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Stalking
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10/30/02
It's cold. That's all I really have to say. I don't know when it happened. All I know that is it was perfectly nice out until I went to Canada the 13th (did you know their Thanksgiving is our [I guess I should say my. Not everyone in the world is American, I suppose] Columbus Day? I couldn't figure out why it seemed like no one was at work and restaurants were closed, duh). It was cold there, which was a fun novelty because I got to wear a sweater for the first time all season, but I thought that was because it's Canada, but ever since that weekend, it's been chilly here. It's in the 30s right now, and that's just wrong. I had to turn on my heat yesterday (though, now that I think about it, when I've had radiator heat in the past, it's come on in late Oct.) and I only to wear my jean jacket like two times. Now I have to wear a coat coat, and could even stand to wear a hat and gloves if I were one of those sorts of people (which I'm not). Oh, so it's Halloween tomorrow and I don't have a single plan. I wonder if I'm supposed to have candy in case kids knock on my door or if kids even trick or treat anymore. I'm going to be one of those scrooges that leaves their porch light out (that's supposed to signal you're not giving out candy, right?). Last night I was so busy trying to finish up this story I was writing, that I forgot to watch the premiere of "24." I'm so not into action and all that, but I got sucked into last season. What kind of life is it when you can't even watch all your TV shows.

10/25/02
I don't have to work today. That's good on one hand because I don't like to work. I suppose it's bad on the other since it's not like I'm getting any money for sitting around the house. I was semi-assigned to write this story on Goth clubs for the NY Post and then it fell through so instead they gave me a story to write about bars along the upcoming NY marathon route. That's OK and all, but I really, really wanted to write about the Goth clubs. I already had rounded up a bunch of friends (many, former teenage Goths) who were gung ho to make the rounds. What do big city Goths in 2002 do anyway? I always associate that scene with '80s suburban youth. Oh well. The sniper(s) being caught is very anti-climactic. The only part that interested me (apart from the teen supposedly being kept on a strict diet of crackers and honey--I would've gone all violent too if I had to eat that every day) was how they were found sleeping in their car at a rest stops. Rest stops are weird. They seem to be associated with seedy activity and I'm not sure why. Of course there's that whole thing with gay men going to them for anonymous sex. I'm not sure how common that is, whether it's sort of an exaggerated cliche, but I did know one guy in college who would really go to rest stops to have anonymous sex with other men, so who knows. So, on the drive back from Montreal we kept gaining on, passing, then falling behind this black Saab with NY plates. Like we'd be neck to neck, then they'd get ahead of us for like 15 minutes, then we'd catch up and be in front for the next 15 minutes. The road was pretty sparse so it was easy to keep spotting this car over and over. I didn't think much of it, but I guess James thought it was some competitive game like he couldn't let the guy get too far ahead of us. At one point, I sort of needed to go to the bathroom so we decided to exit at the next rest stop. It wasn't one of those fancy rest stops they have out here with Starbucks, Mrs. Fields Cookies, Roy Rogers and a gift shop, where families congregate and leave trash all over the floor, it was an old fashioned one with only bathrooms and a drinking fountain. As we got closer to the exit we realized the car that had been in front of us was nowhere ahead of us on the highway. We speculated that maybe he'd pulled off at the approaching rest stop. I could hold my pee, but James was like no, we're going to follow that guy so we exited. I joked that maybe he was up ahead at the rest stop waiting for us (well, him) because he thinks we want to have sex with him or something. We pulled into the parking lot and the Saab was sitting there. The engine was turned off, but whoever was in the car (I know it was a man, but I never got a good look at him) hadn't gotten out. I figure he'd been there maybe three minutes already, not really time to stop, use the bathroom, get a drink, whatever, and get back in. I was like oh, shit, he is waiting for us. James got out and the other car remained, but as soon as I got out, he turned on the engine and sped off. It was the strangest thing. I don't think it meant much of anything, but I was about 75% convinced he thought we were following him on purpose and for dirty reasons. As it was twilight, it was very possible he could just see two silhouettes with short hair in the front seat of our car and assumed it was two men (I don't think I look like a man, but whatever), possibly two randy men on the prowl. It could've been a beautiful threesome if he hadn't hightailed it out of there so fast.

10/23/02
Only this evening have I become engrossed in this stupid sniper case. He's really starting to irritate me. Tarot cards? Cryptic messages? Threatening children? So cheesy, like some Hollywood version of a bad guy. The whole thing's so misguided, at least stuff seems to be happening today. I only became engrossed tonight when I heard about the Tacoma connection. It's so a NW kind of crime. Washington D.C., who cares...but Washington state...yeah, that makes sense. The region's a total breeding ground for miscreants.

10/22/02
Ok, I swear I'm not obsessed with Ray Romano (you know like when you make such a big deal about not being gay that everyone thinks you're even gayer), but he keeps haunting me. Tonight I was semi-watching "In-Laws." It was on TV while I was in the kitchen making dinner but I could still hear it. I've never watched this show before and I've only watched "Everybody Love Raymond" (which from here on out will be referred to only as E.L.R.) once, last week. So, on "In-Laws" there's this joke about a pet rabbit the daughter had when she was a kid, and I was like hmmm...there was a running joke about a childhood pet rabbit on E.L.R. too. Then, the father on I.L. said he wanted his son-in-law to write his eulogy, and I was like what the heck's going on. On E.L.R. Raymond got into trouble because he'd written his father's eulogy (he's not dead yet) and his mother found out (then got jealous and wanted a eulogy of her own--ha, ha). So, are childhood bunnies and eulogies like a big trend these days and I'm just out of the loop?

10/21/02
At my current temp job, it's weird, there isn't a women's bathroom. You have to walk into the hall, go through glass doors and enter Channel 11 WB's offices. It's a bit of a haul, but it affords me a priceless glimpse of a giant poster that says Five Days Rays a Week. Get it? "Everybody Loves Raymond" every freakin' night, mon.-fri. Today there was someone that I think is from my office crying in the bathroom. From bits and pieces like the person in charge of me saying in response to my chipper, "how are you doing?" "I've had better days" and then hearing her on the phone talking about how something was inevitable, she just didn't know it was going to be today, that they were letting people go this morning. This is not surprising. This office is large and filled with cubicles that still have computers, photos, calendars, name tags...and yet they've remained empty in the week I've been there. There may be only about 15 people on the entire floor. It didn't seem like much of a secret that a massive proportion of the staff had been recently eliminated. I assumed that the cheap bastards must be filling spots with temps like myself. I'm not sure how long I'll be there, probably just a couple weeks. The freaky thing was how I could overhear someone talking about going through the new resumes they'd received from a monster.com ad (the one I answered) and how there were over 200 in the maybe pile (well, inbox--it's all email). I must be pretty special to have been plucked from such a large anonymous pool to cut and paste in Word documents and research careers like ESL teacher and write little blurbs for high school students searching for college major guidance. I don't know what that girl was crying about, I've been fired and laid off twice in less than two years. It really doesn't mean much to me anymore. Seriously, the more time passes, the less I care about jobs. And strangely, yesterday I received a phone call about that Food & Wine job I interviewed for in like July. They want to know if I'd like to do freelance research and then weirdly asked if I'd still be interested in the full time position. And honestly, I don't know that I am. I was like three months ago. I can only guess that someone they originally offered it to quit or was fired, or who knows what, but it doesn't feel as attractive as it did. I don't even know what it pays (very low, I'm guessing) and the hours would be long and I'm planning on doing school full time come Feb. so I can't really have a time-consuming day job anyway unless it's totally amazing. Like I said, I just don't care so much any more. I don't mean to say I'm hopeless--it's the opposite--I just feel absolutely non-desperate about everything, which is a relaxing sensation. Maybe it's old age wisdom creeping up...or maybe my Wellbutrin has finally kicked in.

10/17/02
I swear I wrote something here about jury duty that I did last Thurs. and Fri. and other crap on 10/10. I think I just overwrote it. Dammit, not that it was important or anything, but it's annoying because it was really long and moderately interesting. What can you do. I saw someone get hit by a car this morning on my corner. Well, I didn't actually see the impact, I saw some tennis shoes sticking out into the street and a male body angled away from me. The only time I ever actually saw someone get hit by a car for real was when I went back to my high school after I'd graduated to pick up my yearbook. I was across the street smoking in front of The Grotto (this was a little white hamburger shack that made shakes in a million flavors like peanut butter and had the best fries and salmon-colored dipping sauce. Technically the name was Hi Fi Grotto according to the old sign on the side, but everyone called it The Grotto. Every type of student would run over for corn dogs or candy, but only certain types: rockers, heshers, truants, stoners, skippers, whatever hung out front because that's where smokers congregated. Cigarettes unified all social strata. Punks [like all two of them], post-punks, grungers, metal-heads, rebellious jocks and even one retard [Donald, the coke bottle glasses guy who lived in the group home on my block]) and it was lunch time so lots of kids were out and Donna Antolin (one of a family of Filipino girls who all were like 90 pounds, most of it coming from their giant, curled sprayed horsey hair. I was just about to say, "well, it was the '80s. But it wasn't--it was 1990--there's always a bit of a lag with new decades) got smacked by a car on her way to The Grotto. I can't remember seeing her hit exactly, but I vividly remember a white Ked flying up high into the air. I don't even know what happened to her (teenagers are apathetic--I think I just headed home), I'm sure she lived, but I'll always remember that shoe flinging into an arc. This guy on my corner this mornin had on both his white shoes, as I've mentioned. There was a small group of teens standing on the median of Fourth Ave. I couldn't tell if they were with the victim, I couldn't even tell how old he was. It appeared that he got hit either stepping off or onto the median. It's not surprising, the street is four lanes in each direction and people are always darting dangerously close to oncoming traffic. I'm always amazed how few accidents occur in the city since drivers are total aggressive bastards and pedestrians are always tempting fate blatantly walking in front of cars. It must've just happened, as the ambulances hadn't arrived yet, there were a couple police cars (but the station is on the same block). On my five-block walk to the subway, I could see all the traffic backed-up, the ambulances in the distance and a lot of angry honking people because the lanes were all congested. They'd probably run over the body like a road bump if it meant getting through quicker. So, I was on my way to the subway for this temp job I started Tues. It's not so bad because it's not admin crap through an agency, it's grunty, monotonous stuff for a college guidance website, but tolerable. I don't think it'll go for more than a few weeks though. I went to Montreal for the three-day weekend and that was good. I've meant to write about it, but I've been distracted and busy working all day now and trying to get my act together to apply for grad school by Nov. 1. It's tiring. In Montreal I ate fondue, viande fumee (their regional specialty) maple boston creme donuts at my favorite Canadian chain, Tim Hortons and fancy Portuguese food If you haven't noticed, I'm all about the food. Shopping? Historic sites? Natural wonders? Who needs them. Canada is particularly fun because even people like me can feel mildly rich. Like you can go to a pricey restaurant and it's a bargain a). because of the exchange rate (duh). and b). because as soon as you leave NYC the cost of everything goes down. On the way up we stopped at a Wal-Mart in Latham, NY recreating our last trip to Montreal, Oct. '99 when we first started going out. I went totally nuts. I know I've been living in this town too long when I'm absolutely shocked by the prices of places like this. Everything's cheap: fishnet tights, nail polish, Kathie Lee sweaters (never mind the sweatshops), pantiliners, watch batteries, Crunch 'n' Munch, and there's a huge selection and everything's in stock like Sally Hansen Nail Prisms which have been advertised in magazines, but have yet to make it to my busted Rite Aid that never gets new make up displays. Wal-Mart is like Target before it got all hip. I actually bought clothes like a $16.99 fake suede dress, a $7 striped, glitter-threaded camp shirt and the aforementioned $19.99 Kathie Lee sweater, which is like a sweater-jacket but with fur on the front panel like a vest, if that makes any sense. The interesting thing about Wal-Mart clothing is its sizing. It's skewed really large, like how usually stores make 2-4 small, 6-8 medium and so on, instead Wal-Mart starts at size 4, I don't think zeros exist in their world. It's a big difference from H & M extra larges that are obscenely tight to Wal-Mart's version that I swim in. Obviously, they're catering to their clientele, who are quite frankly on the rotund side (there's this weird dichotomy with lower class white women where they're either really large or frighteningly stick skinny. I've never understood this.) The Wal-Mart side trip was the best, made even better by the four separate pages on the intercom for customer service to the gun section. You just don't get that kind of fun in NYC.

10/8/02
I find it hard to believe that Verizon has reverted back to 25-cent pay phones from 50 cents. (At least that's what I think I heard on the news the other day.) That just doesn't happen. Rents don't go down, cigarettes don't get cheaper, it goes against all nature (not that I'm complaining). I guess it must be because no one would use the 50-cent ones. Unless I was totally desperate and in a super hurry, I'd walk blocks to find another company's 25-cent phones. The majority of New Yorkers (and probably the entire U.S.) now have cell phones. The only people who use pay phones are those who can't afford (or have moral issues) with cell phones. If someone's too cheap to buy a cell phone, they're probably going to avoid Verizon 50-cent pay phones, knowing there's usually an old 25-cent one around the corner. Anyway, that may be the best thing to happen in October so far. Speaking of phones, mine isn't working. Well, my service hasn't been turned off or anything, but my voice is all muffled and no one can hear when I'm speaking. This is a mystery because my phone worked Thurs. I briefly stopped home Friday night and noticed the phone was wet and there were small puddles of water(?) on my desk. There didn't appear to be a leak from the ceiling, I swear if I spilled a drink I would've remembered (and at least have wiped it up). It gave me the creeps like someone had snuck into my room. I come home today (Tues.) and there is brown, dried-up patches of liquid around my computer. It really seems like a leak or like a coffee spill, but I don't see evidence of either. And now my phone doesn't work...and the G key on my keyboard is on the fritz, it only types if you hit it super hard. This isn't the biggest (I had to hit the G like five times for biggest) issue in the world, but it has me mildly miffed. My Oktoberfest story appeared Saturday, and looked much more impressive in the actual newspaper than on the web with three large photos and big headline. I think it'll be off the free part of the site by next week, these things are so fleeting. Every now and then I get curious and like to see what search terms bring random people to my site, and they never cease to crack me up. Case in point: "how to make stalker suits" (which lists me third on Google). I'm thinking like some Halloween costume in the works, as in what would a stalker wear, which is funny to me because a stalker would probably just wear regular clothes, right? But then it struck me that this person must've meant stalker suits like law suits, as in how do you file one, and strangely that still cracked me up.

10/4/02
It seems odd to write about last Friday this Friday, but the past week has been a jumble. I went to a NY Press party courtesy of a recent Portland ex-pat Sean Tejaratchi, who now works for that local paper. He used to do the very popular clip art zine, "Crap Hound." At least I think that's used to, past tense. The best part of the party, besides the open bar, was the guy they had dressed up like Captain Morgan, promoting the spiced rum with two lovely ladies on each arm. I always thought that "The Captain was Here" ad campaign was weird, and seeing a Captain impersonator didn't change my opinion. The impersonator was black, but the cartoon Captain seems sort of race-neutral, like he could be white, black, Hispanic or a mix of all three, though he's probably not Asian. But that doesn't matter since Asians don't drink much anyway (alcoholic Asians, don't send me nasty mail, I'm just generalizing based on people I know). Saturday I had to make the rounds at all these German bars/restaurants in Glendale, Queens for this Oktoberfest article I wrote for the NY Post, which should be out tomorrow in their weekend edition. If you live in NYC, pick up a copy, it's only 25 cents. People like to turn their noses up at the Post like they're cultured or something. There's nothing wrong with the Post--it's cheap, lowbrow, gossipy--kind of like me. Glendale's freaky because it's not on a subway line. The farther you get from Manhattan, the stranger people get, and when there's no direct line into the city, residents become creepily isolated. I used to complain about Ridgewood, but it's got nothing on Glendale, the neighborhood farther east. Supposedly, Queens is the most ethnically diverse county in the entire United States, but aparently Glendale doesn't figure into that statistic. It may very well be the whitest neighborhood I've ever been in in NYC. I pitched the story because I thought it was interesting that they have four German restaurants in seven blocks. I mean, there just aren't many Germans left in NYC anymore. Last Thurs. James and I checked out Gebhardt's, which was respectable, the people were friendly, but James kept scaring me by insisting our waiter had an Aryan Nation tattoo. He did have a shaved head, but he just seemed like a Queens teen. I could never get a look at his arm and didn't want to stare too much in case he decided to shank me Oz-style. I don't trust James to know about Nazi youth, I think he was just exaggerating to make me nervous. Besides, I'm the one who grew up in the NW, where there really are racist skinheads. Saturday I returned to the neighborhood with Jane and Jessica. Our first stop was an old man bar, Von Westernhagen's, that I was a little hesitant about. I explained it as Greenpoint Tavern if there were no hipsters. You know, a locals, dive bar where single females and anyone under 50 dare not to tread. The bartender seemed like a jovial, elderly German fellow, the middle aged couple to our left seemed all right enough in a typical Queens-y way, but the large, loud, gray crewcut gentleman to our right gave me pause. He seemed like a loose canon, I definitely didn't want to make eye contact with him, being outsiders and all. Another guy came in, they shook hands, and what came out of the big guy's mouth threw me for a total loop. Since Jane and Jessica didn't flinch or appear to hear what he said, I thought maybe I'd heard wrong. I could've sworn he said, "Sieg heil. White Power." and I got scared for real. You just don't hear people say stuff like that all matter of factly, and especially not in NYC. Originally a friend of James's, Pat, was going to come along too. Being Korean, I was half-glad he couldn't make it. We would've totally gotten our asses beat. To make matters worse, the movie on TV was "The Green Mile" and I kept thinking, "oh shit, he's going to say something about the black guy" and then he did, using words I never thought I'd hear in a bar (well, anywhere for that matter) like "spade" and of course "nigger." Then he said "Sieg heil. White Power," again, and I knew I wasn't imagining it this time. While being completley creeped out, I was concocting imaginary peppy text for my article in my mind, "Forget all those lame Manhattan Oktoberfest parties. For the real deal head to Glendale, Queens where authentic Germans, skinheads and neo nazis really know how to celebrate in style!" Yikes, talk about scarring. Speaking of those crazy nazis, last night I caught the tail end of Swing Kids on cable. Talk about a fucked up movie. Rebellious German teens sock it to the Third Reich...by jitterbugging to the latest American big band tunes! They just wouldn't give in, in fact they danced their way right into the gas chambers (well, they didn't actually show that). The ending scene has the nazis busting into a dance hall and carting kids off to concentration camps while the main character warbles "it ain't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing." The shining moment was when the determined swing kids raised their arms and declared, "Swing hiel." Yes, swing hiel. I couldn't believe my eyes and ears for the second time in a week.