i did manage to find this gem of ross cupping the pool table.

okay, now cough?

i would get more specific than that but i don’t have many details. sorry, mom. and more sorry for the next part:

Chapter 5: hangover, bitches…

there’s actually not much to tell here. este had to go to work at like 930 that morning, and thank god he took pepe out before he left, because i could not summon the strength to take him out until 7 that night. coincidentally, joe blog happened to post something about hangovers that very day, so i got to read about and experience one all at the same time. so that was nice. i also watched ‘michael clayton’, which was really good, but the end credits are george clooney riding around in a cab, which made me mega-nauseous, so i wasn’t too psyched about the end there. oh, well. i got to bum around and do nothing, so i guess that’s cool. next time maybe i’ll remember to drink some water, though, so i don’t end up on the brink of death from dehydration.

Chapter 5: Let’s Go, METS!

honestly, i couldn’t have cared less about the score of that game, but it was still wicked fun to go hang out at shea stadium before it’s demolished (or flattened, or whatever) next week. and for the record, they better be VERY careful when they do happen to smush it, because the new stadium is mere INCHES from the existing one:

we had that awesome view right across from the giant sign because we were about seven rows from the very end of the stadium. i wish i had gotten a better perspective shot of the whole thing, but you’re just going to have to take it from me… it’s really scary up there. the stairs are sosteep. but we did have a really nice view of like, the entire stadium.

the original plan involved 12 people going to this thing, but yadda yadda yadda… we ended up with 6 people and 6 empty seats. it actually provided a nice buffer. would’ve been nicer if it padded us from kid-who-can’t-keep-his-legs-from-pounding-the-back-of-my-seat or group-of-tweens-who-yell-a-lot, but what’re you gonna do?

Chapter 6: On an Unrelated Note, I Have About 15 Mosquito Bites

the end.

a post about walking.

i’ve been trying to walk more recently. it’s been easier to walk to a less convenient subway stop on my way to work, mainly because by the end of the day i’m lazy and decide that “oh, i’ll just do it tomorrow”. so i decided to apply some self-control the past few days and move my walk to the end of the day so i can actually take my time and check out new things.

so naturally i ended up lost. not lost in the sense that i needed to “pull over” and ask for directions, but more in the sense that i ended up near streets that i wasn’t anticipating. like, streets with names instead of numbers. i also happened to have a headache that was about to knock me right the f out, so i wasn’t super happy about the situation. BUT, i pulled through. it turns out i was just in the west village.

i passed gay street (which doesn’t seem that cool, but any street vendor worth their salt has a picture of the street sign among their wares), and also this amazing-looking storefront that i can’t go into detail about because i’m going to get my mom a present from it because their stuff is right up her alley. i didn’t go in because of my life-ending headache, though, which i have now come to regret. i tried to recreate that trip again this afternoon, but to no avail. i could follow my path i think about halfway, but i took the wrong right somewhere along the line, and lost the trail. lame. when i was walking down 5th street, though, i did hear someone playing some awesome saxophone in their apartment. so that was nice.

more to come later! we’ve been doing fun city things and have more on the docket, so stay tuned.

“is it like… because you drink until you can’t walk?”

that’s a quote from my mom there… she was asking the meaning of “pub crawl”. it was cute.

anyway, este and i did a super fun pub crawl last night! it ended up being just the two of us (with one brief exception when mariel and erin met us for a drink at our fourth destination), but remained totally un-lame. i think technically we were supposed to get some sort of “passport” or something, but our tickets didn’t come in the mail in time, so we ended up walking around with este’s confirmation email all night:

it confused most of the bartenders, but ultimately they didn’t really care. one of them even gave us an extra round!

this was my first pub crawl, so i was a little nervous because we were meant to travel to six different bars. well, six beers is kind of a lot to put in this stomach over here, but it turned out they were using smaller glasses for the people doing the crawl, so i made it through like a champ. well, a champ that complains a lot about being soooo very full of beer.

i did take pictures of most of the bars we went to, but they’re all dorky and not interesting, so i’ll post this one instead:

it’s real astro turf! it was up on the wall of some building in alphabet city. amusing.

but overall, the bars were really nice. only one was kind of packed; the rest seemed to be pretty slow, so we got to sit down for a lot of it, which helps when you’re otherwise on the move. i highly recommend the route to other people in the east village. it’s all a part of craft beer week, which actually includes several different routes, including a couple in brooklyn. get into it!

superdork.

so i’m SO bored at work, i opened a twitter account. also, i like blogging, but sometimes i feel like sharing small things (like the guy playing the harmonica that i followed on my way to work yesterday) that don’t really call for an entire blog post. so in the interest of indulging myself – quite frankly – i set this silly thing up.

if you have it already, publicly or weirdly secretly (i’m looking at YOU, lucille! ask me how i found out.), let me know so i can follow you around on the interwebs, and vice versa.

ps: noah, i know you’re curious about the site in general, so i’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

zzz…

oh i’m sorry, am i NOT supposed to fall asleep at work? my bad. but then again, i thought you were supposed to do WORK at work.

ugh. sorry, guys. i’m not really that angry, i’m just super super bored. the place i work at runs in two seasons per year, and we’re between them right now which means that there is no work for me to do. also, my boss is out of town, so he can’t even give me inane tasks to do. so basically i’ve reorganized our office space, finished a crossword puzzle, left early yesterday (whoops!), and read blogs. all day. every day. and there are still two days left in the damn week.

anyway, i’m just writing to bitch a little, and also to get opinions on the new format. i want to be able to do that thing where you change colors and fonts and stuff, but the only thing i could find that sort of allows you to do that makes you pay cash money. i don’t want to do that. so can someone tell me how to do that without spending anything? because that might be a fun little activity for me.

conspiracy fail.

it’s incredibly slow at work today (and probably will be all this week, too), so i thought i’d post a gem from my hours of web surfing. i mentioned FAIL in a previous post; this youtube video was posted by them this afternoon:

enjoy.

smorgasbord, pt. 2

just a few small tidbits today, guys… and why do i feel the need to share with you a handful of insignificant details about my past few days? i’m glad you asked!

tidbit #1. este is assisting all day.
but not just assisting. assisting at a TOP SECRET wedding in the city! so top secret, even i don’t know anything about it. crazy, right? we’ll see if he sneaks some pictures and lets me post them here. probs not, though, so don’t get your hopes up.

2. i found this site:
best of craigslist. i’m not saying it IS the funniest thing ever… but it’s pretty damn close. my personal fave so far is “to the perv who groped me on my way home”.

3. i saw two weird and unrelated things on thursday, and then one more yesterday.
thursday:

now this may not seem unusual to everyone, but to me it kind of was! for whatever reason, i decided to go off my normal beaten path to work that morning, and ended up walking west on 74th st (usually i take 76th… crazy, right?). well i’m walking between central park west and columbus ave, when i notice these columns on several buildings! seriously, there were at least five. the picture above is actually of a small school, though, which kind of cracked me up more. it’s like… yeah guys, we get it, you live on the upper west side. you’re very fancy, and clearly deserve some g-damn COLUMNS on your buildings. it’s like they needed to remind me that all i have are lowly iron fence things. whatevs.

so anyway, when i was leaving work, i decided to go for a little stroll because it was nice out and it’s good to exercise and blah blah blah. so i decide to walk to rockefeller center because then i could take the F home from there and it’s a pretty easy walk. OR SO I THOUGHT.

i had been hearing about some crazy usher/keith urban/nfl kickoff thing in columbus circle (which was on my route to the rock, as i like to call it) like all day on npr, but for some reason, it didn’t occur to me that this wouldn’t be a public event! so i start my walk, and when i get to within ten blocks of cc i start hearing usher. five blocks later, everything is blocked off! everything. so long story short, i had to go through the damn park to get home. now the park is lovely, but the paths are windy and i basically have no knowledge whatsoever of where any of them lead to, so i was kind of annoyed. and there were cops EV-ERY-WHERE. so i was kind of pleased when i finally found their stomping ground for this event:

for those of you who have read the trog before (like, way before), you may remember some images and mention of groups of cops near my old place in brooklyn, and how they all hung out under the bridge. so i was surprisingly comfortable with seeing like 75 of them milling around in one area. and that awesome little segue way brings me to…

friday:
more cops! i don’t have a picture of this one because i didn’t want people to get mad, but it was weird all over again. i decided to do a different stroll home yesterday because the first one was such a disaster, so i’m walking down our street, and i pass the police station that’s on the corner on the opposite side of our block. there are usually a couple of cops milling around talking to neighbors and homeless people and stuff, but there were so many of them out yesterday, that i took notice. as i started getting closer to our place, i saw a kind of big group of people on our corner, absolutely surrounded by cops, and fenced in to the sidewalk by those weird corral things they use for events and stuff.

i happened to have just passed a cop, so i turned around to ask him what was up, and he told me it was “police protest slash concert”. excuse me? “i dunno, the east village is so weird.” i later found out that a group of faux punk kids were protesting, on the large scale, a new police precinct, but more specifically, some kid getting shot by an off-duty cop. awesome.

4. prison break is back.
thank god.