When letting someone borrow a pen hold onto the cap (if it comes with one). This reminds you how silly it is to be holding a pen cap and you'll go, Oh yeah my pen!
The artist still known as Prince performed a concert two nights ago. Didn't go. I wanted to but tickets weren't...cheap to come by. This morning I read OnTheRedCarpet.com that he won't be getting giggy with iTunes and the whole clickable Internet thingy anymore, regarding the Internet as "completely over." Over as in dead, yesterday's news, unprofitable. So how will the music man release his new album 20Ten? Why as surprise CD inserts in some European newspapers. Just like a surprise in the cereal box! I can dig it. Booyah!
Unless you have one of those blocky multi-faced electric converters/adapters chances are high you'll unplug your machine and totally forget about the converter attachment until you go to plug it in again. It's happened to me about four times. Doh! To remedy this I've begun taping the attachment to the cord and now I am always mindful of it. The fact that the tape job is a little tacky works in my favor; it reminds me that it's there.
It's been nearly a week since I left NYC and came across the pond and it's worth saying that I had no hiccups, stress, beef or third-degree passing my black ass through English officials at Heathrow Airport or German border patrol at Berlin's Tegel Airport. No twenty questions, no sarcastic undertones, no snarky attitude, nothing remotely racist--- like the Qúebecunt border patrol.
I had forgotten it could be so easy. I felt like a white person.
- A German acquaintance wrote to me about my New Rules regarding tipping in Europe and it suggested to my mind to share last Sunday's episode in NYC:
By the way, Happy Fourth of July. Woo-hoo! So a friend and I met for a late Sunday brunch last week. It was, incidentally, NYC's homosexual celebration day (Pride, they call it. Go figure). I didn't run into any of the circus until after eating so my appetite was still intact. The cafe my friend originally suggested was, to our surprise, completely closed and emptied out ---talk about a New York minute!--- so we settled two doors down at Bar-B-Q, a macho sounding diner-esque eatery on the fringe of chi-chi Chelsea where nothing is diner and nothing but blatino hustlers are macho.
I had eaten here before because they used to offer mojitos. Mojitos were no longer on the menu but, for Sunday brunch, one could have either mimosas, bloody marys or some other drink I can't recall in unlimited quantities for the duration of 60 minutes. Fast forward to the end of the meal: the bill of fare.
Brunch prix fixe was $13.95. Our bill was thirty dollars solid. We each only had a twenty-dollar note. I thought to leave a $10 tip was outrageous and my friend, who has adopted NY as his permanent residence, offered little in the way of argument. Is that not too much? I said. Yeah maybe, he answered. So it was settled: we'd leave a $5 dollar tip and split the other five for train fare. Well!
This pretty boy motherfucker waiter, probably a homo jock, looked at us and said, the motherfucker actually said, "Wow. I, like, served you, what, six or seven mimosas?" And I said, "Yes thank you for reminding me. Five dollars please."
So homeboy pulls out this WAD of money from under his apron and flips pass ten- and twenty-dollar bills ---billssss...plural--- to peel us off an Abe Lincoln; he, the waiter, has more money than the two of us and I, me,had to sleep in Central Park just days earlier and THIS GAY BAIT MOTHERFUCKER had the nerve to turn up his nose at five dollars? Five free dollars?! If I had been dining alone I would have told him, Thank ye very little and fuck you very much, and not left a goddamn thing. Imagine! "Unlimited" mimosas means five...six, seven, eight...nine...twenty. And it's not as if we were boorish diners snapping our fingers at the aspiring actor or griping about this or that.
That's NYC for you where free money is even insulting. They expect gratitude for doing their jobs. Assholes, rich pigs, wannabes, and queers...and most times it is hard to tell the difference betwixt the four; but they're all ungrateful, pretentious, barely English speaking, me-centric, individuals. Nigga please.
I went to wrestling practice today. Was looking forward to it all morning long. Totally forgot that Wimbledon was going on (I love cheering for Serena Wms, who, I might add, is the Wimbledon Champion for the fourth time. Booyah!) but that's all right. I wasn't as out of wind as I thought I would be and it turned out to be a decent roll-around and sweat.
Towards the end of practice we could hear the horns and fireworks and those damn bleeting plastic noisemakers that are causing a stir at World Cup all going off outside. That was the "cheering" of another German goal. Either that or, as one joked, a Turkish wedding was afoot. Ho!
This time last week I was in NYC watching Team USA playing soccer and today I'm in Berlin wrestling; Germany trounced Argentina 4-0 (Damn!) and Serena won Wimbledon!