Finally, the project that consumes me every year during the beginning of October has ended and I am free once again to do something other than work every bleeping second of every day. I will post the super-cool stuff I made for the meeting shortly, but in the meantime, let’s cover what I did this past weekend. It was jolly delightful. I met up with Jem who was in town working the Comic Con. She is really into beer, so we headed off to the East Village to traipse through a variety of bars. The first one I can’t remember the name of, but it was full, and I mean completely full, of fratboy douchebags. I actually didn’t hate it there. I watched some of the Georgia-Colorado football game (Colorado had a male bison run across the field!) and sang along with Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer”. The only problem was that it was really really loud and there was nowhere to sit, so we moved on. The next stop was McSorley’s, the oldest continuously operated saloon in New York. Loads of famous people have passed through there. It was, how shall I put this, rustic. There was sawdust on the floor and communal tables and please allow me to run through the entire menu:
Two kinds of beer: light and dark
Liverwurst sandwiches
A sleeve of Saltines, a pile of sliced cheddar and a pile of sliced raw white onions
AND PEOPLE WERE EATING THIS. New York has, what, eleventy-billion restaurants, and people were eating stuff that I wouldn’t eat if it was 3:00 in the morning and I was starving and it was the only food in my fridge. By then I was pretty peckish, so as soon as Jem finished her beers (one light and one dark), we headed off to St. Marks Place for real-person food. We went to a stellar restaurant called Je’Bon which served pan-asian food. I had curry that came in a white bowl the size of a toilet. It was huge and delicious. After that glorious experience, we tottered off to my favorite place of the evening, unfortunately named Burp Castle. I deduced from the name that it would be like a Chuck. E. Cheese with beer, but thankfully I was wrong. It’s a bar built to look like a room in a monastery, with 15th-century-style frescoes on the wall. The bartenders are in the brown tunic and rope belt of a monk, the lighting is very dim and very flattering, and if you talk too loudly, the bartenders gently shush you, so it’s sort of quiet. Jem had a creme brulee beer, which I had a tiny taste of, and you know it wasn’t bad. I found a picture of Burp Castle online, so you can get an idea.
The next morning, it was off to St. Francis of Assisi Day at St. John the Divine! You should read my previous post on it before you continue because I make references to the post. This is what standing in line looks like.
There’s a great deal of chaos and butt-sniffing and barking. There was a cat there who wanted nothing more then to kill everyone in attendance. One kid brought his dragon-lizard-creature.
The service was pretty much the same thing as always. This is the 26th year that they have had the Earth Mass, as they call it. I got a better shot of the lady with the punchbowl this time.
Inside, I saw a sphinx cat wearing a blue sweater and an expression of disdain for the proceedings.
I also saw the ugliest dog I have ever seen. I swear to God, It looked like it was rotting. I couldn’t stop looking at it and thinking, “Is that…mold?”
Speaking of God, I had excellent seats this year to see the eucharist. Everyone has a different way of accepting the wafer and wine, but one guy took the wafer in his hand, then walked over to the fancy wine goblet and dipped it in and popped the now soggy wafer in his mouth, and while I was thrilled because it seems so much more hygenic then everyone drinking from the same vessel, I was also like, “Hey, I don’t want to tell you how to do your thing, but I don’t think you’re supposed to dunk the body of Christ into the blood of Christ like chip dip. Seems a litte disrespectful. This is not a Superbowl party. Just sayin’.”
And now, the annual Presentation of the Irritatingly Blurry Photos. The procession was a bit of a let-down this year. There were no birds of prey at all, there were no bees in a glass case, and most of the creatures were farm animals, which is fine, but I kinda liked the baby kangaroo and the baby gibbon from last year. There was a hysterical teenage emu. We’ll get to him later.
First, a cute chubby pig.
A festive little cow.
A mini-horse.
One of several llamas.
A dromedary.
In the middle of this procession, a young emu came down the aisle, and he must really hate church because the second he got in there he started skidding backwards on the floor and attempting to jump away and making weird beeping noises, so his handler gently brought him over to the side to chill.
Emu freaking.
Emu chilling.
Emu being carried down the aisle and flailing.
There was a fennec there, but you could barely see it because the lady carrying it was clutching it to her bosom so tight. I am aware that fennecs are wild animals and if they get loose they don’t come back, but this woman was holding that fennec with an expression on her face like, “No fennec for you! No fennec for anyone but me! Fennec all mine!” This is the uber-crappy shot I got of her. Selfish fennec-clutcher that she was.
Afterward there was the usual fair outside (minus the birds of prey, boo) and I donated money to all the charities and got to meet a whole bunch of very nice dogs. There was a 235-pound English mastiff there.
And who immediately wanted to get into a fight with him? Of course, the Pomeranian puppy. This is the puppy meeting the mastiff.
This is the Pomeranian putting his dukes up.
And this is the mastiff gently sniffing the Pomeranian’s junk, then exhaling heavily and laying down on the ground while the pomeranian hops around him, pummeling ineffectively at the mastiff’s snout.
Watching all this go down in the background was an extremely attentive dachshund. I thought he was adorable.
That’s pretty much it. One day I’ll get a hold of a good camera that can take good pictures of moving objects in dim light, and then I will have good pictures. It will happen someday, I swear.
