A Geoff Stevens Original Christmas Card

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Stevens Bros. Halloween Costume Hall of Fame

Ingenious way of incorporating my crutches into the costume, huh? That night, Nick came along with my Dad as I trick-or-treated the neighborhood. The result? We got unmercifully egged in a drive-by on Liberty Street. Nick found the yolk inside the pocket of his new jacket.



Pirates often spurned swords for well-endowed vibrators. That's me as Oscar the Grouch in the corner.



Check out the killer cape my grandma made for me. That thing's still in mint condition in the back of my closet.






You're guaranteed to see this haunting visage in your nightmares tonight.




Hey everyone! It's the world's saddest rodeo clown!


Ah, the greatest photo Walker Evans never took.




Watch out for the chubby, mullet-clad teenage Terminator!

Love Is What I Do

Two weeks ago, Nick's good friend and college roommate, Kevin, the "swing" for several of the show's principle characters, got to play the lead role in the Wedding Singer while the usual Robbie Hart was on vacation for the week. He's been on Broadway and off-Broadway for the last 10 years in Les Miz and Altar Boyz, but I had never seen him perform, and neither had my Mom. She drove down to NY last Friday, looking almost more excited than she did on Nick's wedding day, and a bunch of us- me, Mom, Nick, Emily, and Krister- went to see Kevin play the title role on Friday night.

The show was a lot of fun, and it was a thrilling experience to see Kevin up on stage for two and a half hours. The play itself was a lot better than I expected, thoroughly entertaining and never boring. Watching Kevin, I had a smile on my face for the whole show, so much that I gave myself a headache after a while, but I couldn't help it.

The big surprise of the show, though, was Konstantine from last year's American Idol. I never saw any of that season since I was in Turkey the whole time, but he really impressed me playing the role of Robbie Hart's best friend.

After the show, we got to cut through through the velevet rope, walk through the actor's door, and check out the stage. Here's a shot of me, Kevin, and Mom on stage, though it was so dark you can barely tell where we are.



The most staifying part of the evening was seeing Kevin come outside afterwards and greet all the fans who wanted to talk to him, take a photo, and even get his autograph.



Here's another shot of Mom and I outside the theater before heading home.



With Mom's limited mobility, we couldn't walk to a less crowded area to hail a cab- we must have stood on the corner of 9th Ave. for about 20 minutes before we flagged down a free taxi.

Noooooo!

Now that the Red Sox have been out of the playoff race for a while, the Pink Hats have decided to descend upon the Patriots and Foxboro Stadium this season. I guess it was only a matter of time, but it still hurts.

The Wire on Critical Fire

The Wire has been getting rave reviews and pleas of "Please Watch This Show!" for the past few weeks, leading up to its season 4 premiere last week. A lot of critics and writers are calling it the best show on TV, ever. I don't think they're too far off on that assessment.

I didn't even know about the show until season 2 was already over. I had read some great reviews in EW and elsewhere, but it wasn't a show a lot of people, at least that I knew of, were watching. On a lark, I bought the first season DVD right before I left for Turkey, thinking I'd need some good, dense TV shows to watch while I was overseas. Best decision I ever made. I started netflixing season 2 as soon as I got home in the summer of '05, and I just finished watching season 3 on DVD a few days ago. Season 4 just started up last week and for the first time, and it feels strange, I'm watching it in real time.

A friend of mine is having twins in the next few weeks, and he invited all his friends to a baby shower this weekend. Us guys, we didn't know what to get them- did they really need more baby clothes and kids' books? Krister came up with the plan of having a bunch of us pool our resources and buy the father-to-be the first 3 seasons of The Wire, since we all know he's going to be on serious lockdown once the kids arrive. He was ecstatic when he opened up the gift this past Saturday, although I don't think his very-pregnant wife was as thrilled as he was.

World Trade Center misfires

Seems like they fumbled up the facts surrounding the rescue in World Trade Center and missed out on some of the more interesting plotlines and backstories.

United 93 is now out on video and, if you can stomach it, I highly recommend seeing it. It's the best movie I've seen so far this year.

Nick and Em on Wikipedia

Nick pointed out to me last week that a picture of he and Emily shopping for vegetables accompanies the Wikipedia article for the Union Square Farmers Market. Pretty random, huh? Some NY lawyer and wikipedia maven snapped the photo and wrote the article sometime last fall apparently.

Homework

I read this Slate article about elemtary school homework and outside reading, and it brought back a funny memory from 3rd grade.

My class was given an assignment to read for 30 minutes over the weekend. My teacher passed out little forms where we could fill in our name and have a parent sign on the bottom stating that we did, in fact, read a book for half an hour. On Friday night, with my whole family sitting in the clubhouse at the Raynham dog track, watching greyhounds run around in circles chasing a white motorizied bunny rabbit, it hit me that I had forgotten the form and left it in my desk at school. Oh the terror! Sound the alarm!

I was terrified- I wouldn't be able to complete my homework assignment, and I wouldn't be able to watch the "Fun Film" on Thursday afternoons for those kids who hadn't forgotten to do/bring in their homework all week. My stomach was too busy doing somersaults to realize that, DUH!, I could have had my Mom just write out a note herself saying that I read a book for 30 minutes. Where was that "outside the box" thinking when I truly needed it?

After sitting there watching the dog races while my stomach churned with dread and worry, a bright idea finally hit me- have my Mom actually follow me into school on Monday morning, come to my classroom, and sign my little reading form. Yeah, that'll solve all my problems! After that 20-minute panic attack, I could go back to enjoying quality time with Mom, Dad, and Gogo at the dog track. I still wonder why my mom didn't think of writing a new form from scratch for me, but she went along with my plan and came in with me on Monday morning nevertheless. My teacher, Miss Mavilia, told me she was impressed that my Mom came all the way to the classroom just to sign a sheet of paper.

A third grader should never be that worried over a homework assignment. I don't know what I was thinking...

The Speedy Fung-Wah

Yesterday a Fun-Wah bus en route from New York to Boston rolled over onto its driver's side when it drove too fast on an off-ramp.

Was I surprised? Not really. Since my car expired earlier this year, Fung-Wah (and occassionally Greyhound) has been my primary way of getting back and forth from Boston to New York. It's hard to tell how fast the bus is driving when I'm in the back, it's dark, and I'm sleeping for most of the trip, but I was startled when one late trip from Boston to New York clocked in at 3 hours and 15 minutes. Sure, it was late and the roads weren't heavily trafficked, but when 4 hours or a little bit more is the standard, 3:15 is a little to rapid for my taste.

I took the Fung-Wah back to NY on a 9pm bus from Boston and arrived at 12:30am on the nose. It's nice to get back earlier than expected, but at what cost? I don't care which shortcuts the bus took- a trip that short in a full-size motor coach is a difficult feat if you're driving at the speed limit, or even a few miles over it.

I'm sure I'll use Fung-Wah again in the future- after all, they have buses going back and forth between NY and Boston all day, every day, and two incidents in the last 2 years where nobody's gotten seriously hurt isn't that horrible a record, but if it's a more convenient, I may spend the extra 5 bucks and add an extra 45 minutes to my trip and take Greyhound.

Jerome Jerome Jerome

How many times can Chicago Cubs manager Dusty Baker mention his departing pitcher's first name in a single interview? The answer? A lot.

"It didn't work out," manager Dusty Baker said. "We were trying to wait on Jerome to work out. I know Oakland had probably been coveting Jerome for a while. They got a bird's-eye view of Jerome. … They have a very good idea of Jerome. I have a pretty good idea of Jerome, but I didn't see the Jerome that I had hope to see, or we had hoped to see."

A Look Back At The Wedding Day (LONG!)

This entry on Nick's wedding day has been a long time coming (was it really over 2 months ago already???). I already wrote in detail about day 1 and day 2 back in mid-June, so I felt I needed to wrap this up to make the trilogy complete. Let's see if I can remember everything now, or at least the good parts.

When I woke up in the morning, after a late night hanging out with the guys in the lobby trading old Nick stories and Nick rhapsodizing about Patches behind the stove, I realized that Nick was already awake, out of bed, and gone. He was on the pre-wedding morning jog around the neighborhood surrounding the hotel. I went down to the lobby for breakfast and there were loads of wedding people down there eating and chatting. Nick arrived back from his jog with a giant bag of popcorn in tow. There was a giant Walmart just down the road, so he popped in, bought a bag of freshly popped corn, and jogged back with it. Walmart's popcorn is so good, too, almost movie-theater caliber, but everyone saw him and wondered, "Who comes back from a sweaty jog with a sack of popcorn?" It was good thinking, because it came into play later in the day.

As Nick entered the lobby, a group of people instantly surrounded him, wanting to wish him well, see how he was feeling, and ask questions. Looking back now, I should have stepped up as the best man and acted like a bodyguard for him, because he just got peppered with endless logistical questions and whatnot when he really needed to hurry back up to the hotel room and get showered and changed for the wedding. I don't think there was one time we got dressed or ready to leave the hotel when we weren't in the 2-minute hurry-up offense mode.

By the time we got up to the hotel room, we barely had anytime to get ready. Nick still had to shower, shave, iron his shirt, get his suit ready, etc., and not much time to do it. It was a frantic 15 minutes while the two of us ran around the room helter skelter. Neither of us had the chance to eat breakfast, so I threw a frozen pizza into the microwave. A few of the groomsmen were already down in front of the hotel in the van assigned to drive us to the church and we weren't even dressed yet. Once I got everything on, I grabbed the pizza and the bag of popcorn and Nick started down to the lobby more or less half dressed. I think he had on his socks, shoes, pants, and his shirt not even buttoned up all the way. He'd have to assemble the rest of his outfit while sitting in the front seat of the van during the ride.

The groomsmen were impressed by the pizza, but none of them were brave enough to eat it in the car- something about being afraid of getting grease on their tuxes or some nonsense. Someone commented that it really wouldn't be a Stevens wedding without someone holding and eating a pizza while in a moving vehicle. So true.

We got to the church really early, so there was a lot of waiting around before any fireworks happened. It amazed me watching everybody arrive, so many friends and family members descending upon the church in huge bunches.

Eventually Nick and I went to some meeting room in the back of the church so we could be sequestered and out of sight when Emily arrived. We were in there for, I'd say, a good 20 minutes, just waiting for the action to get under way while the woman in charge of flowers stopped by to attach our colorful boutonnieres. Nick wasn't nervous or anything, he was just energetic and ready to get the show on the road. If his knees and legs are jumpy even when he's sluggish, you can imagine what he was like while we were sequestered. At one point I started singing the chorus of Huey Lewis' "If This Is It," and then Nick, pacing around the room, picked it up and continued to sing the ENTIRE SONG, word for word. Afterwards, he remarked, "Wow, I had no idea I remembered or even knew all the lyrics to that song. That's crazy." Yes, it was.

Eventually Wilson and Emily's Dad came to get us. We walked down the hall, through the lobby and into a little room adjacent to the main room of the church, where all the groomsmen were piled in. There were 8 of us stacked in there, ready to bust out the door into the church on our cue.

It was a long wedding. It wasn't a Catholic ceremony with a full mass and all that fuss, but it somehow ended up being just as long, or even longer. Before the groomsmen even entered, a few tunes had to be strummed on the guitar and then some flutes performed a number or two. When it was finally our time to enter, I couldn't believe what a packed house I saw. With a crowd of 250, there wasn't an empty seat in the house. A few more and it would have been SRO.

The ceremony was long, but it went smoothly. The Halls had a 12-year-old girl enter before Emily and walk around the entire church ringing a bell. She had to walk up and down every row and it went on for a while. People started to laugh, and even the bell ringer herself started laughing at the interminable ringing. Has anyone ever seen this performed before? Twenty seconds of bell-ringing? Fine. But almost a full minute? Make it stop!

There were two readings during the ceremony- one delivered by Emily's grandmother, Eloise (she got a rousing ovation afterwards), and the other from my Aunt Patty. She read a passage from "Fahrenheit 451," which I also used as the closing paragraph of my high school graduation speech. Nick asked me a week earlier if I had any recommendations, and when I mentioned that, he said it was perfect. The only problem was I had to find it. I didn't know where I had any hardcopies of my speech, so right before I left the house in Braintree the previous weekend, I searched around Nick's room for my old 3.5 inch computer discs that stored all my high school work. I grabbed the one I thought might have my speech (we don't have any computers at the house anymore that have a 3.5 inch disc slot!) and lo and behold, I guessed the right one. I brought it in to work and retrieved the speech off one of the computers there, and found a lot of other funny stuff stored on there, including all of my email correspondence back and forth with Nick from 1999. What a time capsule...

There were a few more songs during the ceremony. Some family friend who was an opera singer did a song, and he also performed a duet with Wilson’s sister, Kate, who had a very impressive voice. The best song of all, though, was the Lord’s Prayer sung as a an a capella quartet by Emily’s dad, Bill, her brother, Daniel, Wilson, and Wilson’s dad, Pinckney. It really blew everyone away, and I had goose bumps all over. It was so good, I didn’t want the song to end. I was ready to call out for an encore, but thought it best for the wedding to, you know, proceed. Nick and Emily had to finally tie the know at some point or another.

Once the ceremony concluded, we in the wedding party lines up in the foyer in a reception line. Since it was raining/drizzling, there was no way we could have it outdoors. Thus, in order to exit the main church room, you had to go through the reception line, or do your best to skirt out of it. The line just went on and on and on...I felt bad for all the people trapped inside, sitting in the pews, just waiting to get out.

And because of the rain, all the wedding photos had to be taken inside at the church instead of at the reception (a shame, since the reception site, Caramoor, was ridiculously beautiful and photogenic). Once the receiving line died away, all the family stuck around for photos.

At this point, one of the two buses Nick had hired to ferry wedding-goers from the church to the reception (a 45-minute drive) should have left. The first bus was full and everyone was ready to go, yet Bus 1 couldn’t leave because the driver of Bus 2 didn’t have directions and intended to follow Bus 1. Terrible plan. So while we’re hanging out in the church taking about a hundred photos with the wedding photographer, there was a large group of wedding guests aboard Bus 1, growing more disgruntled and angrier by the minute. And all the while, we thought the first bus had left long ago since they had pulled around to the front of the church out of view. Guests with cars who drove themselves to the wedding got there a good hour before everyone else. And they also got first crack at all the delectable appetizers!

While taking photos, I liberally passed around the bag of Walmart popcorn, and people were just scarfing it down. A good thing, too, because I don’t think we were served dinner until around 8 o’clock and the wedding started around 1:30 in the afternoon. Once on the bus, the groomsmen and I went to town on the popcorn, and the bag was completely empty by the time we got to Caramoor.

Now, I opted to travel on one of the rented buses while Dad drove with my mom in his minivan. They didn’t come with directions to anything for the entire weekend, so they had to follow the buses to the reception. There was one big problem, though- the buses were flying down the roads at breakneck speeds in rainy, slippery conditions, and my Mom absolutely hates for anyone to drive fast, especially when she’s in the front passenger seat. From what she and Dad told me, she more or less lost it on the ride to the reception. Yelling, screaming, crying, thinking they were going to crash and die at any moment. She called Patty on her cell phone and asked her if she could tell the driver to slow down, but that didn’t do any good.

When we arrived at Caramoor and I saw Mom and Dad getting out of the can, she had tears streaming down her face and she was going on and on about how she thought she was going to die. Dad, meanwhile, stifling an eruption of his own, looked like he was ready to pull his hair out. How would you like to be charged with following 2 reckless, speeding buses in the rain while having someone shout and cry in your ear for 45 minutes non-stop? I was so glad I opted for the bus.

We had a cocktail-hour sort of deal under a medium-sized tent. They had a full bar, Nick’s jazz trio he hired was playing some great tunes, and the stone floor beneath us had little swastika symbols on it. Ahh, remember the good ole days when the swastika symbol didn’t have any affiliation with Nazi Germany?

The challenge for all of us at this time was to snag some appetizers. Waiters were walking around with some of the more unpopular offerings- some peach-like fruit hollowed out and filled with something not very appetizing-looking, while the in-demand appetizers like the mini-cheeseburgers, the crab cakes, and the ham biscuits were nearly impossible to find. I learned from Ari and Dan that the best strategy was to stake out the waiter’s entrance to the tent- that was really the only way to get anything, because they’d only be walking around for less than 30 seconds before their tray was empty. Meanwhile, the waiters with the fruit couldn’t pay people to take it off their trays. In the end, I was able to nab one of everything, save for the biscuits, which I heard were amazing from the guests who drove to the reception, got there an hour earlier than everyone else, and devoured them all before us bus-riding folk even arrived.

Amid all this bus-riding and appetizer hunting, I had a best man’s speech to organize and prepare. I really had no idea what I was going to talk about before the morning of the wedding, despite my Mom constantly asking me about the speech in the week’s leading up to the wedding day. I had some ideas, but in the end I ended up going in a completely different direction. I made sure to put a pen and a little waiter’s notebook in my jacket before I left in the morning. I jotted some phrases and bullet points down on the bus ride, and then I organized everything and attempted to put it in a mini-outline when I stepped away from the cocktail hour tent for a few minutes.

All in all, I was happy with how the toast went. I got a nice loud ovation just when the woman from the band called me up to the stage, and then another round of applause during the toast, too. I basically talked about how important Nick has been in my life, what a great guy he is, and how happy I am to see him succeeding in life now that everyone else is recognizing what I knew all along. I talked about Emily a lot, too, I didn’t want to make it all about Nick, and I told some funny stories about her and the two of them, though Nick told me afterwards that I probably should have explained what chiggers are (Emily got a bade case of chigger bites down in Tennessee last summer). My toast probably went on a little too long, but I couldn’t help it. I wish I had a timer up there to look at or some sort of red light that someone could have flashed. Not having written it out or been able to practice it at all beforehand, I was winging it, and I had no idea how long it would be- with just 7 or 8 bullet points hastily scribbled down on a tiny piece of paper, I didn’t think I’d go long.

I was pleased as punch over how much people appreciated it. I had people coming up to me all night long, a lot of them strangers I had never met, going out of their way to say what a great toast I delivered. Even when I ran into Nick’s friends here and there over the course of the summer, someone would pull me aside and compliment me on it. I guess if someone still feels compelled to say, “Great job on that speech” two months after the wedding, I did a good job in honoring Nick and Emily.

It didn’t help my concentration that I had a massive headache at the time. I felt one coming on when we first arrived at the church, but I certainly didn’t bring my backpack to the wedding ceremony, so I didn’t have any Advil on my person. Mom had some prescription paid medication in her pocketbook, but it didn’t do a thing. A whole pill of a percocet-like pill and it might as well have been a placebo. Later in the day during the reception, Dad gave me a couple of his prescription pain pills, and those didn’t do anything, either. I couldn’t believe it, and my head was POUNDING. At one point I stole away to a bathroom stall for a goof 20-30 minutes to massage my head and my pressure points, but that didn’t help, either. Nothing helped alleviate it until I got back to the hotel at the very end of the evening. I downed 3 advil and within 15 minutes I could feel the headache loosen its grip and 10 minutes later it was completely gone after about 12 hours of head pounding. Advil did the trick while Vicodin couldn’t even make a dent?

After the cocktail hour, they had us all move into the main tent, which was ENORMOUS. Apparently they give concerts there all summer, and they could easily fit a few thousand people under there. The tent went way up, so high, and there was a massive stage encircled with Greeks columns. It looked like we were celebrating at the Caramoor Parthenon. It was all so big, so giant, and so meticulously put together, I don’t know how anyone COULDN’T be impressed. I know I was.

Nick and Emily entered the main tent, for the first time being introduced as Mr. and Mrs. Stevens, and Nick had them walk into the opening of Coldplay’s “In My Place.” I made sure to have Paul go over to Nick later in the evening and say, “You know how I know you’re gay? Because you entered your wedding reception to Coldplay.”

I taped their entrance and their first dance on our new family video camera and I was lucky I did because Emily’s parents, amid all the wedding hoopla, completely forgot to videotape any of the reception. They had three camera tape the ceremony, but once they got to the reception it slipped their minds entirely. The next day, they thought they had no video recordings at all of the reception, but I relieved their worried and let them know I got caught the first dance and I circled around the tent, making sure to get all the guests for at least a few frames during the band’s first few songs. Aren’t I the swellest?

Aside from forgetting to videotape, Emily’s dad also forgot to bring the slideshow DVD that he premiered the night before at the rehearsal dinner. He had the grounds crew set up the projector, the dvd player, and all that stuff, and the DVD itself was nowhere to be found. Apparently, when we were packing everything up the night before, instead of leaving the disc in the player, Krister took it out and handed it to Mr. Hall, who put it in his jacket pocket, which was now sitting up in his bedroom at home. It was one of those “Oh, well” kind of moments. Would have been nice, but at least we all got to see it the night before.

It was pretty late by the time we were served our dinner, probably around 8 o’clock, I’d guess. By that time, people were HUNGRY. The food was fantastic- I, and many others, just wished there was more of it. I looked at everyone’s plates at my table after dinner, and they were completely empty. We had an extra setting at the table, and that plate of food disappeared in a heartbeat. After such a long day, I could have eaten an entire second plate of food without giving it a second thought.

Having a wedding with an open bar, there are always going to be at least a few people who drink a bit too much and get a little wild and crazy. Somehow, all those people ended up on Nick’s guest list. My cousin Andy, a year older than me, was hammered by the time cocktail hour had concluded. He could not even walk in a straight line, and I saw some of his brothers helping him into the main tent. My Aunt Donna, who blames it on her empty stomach, was equally sloshed. She came up to me during the night and gave me a giant hug. The she proceeded to walk away and crash into the bar, rolling a little bit on the edge of the table and knocking everything over onto the ground- awesome! My younger cousins, all of them way underage, got tanked on the wine at the dinner tables, and two of them were served at the bar no problem. And a lot of Nick’s friends, who can usually handle their liquor just fine, looked completely out of it at times. There was some mass consumption going on that night.

My cousins Kev and Mike, at the end of the night when little bottles of bubbles were being passed out, they assumed the little bottles were liquor. They unscrewed the caps and downed their bottles in one gulp- when they realized that what they had just ingested was not vodka, but in fact soap, they sprinted to the bathroom and gagged themselves until they threw it up. Gotta love weddings!

Once the reception was officially over, it was time for Nick and Emily to climb into their white convertible, cans attached to the back, and drive off. But since they had both been drinking at the wedding, it was actually me who did the driving. Well, they drove off to the end of the parking lot and then we pulled a switcheroo. Luckily, I had Gabe Roth in the passenger seat to keep me company and be my navigational Chewbacca for the journey back to Emily’s house. A journey for which we had no directions whatsoever while we were in the dark, out in the woods, in the middle of nowhere. It also started raining on the ride home, which doesn’t jibe with the idea of driving off in a convertible. While we were getting wet as we tried to find our way home (with a trail of cars following US) we never did put the top up, and I’m not sure why.

Eventually, after a series of guesses and wrong turns, we found our way back to Emily’s house in Westport. Meanwhile, back at the reception site, my Dad got his minivan stuck in a giant puddle of mud. When he started his car, I guess he backed up before pulling out and he got himself stuck really deep. He gassed it, and the car didn’t move an inch. A bunch of people came to my parent’s aid- Emily’s brother, her uncle, and her aunt. So they get in the back and start pushing his van while he’s gassing it trying to get out. The tires are sputtering and mud is flying everywhere, especially on everyone pushing in the rear. They got the car out eventually, but not before everyone was caked in mud from head to toe. We could still see numerous mud hand print on the back of the van the next day.

And even though we had a hard time finding our way back in the convertible, I’m glad I skipped the bus ride. One of my younger cousin’s, John, got really sick, and just started yakking everywhere. Apparently, it smelled fantastic. And this wasn’t a boot and rally- some people on the bus were really worried about him and didn’t think he was going to be OK. One of Nick’s friends, who can get a little over-emotional at times, started crying for him, and she went and sat next to him to try and soothe him, I guess.

I heard stories from other people about the two crazy bus drivers and how certifiably insane they were. One woman, she just started telling stories to anyone who listened, and if someone lent her an ear she’d just go off and ramble on about her twisted past.

And aside from being crazy, they were both terrible drivers. At one point, she actually drove over a street sign in Westport. Knocked it down and drove right over it. With the puking, the crazy rantings, and the safe driving, it really sounded like I lucked out getting the “just married” convertible ride home. A little rain sounds better than that!

Once we got back to the Hall house, we had a wedding after-party for about 2 hours. They had a keg out back, some snacks, and leftover wedding cake. I was just amazed how many people were still standing and able to hold coherent conversations after such a long day.

Once that after-party ended, we all got back on the bus (by this time the driver had covered the throw-up with a bag of kitty litter) to head towards the hotel. Once we got at the hotel, there was more hanging out and partying in the lobby there for another hour.

My cousins, full of bad ideas by this point, started calling up escort services from a newspaper they found in the lobby, trying to get some girls to drop in on them in their rooms later on, but I found out the next morning they had no luck.

So, that’s about all the pertinent stuff I can remember at this point. This is almost 7 pages, single spaced, while I’m typing it in Microsoft Word, so I think that should be sufficient for a blog entry. And to think, I tried my best to describe everything with the least amount of details possible, and it still came out this long. If you’re still reading, I salute you.

Moustachio Strikes Again (Unsuccessfully)!

Ever the ignoble cad, the love-starved DJ Moustachio prowled around the upstairs of Mo Pitkins this past weekend and went so far as to make a pass at his own sister-in-law! She promptly rebuffed him with a hearty, endearing smile. Those at the table wondered aloud, over their manchego fries, their reuben sandwiches, and their numerous cans of Modelo, as to how she summoned the fortitude to resist him, especially with that manly tuft of chest hair peeking out of his brand new Hanes V-neck T-shirt. Some phenomena simply cannot be explained.

The Return To Cool

The HVAC system was up and running in my office building when I came into work Monday morning, but the hot, sweaty, greenhouse memories of last week will not be forgotten anytime soon. I actually miss it a little bit. With all the lights turned off, fans blowing everywhere, engineers trudging around in t-shirts, shorts, and black dress shoes; it felt like we were in a bunker of some kind. It gave the ho-hum place a little character for a while. The biggest difference of all has to be the noise. Usually, my office is disturbingly quiet. You can practically hear footsteps from across the building. But with the fans running and the windows open last week, you could barely make out the PA announcements or hear the phone ringing 2 feet from your ears.

My old producer just bought a NY Paper for 10 million dollars?!

The bottom of my stomach nearly dropped to the floor when I was paging through a copy of today's New York Post, fished out of the top of a garbage barrel in the subway, looking for movie times when I saw that the guy who helped produce my first 2 plays at Harvard just bought the New York Observer for a cool 10 million dollars.

Yup, 25-year-old Jared Kushner, producer of the Adams Pool Theater's Drop Dead and Hooters, now OWNS the eponymous salmon-colored New York weekly. My first reaction was disbelief. My 2nd reaction? Nausea! I'm a little shell-shocked. I think I need to go outside and get some fresh air.

Hazen and Sauna

We haven't had any A/C in the office all week because of a fire on the 5th floor the building (24 stories in all) on Monday morning. Not everyone is affected though. Some floors have air and electricity, certain sections of floors have electeicity, but no air, and many cobinations there of. The elevator's have A/C, so when you step off those in the morning onto the 11th floor, you can feel the heavy, humid heat hit you like a bag of bricks. We're keeping most of the office lights out to stay cool as possible, although the lights in the bathroom simply don't work. We were peeing in absolute darkness until someone finally put some office lamps on the sink counter.

Yesterday, someone brought in one of those large clock-like thermometers that hang on the wall. I walked by it around 4 o'clock and nearly fainted when I saw the reading- 88 degrees! No wonder I was sweating bullets while barely moving a muscle in my office chair. It's bearable in the morning, but from 2-5, the greenhouse effect kicks in and we all start roasting and basting in our own sweat. Nobody comes to work in a suit or a shirt and tie anymore- it looks like we're all going to the gym in our shorts and t-shirts.

Meanhwhile, the office comptroller sent this email out to everyone yesterday explaining why it's taking so long to fix the air conditioning. Oh, the irony!

Work to repair the damaged buss section has been ongoing since the outage occurred on Monday -

Fortunately, the damaged pieces are manufactured by Siemens Corp, a tenant in the building, who has been without power on two of their floors - They have been able to expedite the shipping of replacement parts - those parts are in the process of being installed -

The current estimate for power and air restoration is after hours Friday, so one more day -

We'll send any updates as they are received -

Voice Over Shirts- Get 'em while they're hot

Nick and I are now in the T-shirt selling business. Check 'em out!

Newest Ipod Accessories!

With Microsoft aiming to soon dethrone Apple and their eponymous Ipod with its own portable music player, Nick came up with an idea for last weekend's Shark Show- what are some ridiculous, inappropriate items that Apple could Ipod-ize to increase its current market share? I came up with the images and did the photoshopping while Nick presented the slide show with his commentary at the show last Saturday night. Take a look at these advertisements for products that will hopefully never see the light of day...

Moustachio allays the female throngs

Now please, ladies. You're gonna have to calm down. Please, I beg you! Try your best to collect yourselves, for everyone's sake here. We don't want to make a scene now, do we? No, we definitely don't want that, and we don't need one, either. Like I said, you're all going to get a turn, don't worry. I ain't going anywhere. No, no, I promise. Just take a number, have a seat- yes, on those leather couches behind you is perfect, and I'll get to you all as soon as humanly possible. If you brought a book or some kind of reading material, I admire your forethought. I'm only one man, remember. Albeit a sexy, moustachio-clad man, but nevertheless, there's only one of me. OK, #725 please step forward and away we go...

Goodbye My Friend, Goodbye My Lover...

Krispy Kreme, producer of the world's greatest donut when served fresh and hot off the assembly line, is shutting down all Massacusetts stores, save for one shop located on Route 1 in Dedham. All the KK locations in NYC have closed, too, except for one on the upper east side. What caused the old KK to go downhill so badly and so quickly here in New England?

Read about it in the Boston Globe.

Some interesting stats found in the article:

--- Customer tastes have changed, said Honey Dew Donuts founder Dick Bowen. When he opened the first Honey Dew 33 years ago, 70 percent of sales came from doughnuts. Today coffee accounts for more than 60 percent of sales for the 150-store chain and doughnuts for 12 percent.

--- With 63 percent of its sales coming from beverages, Dunkin' Donuts has repositioned itself as a coffee company.

--- Minus land costs, it's a $2 million investment to open a Krispy Kreme locally, compared with about $500,000 to open a Dunkin' Donuts.

Sending a signal to Masspirg street reps

For anyone who lives in Boston or has spent any time in the surrounding area, you might want to invest in one of these tshirts. Much like the recent college grad who started making them, I agree with and believe in Masspirg's goals and aims, but I hate, repeat, absolutely hate being accosted (or aggressivley approached) by clipboard-holding Masspirg reps on the sidewalk while I'm walking from point A to point B. And quite frankly, at the moment I don't really have the kind of money they're looking for anyway. Wouldn't they fare better staking out Beacon Hill and Newton instead? People speed up their pace, turn their head, quickly try to throw their headphones over their ears, or even cross the street to avoid these eager, friendly-looking college-age reps. Don't let their guise fool you- they are either feared or loathed by the masses.