(The Boney King of NYC.)

in which the snl celebrity jeopardy sketch comes dangerously close to fruition, and andy richter really does control the universe.

jgall0610 — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:22:13 +0000

The above clip is the second half of a recent Celebrity Jeopardy episode. I don’t have all that much to say about this, other than the fact that Andy Richter was already pretty high up on my list for playing identical quintuplets (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, watch season three of Arrested Development. Actually, watch the entire series. Seriously.)

Suffice it to say, Richter dominates. I don’t expect you guys to watch it all (the clip is only the second half of the show, but it is ten minutes long), but, well, this is like, Ken Jenningseque. Also, as Wolf Blitzer finishes nearly $5000 in the red at the end of Double Jeopardy, I have to wonder… what exactly does it take to work at CNN?

Also, what’s Ken Jennings doing now?

my eyes dilate, my lips go green, my hands are greasy…

jgall0610 — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 02:57:59 +0000

Finally, I’m writing in this guy again. My guess would be that it’s been roughly two months, and a fair amount’s happened in that time, but I’ll write about that later if my blogging sticks this time around. Currently, I’m eschewing the VMAs on MTV (when was the last time that they even showed an entire music video?) in favor of a Phillies game (get ‘im, Pedro), but there’s a bit of a more pressing matter that I want to discuss.

The title of this post comes from “Start Me Up,” by the Rolling Stones. That song is from their album Tattoo You, an album that apparently is really good, but one that I don’t own.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my roundabout, music nerdy way of saying that I’m thinking about getting a tattoo this week.

I’ve thought about getting one for a good amount of time, but there have been a few obstacles in the way. Unfortunately for the sane part of my brain, one of those impediments has fallen by the wayside, as I’ve been promised by a friend that, should I actually man up and do it, it would be paid for. This leaves a couple more problems, of course:

1) Finding a good location on my body. I’m not particularly muscular really anywhere, so I have to think a tattoo would look kind of dumb on most of the fantastically scrawny parts of me. Plus, as I get older, time and gravity would inevitably win out.

2) The permanence. I don’t have a problem with something being on my body for the rest of my life. My major problem with that is that it would obviously have to be something that I’m into for the rest of my life, and at this point, the only thing I can think of that fits that category is something Philadelphia-related, as I love the city and know that I always will. As I don’t even really like the look of the Philly skyline, and due to the fact that tattooing a food item (cheesesteak? soft pretzel? water ice?) or cliche tourist-y thing (Liberty Bell?) on my body is repugnant to me, the only thing that seems consistent and appropriate to me is something to do with the Phillies.

Added bonus: the Phillies logo has the Liberty Bell on it anyway. So I guess that’s a win.

Here we go. I'm kind of just throwing ideas out there now.

There’s obviously no sense of urgency here, and I’m still looking around, but for now, there’s where I’m at. Possibly a Phillies logo, of a significant size, but not huge, and as for a location, I’m currently thinking on my neck or high up on my back. But we’ll see where it goes, and I’m absolutely taking suggestions.

he had high, apple pie in the sky hopes.

jgall0610 — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 07:52:19 +0000

The evening of July 23rd, 2009 and the early morning of July 24th, 2009, as presented in the format of new blog segment Gained/Maintained/Drained!

GAINED:

*One win by the Phillies (and, coupled with one loss by the Atlanta Braves, one game in the NL East standings. Go Phils!)
*A small appreciation for wandering the streets of New York City late at night after walking back from Penn Station at 2:30 AM (which will inevitably come in handy for me when I’m homeless).
*Newly hardened arteries, a small price to pay for the wonder of Dollar Dog Night.
*An unexpected pack of cigarettes (minus two or so) upon reentering my apartment, compliments of roommate Amanda Baker. Not that I smoke enough to even have a pack of cigarettes, but this is probably a win.

MAINTAINED:

*A love of Dollar Dog Night.
*One dinosaur blanket that isn’t mine, acquired when my weary hitchhiker from Caravan left it in my car. This was maintained because we failed to get in touch.
*The feeling that my friends from home are still very much great. This is a major casualty of summer in NYC.
*A love of the Phillies, of Philadelphia, and of Philadelphians. Example: While on the SEPTA train back, this girl got into a heated argument with the conductor over the price of her ticket. She claimed that she should only have to pay the child’s price, as she was 11. However, as she did not look eleven, the conductor asked her what year she was born, to which she responded “1994.” This should have immediately ended the conversation, but even though she was clearly beaten, she kept adamantly demanding the child’s price. This stubbornness (and I will credit it to stubbornness, hoping that she did not actually believe she was the only 11-year-old born in 1994) is a perfect summary of the city of Philadelphia.

DRAINED (of):

*Roughly $50 ($20 for the ticket, $7.75 for four hot dogs and a soda, another soda later from a vending machine, and $20.50 for train tickets back).
*Any sort of desire to take SEPTA/NJTransit ever again. Bolt Bus, for the win.
*One pair of headphones, left in the car of Kath Thomas.
*Any and all kinds of energy, and will to go to work tomorrow morning. I’m still awake to make sure Amanda gets up at 4:30 for her bus. It’s currently 3:40. I don’t know if I’ll make it.

On that, I’m gonna try and come up with things to do that will keep me awake for the next 37 minutes.

on caravan.

jgall0610 — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 13:20:07 +0000

I’m going to lift this from the host of CARAVAN, Matt Manser. He said everything that I could’ve said about it, really, and he’s more qualified, so, here we go:

“Caravan 2009 was four years in the making.

The first Caravan was in 2006, and had 7 people. At some point, we decided it would be a cool idea to take our gear up there and jam out in the quarry, call it “Blues Fest”. Never quite happened.

Then, at 4 am one morning when all great ideas are born, it was decided to do Caravan the way it should be done. With music, and good people. Lots of good people. I set my bar at 50.

But like all great things, it didn’t come easy. There were schedule conflicts, band promises and drop outs, the difficulty in explaining what exactly I was talking about ( DO YOU ALL UNDERSTAND WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT NOW? )

Then the night we’re scheduled to leave, the trailer won’t work on my truck. What the fuck?! We consider using Haffy’s suburban, until it shorts out his lights. Now the trailer AND his car can’t go.

However, in the true spirit of Caravan, Thayer decided to have all of his tools with him. Mike Connor loaned him a soldering iron to fix Haff’s lights while we went and searched for a solution to the hitch. We found one, by buying and installing an entirely new hitch on the truck. We left at 6 am, feeling accomplished. The fellowship had been broken, and we had been delayed, but nothing could stop us now!

Then the cops came. And busted us. In a big way. We could have all gotten underages, and supplying alcohol to minors, and my dad would be in jail, and I’d be asking for donations for the huge fine that we’d be paying. They could have let that dog out of the car to go sniff around the tents. We were god awful close to being fucked for good.

But in the true spirit of Caravan, luck was on our side. We got a disorderly conduct warning. So we reacted, and made the event dry.

The event was dry, right? We buried treasure in the woods, and we made the campsite squeaky clean. I believe that everyone thought everyone else was sober. It was an amazing group lie.

And then the concert began. At its peak, there were 128 confirmed facebook guests, 12 bands, and I really wanted to rent a pontoon party barge to set the amps up on and float around playing for docks. In reality, I’ve heard guesses of 80-90 people, with 8 bands playing. We went through 9 cases of water, 16 cases of soda, 4 handles of liquor and 10 cases of beer before I stopped buying them. I spent an average of $350 in cash a day at Sam’s Club, and have a $1000 credit card bill coming. This is just the shit I purchased too, I probably found 15 to 20 empty handles cleaning up.

I got a few complaints about the food and beverage situation, and for that I apologize. I tried the best I could to make sure everyone was drinking and eating. I put an extra 500 miles on my car while in Maine trying to run around to grab everything.

We took 32 bags of garbage to the dump. We got $52 in deposits on cans and recyclables.

Of course, this was a great experiment year. I’ve never done this before. I doubt any of you have. So I got things wrong, and I got things right. The people around me came through in amazing ways. Some people knew how to hide the booze and the illicit items, and some didn’t.

So I want to thank my dad Clark, Max Yasgur to my Woodstock, the bandana crew, keren verker, lucy the chef, crazy dave, kyle brophy, mike connor, mike sabolick, hugh haffner and his citronella bunnies, everyone who loaned the equipment, everyone who put up the stage, andrew mitchell for reasons we’ve discussed in private, everyone who believed in the ideal of traveling 500 miles to see a concert, the kids who had to take a 39 hour return journey, the kids who decided that the possibility of an awesome weekend was worth more then the $30-50 they ended up paying me, everyone who believes that we can make it bigger, better and smoother, and bre for giving me the last $2 I have to my name. Seriously, broke as a joke, but at least I can get a vitamin water.

I didn’t go to jail, and I’m on schedule to only lose $300 on the whole thing. So I have no reason to not do it again.

Caravan 2010.“

You heard him, guys. Caravan lives.

carry me, caravan. take me away.

jgall0610 — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:02:09 +0000

Hello, Great Pond. Nice to meet you.

This is Great Pond. It’s 8,239 acres, and from the look of this picture, it was specifically created by Kodak for picturesque moments. Why am I showing you this? Because this is where I’m going to be spending my next three days.

Some backstory: an incredibly ambitious friend of a friend got a bit creative, and started planning out our very own music festival. The plan wouldn’t have gotten off the ground, but then someone volunteered a huge piece of farmland, and others looked into buying a bunch of food and a generator, and building a stage.

CARAVAN 2009 was born, our own little Woodstock. Except instead of Jefferson Airplane, there’ll be a lot of bands that my friends are in, that aren’t famous at all.

After seeing these pictures, I couldn’t be much more excited for this. Tomorrow, I load up my car and leave Berlin. After a stop in Trenton to pick up Val and Kathy, we’ll be road tripping eight hours to my new home away from home.

I’m rooting for this thing. I really hope it isn’t an epic disaster, and that we’re all left for dead in Belgrade… but if we were, we’d probably have a good story.

Hopefully, I’ll be back Monday in one piece.

16shellsfromathirtyoughtsix.

jgall0610 — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:37:59 +0000

There will be a real update today or tomorrow, because I want to chronicle Caravan. But, while at work, I stumbled upon this.

I love Beck. I love Tom Waits. And so, this is one of my favorite things that could EVER happen. Though, apparently, they both don’t like “Best-Of Lists,” which is a shame.

Back really soon, I promise.

won’t let the nervous bury me.

jgall0610 — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:39:09 +0000

Interesting epiphany: If someone on the street yells “JIM!” at me, I will take whatever they’re handing out because I’m too phased to walk away. As a result, four people have given me pamphlets about New York Sports Clubs in the past week. I am an idiot.

Also, I got a text from a friend last night in which he told me that at some point, I had said that I wanted to waltz at my wedding, specifically to this song:
This sounds like a catastrophic idea, as I can’t dance to save my life, let alone waltz, but I’m gonna stick with it. I want the guests at my wedding to be completely confused, starting with my mom.

I apologize for a lack of real updates recently. I feel like I’ve been overrun with a ton of visitors the last week, mainly cause I have been (the number is at four since Wednesday). It’s been nice, but because my room is rapidly becoming a hotel, there’s definitely some strain with the roommates. The last week’s been a blast though, what with the ’70s porn party (which, granted, felt like it was held in a pizza oven but absolutely could have gone much worse) and Gay Pride Palooza (to say the least, an experience).

This is what I expected my summer in NYC to be like: not necessarily a ton of scantily clad men on floats dancing to Michael Jackson songs, but new and interesting stuff going on every week. One of Berlin’s many, many drawbacks is that it literally has nothing to keep people busy. Here? Between free concerts, movie screenings (I get to see Funny People tomorrow, about a month early), working hard (or hardly working), and other miscellany, I’m in a little bit over my head with stuff to do. Which, you know, is exactly where I want to be.

get up offa that thang, it’s time to relieve the pressure.

jgall0610 — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:05:57 +0000

Tonight, a friend has commandeered my apartment for her party idea. The trainwreck potential (of both the greatness of the party and the lack of sobriety) is absolutely enormous, and the theme? ’70s porn. If this thing is a success, there will be pictures. If it is a spectacular failure, there will be video.

Wish us luck.

Crisis.

jgall0610 — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:49:41 +0000

So, while I got a lot of things while I was home (food, clean clothing, affection, etc.), one thing that I managed to leave was my Patrick Carbrey Dunseith, Vol. 2. For those of you who don’t know, this is the name that the Lord bestowed upon my iPod.

This is a crisis. I walk to work. I can’t deal with listening to, you know, the hoipolloi.

In addition, I literally have one album of music on my computer. The other 15000 songs? On PCD.

*fetal position*

blend all your days into weeks.

jgall0610 — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 03:31:38 +0000

So, as I mentioned last post, I went back to good old South Jersey this past weekend. What I realize more and more is that being back there is great in tiny bursts. The family is great, the friends are great, the hangouts and catch-ups are great, but…

Berlin just doesn’t cut it. So close to Philly, yet so, so far away. Even though it’s all kinds of expensive, New York is keeping me busy, at least.

I will say this though: being here is making me feel older and older every day. Not in a bad way or anything, just, you know, older. I had to put aside an immature vendetta against umbrellas and carry one to work. Am I old enough that I have to start calling truces now?

Anyway, I started this post wanting to try and put together some goals for this summer, but, well, I haven’t really figured them out myself. I’ll try to piece together something eloquent soon, but in the meantime, have this. It might be my favorite song of the decade, and it’s relevant cause, well, we really don’t have any sunshine.

On that, I’m off to bed. Fare thee well.