Sunday, March 08, 2015

In the Shadows

I think that people in my neighborhood are having some sort of reaction to the clocks going forward. I just walked past a car blasting "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" on 30th Ave. - the car was filled with dudes singing along really loudly. Then I walked past a guy who was being very dramatic on the phone, saying "...just remember, TICK-FUCKING-TOCK!" Prior to that, I had gone into 42 Squirts 16 Handles and they were playing Blur's Greatest Hits, which to me was exciting, but also strange behavior for this neighborhood.

On Friday night, I went to my first NHL game. I've seen the BC Icemen play a few times in Binghamton, but other than that, I hadn't even watched a Hockey game on TV before. I'm sure most of you have heard this story already, but about a month ago, on my way back from the Clark office, a man sat down next to me on NJ Transit and struck up a conversation, and it turned out that he was an assistant coach for the NJ Devils. He was kind enough to offer me free tickets, hence my Friday night plans! I really enjoyed the game - very fast moving and exciting (and the seats on the first level behind the goal certainly didn't hurt either.) In fact, we were actually seated right behind the organ player - how often does that happen??

My new buddy used to be a hockey player himself (as I would think this is usually the case.) His two sons play for the NHL as well, and we got to see one of them play against the Devils, which must have been a no-lose situation for him because even though NJ lost, his son's team won (awww.)

Yesterday, we saw the movie What We Do in the Shadows. It's a documentary-style comedy about Vampires, which had humor very much in line with Flight of the Concords:


The best part of the experience was when the woman at the ticket counter asked me for ID, and then kindly said "WOW, you do not look your age!) I assumed she had asked for my ID because I had a discount certificate, but she then told me it was because the film wasn't yet rated so they treat it as Rated R, therefore anyone who looks under 25 gets ID'ed. BOOYAH!!!

I realized yesterday that I had bought a few gift certificates to Restaurant.com literally about 3 years ago for $2 each with a $25 value (yes, I like discount certificates, okay?) I checked them, and there were no expiration dates, so we decided to use one of them for dinner after the movie. I vaguely remembered picking this restaurant from the list in early 2012, I think because we wanted a place in Midtown, maybe for after work eating or eating the same night as a Broadway show or something. It ended up being a tiny restaurant in the back of the Four Points Sheraton across from the Port Authority, basically place where tourists eat breakfast before heading out sightseeing. The fact that we had made reservations was kind of hysterical being that we were the only people in there, and it was even more embarrassing that I was a native New Yorker eating in this dinky hotel. It was edible in the end, but still a very strange experience for a local. Luckily, the other certificates I have are for Three of Cups (one of my favorites), which we're going to go to tomorrow before we see Catfish and the Bottlemen, and BBQ, which never fails for decent chicken and frozen margaritas the size of your head.

**BREAKING NEWS** - I just went on the BBQ Yelp site to grab the link and it's closed?!?! Apparently I can't win with Restaurant.com.

"Medicine" by Sunset Sons is a song I first heard a few weeks ago on XFM, and I liked it so much that I put a note in my calendar that the song would be available for download today. When I opened up iTunes for the big event, I found out that it's only available internationally. BOOOOO! You can watch the video below though:


I discovered something amazing yesterday! The Queens Library (not sure if the other boroughs have this), offers a service called Freegal - using your Library card #, you can stream movies and music, but the best part is that you can download up to 5 songs per week for free and keep them forever! YOU ARE WELCOME.

We ended up buying the Roku, and I still don't see the benefit being that we have Xbox LIVE, but I'm sure I'll embrace it at some point (like when we no longer have Xbox LIVE I guess?) With that being said, we've continued our HBO Go watching - finished Season 2 of The Newsroom - really liked it but felt like it would have been a perfect ending to the series. And we've finally started to watch The Wire. Everyone has told me that this is "THE BEST SHOW EVER MADE OMG YOU HAVE TO WATCH IT." I'm fairly addicted and I'm only 6 episodes in so we'll see what happens. We also came across a Game of Thrones feature, but unfortunately, it expired...over 45 years ago.


Have you been to Central America? If you have recommendations or tips, please let me know!

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