frozen bananas

Maddy said her new favorite dessert was frozen bananas. So, thinking that would be a good idea, I pulled off a banana from the bunch that came with today's Fresh Direct shipment and threw it in the freezer a few hours ago. Uhhh. Whoops. Turns out, a WHOLE frozen banana is not a very edible thing. I just took it out of the freezer and realized pretty quick: you can't peel a frozen banana. So I microwaved it for a bit. It just turned mushy but I still ate it. Not bad.

Next time i'm going to peel and slice up the banana first, then put it in the freezer. Genius!

fun weekend w friends and dispatch

I went to the Dispatch concert at MSG on Saturday night w my friend Larry (MHS and JHU). It was an amazing concert -- Dispatch reunion, 25 songs (about 3 hours!), and proceeds going to Zimbabwe. The problem was, somewhere along the illustrious Dispatch history, they picked up half a million high school kids as fans. I'm not sure how, since I was in college back in 2000 when they were pretty well-known, and then I thought they disappeared after their 4th and final original album came out around 2002. Apparently, they disbanded for a few years then had a huge reunion concert back in 2005 where 120,000 people came out. I think that's when all the high school fans emerged. See, i figured Larry and I (both in our late 20s), would see more of our ilk there. Instead, it was a swarm of 20,000 15-17 year olds. Not that I don't like high school kids -- after all, i make my living tutoring them -- but these kids were REALLY annoying and obnoxious, in ways Larry and I couldn't remember when we were in high school. It appeared as if they replaced smoking weed with taking speed, coke and other amphetamines. These kids were AGGRESSIVE, like at a sports event, roudy, loud and a little crazy. You'd think Dispatch, with their relaxing groove attitude would allure a much calmer crowd, but I guess the anticipation of the 3 successive nights of shows - several years of waiting -- made the teens anxious.

It could also be that Dispatch is from Boston, and many of the Bostonions had come out... and people from boston are generally a bunch of asshats. (not all, but most).

The show was great though. Dispatch played a few songs, then took a break to show a vignette video about Zimbabwe (filmed when they visited 2 months ago). They were good, encouraging, and wasted on most of these annoying little teens. They brought out some people from Zimbabwe to do some drumming and singing for a few songs, and even played an acoustic set sitting atop their beloved tour van, which drove into the center of the arena. They have 4 albums with maybe 45 total songs. They played virtually ALL of the "hits" and a few new ones, but we were worrying towards the end that they were running out of songs to play, and how much longer could this last?

Meanwhile, we were sitting in the front row of one of the levels, so people were freely walkng in front of us for food, bathroom, whatever. Halfway in, the nincompoops started all getting up and doing a bizarre conga line, jumping around, and, oddly, slapping hi five with anyone who would raise their hand. This was annoying since a virtual endless line of stupid little kids who probably dressed up for halloween last october continually came by and held up their hands like they were in a marathon or otherwise deserved a hi five. Well, they deserved to get out of my line of sight to the stage.

But it was a good night. We hit up the Gingerman afterwards (where NONE of those kids would have gotten into) and hung out w all the old Hillel hopkins crowd.

Later we hit up a 7-11 which, in China, was as common as Starbucks here. In China, the 7-elevens all smell horrendous bc they all sell an odd meatball-like fish thing - basically 3 tubs of grease with lots of small meatball things, behind the counter -- you eat (definitely NOT me) with ketchup. Luckily this 7-eleven didnt serve that shit, but instead was all decked out as a KWIK-E-Mart for the upcoming Simpsons film! They had a lot of funny decorations, donut signs, slurpee machine signs, and even the guys behind the counter were forced to take part with purple simpsons t-shirts.

Good Stuff.

craigslist

wow, i put up an ad on craigslist last night. basically i'm trying to sell off a bunch of crap from my apartment: clothing that doesnt fit, electronics, furniture, etc. mostly good quality stuff, just not stuff i use anymore. the ad is here: http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/gms/371212666.html . but i was very OCD with this and listed out EACH item including condition, price, category, size, and brand. i also took photos of each item and put them online at: http://public.fotki.com/jeffnovich/craigslist-for-sale . what's cool is that this photo link actually keeps track of the number of hits, so i can see how many ppl have viewed the picture site. it's at about 850 sofar since last night, about 65 just for today. already i got a few ppl interested in various stuff, so things look good. it seems the hottest items are the chinese/japanese art pieces (the last few pictures on the site), that maddy told me (just now) NOT to sell. oh well.

we'll see how this turns out, but it looks promising.

weekend in the hamptons

i went to southhampton this weekend to visit my cousin who has a house out there. we went biking, jogging, chilled on the beach, and dinner w my relatives (his brother and his parents all have condos in the same complex, so it turned into a little reunion with everyone!).

the hamptons is a whack place where you kinda need to own a german car or a lamborgini and be comfortable spending $20 for a bagel and $24 for a generic glass of wine. it is beautiful, yes, and very much like cape cod with the beaches and scenic roads, but it's a bizarro world filled with botox women and their dress-like-sluts 12 year old daughters all mingling at a night club at 11pm where dinner entres cost $80+. the town seems to restrict entry of any car under $100k and, uh, black people.

but it is the life if you don't worry about cost. only 2 hrs from nyc, it's a relaxing place and a perfect vacation spot.

hanging w my cousin was a lot of fun. i explained why we need to be concerned about global warming, how hybrid cars work, the value of raising fuel efficiency standards, and how carbon dioxide heats up the earth. my cousin is about to start as a top executive at a major investment bank so i see it as my responsibility to get him to think about the enviro side of things since he stands to make real differences in the way he decides to invest and focus resources. he said at the end that i made him think a lot more about this stuff and now he understands the issues a little better. score for the environment!

back in the NYC

I've been back in NYC for a little over 2 weeks now, and it is GREAT to be back. I didn't quite realize I lived in the greatest city on earth until I visited a LOT of other nasty cities. I feel like I kind of know something about the world now and can confidently say that NYC is really the best.

I've been to:

China - Beijing, Shenzhen, Hong Kong
Philippines
Thailand - Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Ko Samui
Australia - Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane, Sunshine Coast, Kangaroo Island, Fraser Island
Spain - Madrid Barcelona
France - briefly Paris
Israel - Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Eilat
Germany - Berlin, Munich
Prague
Vienna, Austria
Montreal, Toronto
Puerto Rico
Budapest
US - Chicago, San Fran, East coast, LA


That's a substantial list... Europe is OK, Asia is horrendous, and the US just always wins out.

Anyway, some news:
1) Zak moved out, Paula moved out. I switched to Zak's big room where Maddy will be joining me in about 6 weeks (she's still in China). My little sister moved into my old room. Steve (the subletter) moved into Paula's room. Both of them wil move out the end of the summer and Maddy and I will get to hike up rent a LOT and find 2 new craigslist roommates who will make our rent the cheapest it will ever be.

2) Upon returning from China, i felt 2 things. 1) everyone i saw (IE, non-chinese people, all over the place) all looked familiar, like an old high school aquaintance. very odd. 2) I felt like a movie star, living the most luxurious life, as we went to a nice dinner and a regular downtown bar -- these are things you simply cannot get in China and returning to them made me realize how lucky we are to be living like this. Several dozen episodes of Entourage which i had watched on the flight back helped solidify that concept - i literally felt like those guys, even though going to a regular dinner and having drinks at a nice bar is fairly typical here, it truly felt like I was living like a millionaire.

3) The flight left HK at 12:45pm. (Before then, i woke up at 6am, got to the ferry with maddy and made it with only about an hour til the flight left). 13.5 hrs later, we got to chicago. The flight to NYC was delayed by 1.5 hrs bc of lighting, but it was ok because i was on american soil and thanking god i wasn't in china any more (as if i had just been freed from a POW camp ala rambo or john mccain). It helped to be sharing the flight with 2 movie stars: Maggie Gyllenhaal and her husband Peter Sarsgaard, who was wearing one of those baby backpacks that go in the front... that was pretty funny. I finally got back ot the apartment at 10pm with zak helping me and the big luggage I had bought had literally torn apart at the seams by the time I got up the steps. The entire thing was breaking apart before my eyes from the beginning when the rolling handle broke off of the main luggage just steps BEFORE we even got to the ferry. Chinese shit really sucks. I went to sleep at 3am after doing a lot of unpacking and cleaning, thinking I would sleep 15 hours since I had been up over 30 hours at this point. Instead, i woke up WIDE AWAKE at 7:30am, barely 4 hours of sleep. Made it thru the whole day cheerfully and passed out at 10pm. I got up at 6:30am, and there my new improved sleep schedule began. I've still been sleeping fairly early and waking up way earlier than normal.

4) I started running again, thank god. Jogging at 7am before it gets hot is really good, and exercise helps relieve the jet lag, which i basically avoided entirely. I'm up to 6 miles again, so that's good.

5) Benny's bachelor party was in Puerto Rico this past weekend. It was nice to see everyone, good to be on the beach, plus i won $250 at the casino playing blackjack, which was entirely unexpected since I'm too scared to lose money so I never gamble. THere was a minor problem with scheduling of the flight, as I was stupid and accidentally scheduled a saturday flight on jetblue rather than friday, and had to spend quite a few hours between going to JFK and trying to get on standby (nope) and calling at 12:01am Saturday to get a same-day ticket change which worked out. Still 30 hours in Puerto Rico was pretty nice and I didnt feel like I needed much more time than that.