W-4-M: Thor, God of Thunder, on 14th St

The other day I slipped out of work at 2 in  the afternoon to get a haircut. Just generally speaking this is a rare occurrence because a) I get my hair cut thrice a year, and b) my hairdresser is on 14th street so it takes about 25 minutes to get there and I start to feel pangs of anxiety if I’m away from my desk for too long, as if somehow I will get caught. (By my very nice and friendly bosses? Who never question my whereabouts because we are all adults?)  Still, I am constantly haunted by irrational fears of doing stuff wrong and getting caught. I fear authority, what can I say? Well done, public school system.

I decided to walk across 14th street instead of taking the L to 1st Ave. and on the way, I saw the most magnificent man in the world, ever. If it wasn’t so socially unacceptable (even though it’s totally socially acceptable), I would have whipped out my camera phone and taken a picture, but instead, I texted my In-Network Texting Companion to say “I just saw a guy who looked like Thor walking down the street – his t-shirt was literally cut all the way down below his pecs. he was sunburned. Brown hair though” I couldn’t contain my giddiness about this guy. Granted, he was not blonde, and from the waist down he was just an average Joe, but from the chest up he. was. Thor. I have to admit that my experience with Thor is limited to Vincent D’Onofrio in Adventures in Babysitting when he played a Thor-like savior of a truck driver to Chris Parker and her young charges, so when I said Thor, I guess I meant “Thor, but not Thor the comic book character or mythological figure, just a guy who looks 80’s trashy and had a huge chest.” Seriously, he was wearing a t-shirt cut on purpose to below his pecs. Can you stand it?? I came home that night, after work, after haircuts, and all I could talk about was Thor. We had to search on Flickr to see if other people might have seen this man-beast too, but alas, a search for “Thor sunburnt chest guy” turned up nothing. How dare the people of Flickr not have such a tag?

Last night I was in a rehearsal with the lovely sketch group I’m working with and we were discussing the cast of Adventures in Babysitting, as one does, when Vincent D’Onofrio came up and two of the members of the group said “Oh hey, speaking of, we just saw Thor on the sidewalk! A guy with a t-shirt cut out below his chest, but with brown hair! THOR!”

I’m not sure if I yelled or gasped or what, but I knew they were talking about my Thor. They too did not get a picture, but I’ve never felt such validation. Indeed, Thor was not a figment of my imagination or something I blew out of proportion – they saw him and were just as stunned by the chest so broad you could have local elementary school children paint a mural on. 

If anyone in New York sees my Thor, I beg you, please take a picture. He is my urban Yeti. I know he exists, but I long for the rest of the world to see him.

 

EDIT: Urban Yeti FOUND! Thanks to Stan, I now realize I’m not the only person fascinated by my Thor, The Observer was also fascinated enough to write a whole article about him. THOR!!!!!

P.P.S Edit: Someone else is obsessed with My Thor ™, only they call him He-Man.

 

Stuff n’ stuff

It’s been a busy time at our house these days, what with the 5 solid prime time hours of weekly I’m A Celebrity, Get me Out of Here! that we have to watch, plus all  the Top Chef Masters, Next Food Network Star and 30 Rock reruns we have been forcing on ourselves. The 30 Rock has been holding up the best, shockingly enough. 

I have still been finding the time to make a lot of food at home lately, which led to a disaster of thumbnail proportions when I actually grated off part of my thumbnail with a cheese grater yesterday. At-Home Triage Companion was right there to help stop the bleeding with some anti-bacterial foam and a bandage within seconds, but the bigger issue still was “Is that cheese safe to eat or might there actually be a shard of bloody nail in it?” and we actually debated whether or not to throw it away for a good, long minute until At-Home Triage Companion said “I would feel like a cannibal knowing I was eating a part of you so lets maybe throw the cheese out”. The fact that this was even a debate shows how questionable we are as people.

I also made a really good pound cake from this month’s Martha, only I did the sour cream and berry variation. It was pretty delicious, although I used mixed frozen berries instead of cultivated wild Maine blueberries or whatever it is Martha recommends.

I’ll be doing more celebri-blogging at The Fab Life this summer too (or at least this week – length of stay TBD), although sadly this has nothing to do with American Idol, it’s just regular old celeb gossip which is fine by me. I do miss hating on Adam Lambert  though (oh hey, also, whatever happened to Kris Allen? Because um, yeah, he won right?). 

This week is the final week of I’m a Celebrity... so I guess that means that after Thursday, I’ll have more time to devote to this blog.

 

Just before Lucille Bluth gave us a scare…

 

One Wedding and a FUN..eral.. FUNORAIL. FUN MONORAIL. DISNEY.

It’s been a rough week. The loss of Bea Arthur, coupled with the fact that I’m going to favorite-engaged-couple Amanda and Caton’s wedding on May 9th but planning to wear a dress that’s too small and depriving myself of real food in order  to fit in it is making me unhappy. In other words, I need a cheesecake to get me through this. And someone with a lanai upon which I can drink and drown my sorrows.

At least I know that in a week I will either fit into a dress I bought in December knowing full-well it was too small, or I will give up and just eat my weight in wedding cake to deal with the disappointment I have in my own willpower. Both are fine options, but I really do want to wear that dress. 

The wedding is in Florida, (Tampa, not Miami but you know that if I had the time I’d make the pilgrimage for Bea), but I don’t have the time because as soon as those two lovebirds say “I do,” we are so outta there – Disney waits for no one. Because yes, we are going back to Disney! For a week! Oh my God I can’t wait to eat so much freaking food in the World Showcase! Seriously. After Traveling Companion and I got back from Disney the last time, we researched and found the recipe for the cheesy chicken (Chicken a la Raja or something? More like Chicken con Awesome.) that fake Disney Mexico served because it was so insanely good. I never knew how much food mattered at Disney and that it is so very, very delicious down there, which is why I called about 2 months ago to make reservations for all our meals. They open the reservations up 3 months in advance and people, believe me when I tell you that some places were fully booked 3 months ago. We learned the hard way that you don’t want to be wandering around the Hollywood Studios on an empty stomach, lest you end up eating day-old chicken fingers for lunch. And I love chicken fingers, that’s not the issue, the issue is that there is SO MUCH MORE you COULD be eating if only you had made a reservation. 

The food is not the only reason we’re going either (although it’s a priority now that we found out Space Mountain is not going to be running for 6 months starting like, this week. We’ll always have vaguely racist Splash Mountain though…) We also decided to go a little nutters on the trip and rent Segways and take a Segway Tour of Epcot for a morning. When my travel companion brought this up I was like, “what, and look like Gob? I don’t think so.” But the more we mulled it over I was like “What, and look like Gob? I think very much so.” So I made the reservation, and when I did the helpful Disnervationist was like “Ohhh mah Gahd, y’all HAVE to bring a camera. What’s yer travelin’ companion’s name?” “Jeff.” “Well you are gonna want to take pitchers a’ Jeff fallin’ off that thang!”.  So basically, yes. I’m going to force him to wear loose linen pants and sandals to really look the part.

I have been waiting for three years also to have a sweet sip of the glorious nectar called Dole Whip, the pineapple sorbet only available in Disney and Hawaii and according to certain people on the internet, the occasional college dining hall. It is so good and despite my mild fear of flying to Florida in the midst of an international Swine Flu pandemic, if I had to die, it would be with a Dole Whip in one hand and a custom made chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich in the other (available at the Main Stree USA bakery! Act now!) Farewell cruel world. You are delicious.

 

Crack is wack

ALSO, I forgot to mention, but a letter/comment I wrote to NY Mag is in this week’s issue. Whatever you do, DO NOT tell my parents about this. Seriously. Wait, I think my parents are the only ones that still read this…But seriously, they’d kill me if they knew about this. (Hi Mom and Dad! Don’t kill me!)

http://nymag.com/nymag/letters/56153/

Move-in day, 2001, Sunnyside, Queens. My roommate and I struggled to move a futon mattress out of a truck and into our building’s elevator when two neighborhood guys offered to help. They grabbed it and fit it into the elevator without even taking the cigarettes out of their mouths, and yet somehow, even though they were a little dirty and creepy, we told them to come by our apartment for a six-pack that night as a thank-you for the help. (There is no logic behind that, we weren’t the smartest.) When they showed up, they brought their friend Eddie, who seemed especially creepy. We drank our beers, hung out, they left. A few minutes later Eddie rang our buzzer and told us he forgot something and could he come up and grab it? We looked around, and after checking the bathroom, we realized our new friend Eddie had left his crack pipe in there.

 

Fab

The site I’ve been contributing my riveting American Idol recaps to has been rebranded so, FYI, here’s the new link for you http://american-idol.thefablife.com/

That goes out to the four people who have been regularly checking back here lately. Sorry for my absence, I have nothing new to report these days. But I will soon, we’re going back to Disney World! Wee!

I’ll be sure to give full reports and a photo diary from our round-the-world pub crawl in the Epcot World Showcase Pavilion, don’t you worry.

 

Idol Hands

Just a reminder that I’m still writing American Idol recaps here…if you’re a fan of the show or a fan of me, please read them!

 

Between Mom Jeans and These, I’ll Take Mom Jeans

I just got this email about the next big trend at Anthropologie. Oh. Hell. No.

 

 

P.S. I actually wore harem pants in the 6th or 7th grade. I was in my Weirdo-Awful-Trying-To-Be-Claudia-Kishi phase where it was also okay to wear jingly bell anklets (maybe I was just in an I-Want-To-Be-Indian phase) and this pair of wicker shoes I bought at Pier 1 for $2. I also held on to a pair of hand-me-down electric blue suspenders whose clips were Coke bottlecaps, just WAITING for the right occasion. It never came . Let that be a lesson, she who waits too long for the right occasion to wear the electric blue suspenders will inevitably be crushed to find out there is no right occasion. 

P.P.S. I love that the copy next to the pants reads “…especially when paired with the right top.” It might as well just say “Fatties, Caveat Emptor” or even more honestly “Mwahahaha. There is no RIGHT TOP.” 

P.P.P.S. “Right Top” makes me think that if I ever write about a British character, his last name will no doubt have to be Wrongbottom.

 

I Fearnet for our Future

At-Home-Alone Companion decided to peruse the movie selections On Demand last night while I was out and found a goldmine of hilarity. It ensued here.

 

Go banana!

In keeping (as opposed to inn-keeping) with my recession-friendly lifestyle, I seem to be taking actions that would be taken by someone who lost their job. I’ve already mentioned how much I love coupons and in-store circulars and other ways to find bargains, which is one way of going about all that. But you know how they’re saying that the arts will be on the upswing with so many people losing their jobs that those people will return to their more creative pasts as an outlet? Well they are. And even though I still have my job, I applied for a residency at a printmaking studio just because I like to pretend I’m laid off and have nothing better to do with my time. 

I don’t know if I’ve gotten in – the application deadline was a week and a half ago and for all I know, in my typical haste I didn’t fill the thing out correctly. But I found a drawing I did that I submitted as part of my portfolio and I made it my desktop because I think it’s kind of weird and funny. Uhh, still life of bananas. Go banana!