Category Archives: Uncategorized

Coke, Diet Coke, and Sprite

I hate it when you go out to a restaurant and all they have to drink is Coke, Diet Coke, and Sprite. That’s all we serve at my restaurant. The royal triumvirate of boring sodas. It’s like I can just picture whoever started the place, they’re considering all of the locally selected ingredients for each carefully plated dish. And then right after they finish planning the menu, one of them says, “Oh wait, we forgot to go over beverages.”

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The other guy goes, “What do you mean, like soda? Just get Coke, Diet Coke, and Sprite.” And that’s it. It’s like there’s no imagination at all, not even the possibility that you might branch out even a step into the wider world of soft drinks.

And this isn’t anything against Coke. It’s great. I hate Diet Coke, but whatever, that’s not a fight I’m willing to pick, because people love Diet Coke, and so yeah, not my cup of tea. I do love Coke Classic. But I love cheeseburgers also. It doesn’t mean I want every meal to be a cheeseburger. Nor do I want every drink I have to be a Coke.

I just don’t get it, because there are so many more interesting sodas besides Coke and Sprite. How did we wind up as these two being the standard? It’s like ice cream, you’ve got vanilla and chocolate. Hot drinks, it’s coffee and tea. And for soda, you’ve got whatever flavor Coke is supposed to be and then lemon-lime.

You ever go to a restaurant and ask if they orange soda? Or Mountain Dew? You won’t even get a response right away. The waiter or waitress is just going to stare at you for a little while, to communicate as passive-aggressively as they can, are you kidding me? Are you seriously asking me if we have orange soda or Mountain Dew? Of course we don’t. Of course we only have Coke or Sprite. What the hell is your problem?

I know this because I’m a waiter, and I can’t stand it when people waste my time, “What kind of soft drinks do you have?” And what do I do? I don’t want to be a dick. I don’t want to be like, you’re an idiot, we only have Coke, Diet Coke and Sprite. But that’s all we have. Sure, I can mention unsweetened ice tea, I can throw in seltzer, but that’s it, everybody’s left deflated by the interaction. I don’t know what you were expecting.

But why is artificial orange flavor that much different than artificial lemon and lime flavor? Why is it socially acceptable to have a brown or a clear carbonated beverage in front of you at a restaurant while a green or a neon yellow one would make it look like you snuck out to Pizza Hut to order a soda to bring back to the table?

Cream soda, root beer, grape soda, Dr. Pepper, there are so many alternative soda flavors we could add to the standard restaurant drink menu to make everything more interesting. But no, you’re lucky if you go to a restaurant that has ginger ale.

Every restaurant by me, they proudly serve at least forty-five craft beers on tap. The wine gets its own telephone book sized menu. Bourbons, scotches, spirits, hold on, let me get the liquor manager to come over and give you a history lesson on single malts vs. blends. But soda? We’ve got Coke, Diet Coke, and Sprite. It’s not fair. I love soda. I would love to have some variety when I feel like enjoying a sugary carbonated beverage.

Live-blogging a leg cramp

Ow. Ow, ow, ow. My leg is cramping up. Holy shit this hurts. It’s like right underneath my quad. Is that right, my quad? I don’t really know too much about anatomy. But the part of my leg above the knee. You know, the femur is the bone, only I’m not talking about the bone, I’m talking about the muscle underneath. It just started contracting, and it won’t stop. This really hurts. Maybe I’ll just give it a second, maybe I can wait it out and hope that it starts to relax.

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No, nope, it’s not relaxing. I think it’s getting even tighter. Yeah, it’s definitely tighter. Jeez, I didn’t even know that I could clench my leg muscles this hard. It’s like, when I’m riding my bike to work, and I’m fifteen minutes late, I’m always thinking, come on legs, if there were only some way that I could get you to push harder, maybe I could be in a little closer to on time.

Why can’t my legs spasm like this when I need them to? Not when I’m sitting here at my computer desk. Man, and it’s just getting worse. I can totally understand now how mothers in distress can lift cars up over their heads when their babies are trapped inside. It’s like, my leg, the way it is right now, if every muscle in my body were similarly clenched, I can’t think of anything that I wouldn’t be able to lift over my head.

But this is just painful. I can’t extend it outward. Again, if I were doing anything other than sitting down, maybe this could be of some use. Like maybe if I happened to be standing downstairs while this happened, I could at least try to position my unexpected extra strength to kick the base of the toilet back into place. I should really just go to the Home Depot and buy some caulk, but I don’t even know if caulk is what I need in this case. Chances are I’d wind up just throwing a bunch of money at a whole mess of supplies that I don’t even really know how to use.

And, I know I said this already, but it really is getting much worse. I can’t imagine that there’s any blood getting past the leg muscle. The quad? Or the thigh? Is that the same thing? The part of your leg that hits the chair when you’re sitting down? If the pain weren’t so blinding, maybe I’d be able to look it up on the Internet. But I don’t think I can feel my toes anymore. Everything below the halfway point on the upper part of my leg, it’s like I can’t explain the fire, it’s like …

Wait, it’s stopping. Just a little bit, but it’s definitely relaxing somewhat. OK, maybe it’s over. Maybe I can just move my leg a little bit and help speed along the relaxation process here and …

No, shit, that didn’t work. It was too soon. Things were finally starting to look good and I had to go ahead and try to wrest control of my body’s natural cramp-fighting abilities. Oh man, I can’t tell if it’s worse now than it was before, or if it’s just feeling worse, seeing as how things were getting better before I went ahead and ruined it. Am I going to be OK? How much longer can my muscle stay tight like this before there’s serious permanent damage? Am I going to have to go to a leg doctor?

Wait. OK, this is it. It’s going away this time for real. I’m just going to ride it out here and not get impatient and … yes, it’s gone. Yikes. I can still feel it, I mean, it definitely feels like my leg was totally unnaturally clenched for a really long period of time, but I can move it and, yeah, I just put a little weight on it and everything seems like it’s OK.

Wow, that was crazy. You know, I was initially upset at the timing and location of the leg cramp, but now that it’s solidly behind me, I’m actually pretty grateful that I happened to be here at this computer. Because look, I got to live-blog the whole thing. That’s something, right? This is definitely something. And my leg’s feeling a lot better. I mean, it’s a little sore still, but I think I’ll be fine in like an hour. I think I’m already basically fine, but I’ll just give it an hour and maybe post like an update or something.

Update: Yeah, absolutely fine. I’m flexing as hard as I can and there’s no trace of pain from the cramp. #Blessed.

A winter walk through Astoria Park

I was taking my dog for a walk through the park last weekend. There was still a ton of snow on the ground, snow that’s become a fixture in my head of what I think of when I imagine the outside world. It hadn’t even snowed in like a week, but there was still so much. Even if it were warm out starting today, and I guarantee there’d still be piles of it everywhere, snow that’s fallen, partially melted, frozen, remelted, all resulting in these giant piles of weird sno-cone like slush.

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I kind of got used to seeing the snow mostly confined to the huge piles alongside the sides of the streets. But here in the park it was everywhere. None of the paved paths had been cleared off, and so I kept dancing this way and that, hopping from clean piece of ground to the next, regretting my decision to wear sneakers instead of snow boots.

This winter has been a cold one, and even though I tell myself that I like being outside during the winter, that I enjoy the brisk temperature, I’ve definitely recoiled somewhat. There haven’t been as many outdoor runs as there were last year. And just looking out across Astoria Park, it was giving me the same feeling that I got as a little kid after returning home from a weeklong vacation, everything was familiar, but oddly out of place. It became obvious that feeling that I hadn’t been here in a while.

As I walked along one of the paths, I came across these two parents and their very small children. There was a stroller to the side, so clearly they hadn’t made the little kids walk all the way here. But they were all crouched down around a somewhat clean pile of snow. The little kids had plastic buckets and shovels and it was hard to really describe what they were doing. Is that how little kids play? They just kind of shovel stuff and dump it into buckets?

The whole scene struck as me as crazy, but in a cool way. Like I couldn’t even get myself outside much this winter. But these parents had two kids. That’s got to be a lot more difficult than just forcing yourself to leave the house. You’ve got to get their coats and their boots and make sure that they both go to the bathroom before they leave. And this one kid, the younger one, he definitely had to have been in diapers. What if he decided to pee? Would you have to change him right there in the freezing cold? Or would the diaper freeze against his skin?

And then I’m picturing myself, if I had kids, I’d be standing and watching them just playing with the granular snow. Would I be bored? I mean, I never just go outside and play in the snow. And while there’s that idea that it would be nice to get in touch with my inner child, to go out there and get dirty and make snow castles or whatever, I can’t really see it happening. I’d much rather stay inside on the Internet. But maybe if you have your own kids you like watching them enjoy it, I don’t know.

But then I saw the daughter, she had her bucket overflowing with snow, she threw down the shovel and she grabbed the bucket with both hands. She opened her mouth and slowly brought the bucket up. The mom stopped it from happening, she put her hands on top of the bucket and said, “No. Don’t lick it. OK. No. Don’t.” And the girl put the bucket down and her mom backed off. And then two seconds later that little girl was back at it, she brought it up faster this time, hoping to avoid her mom from stopping her. But no, adults are always faster than little kids, and so I heard that voice as we walked past the family outing now receding in view, “No, honey, don’t eat the snow. OK. We don’t eat the snow. Honey. Baby. OK? No.”

I’m just left with the sounds and images of this world totally foreign to me. What if I have kids and I’m not paying attention and they eat something gross off of the floor? I’ll take them to the hospital after days of violent illness, the doctor will be like, “Did junior here eat anything funny?” And I’ll be like, “Uh … I don’t know.” And the doctor will be like, “Well, it looks like a fair amount of dirt has been ingested. I’ll treat the child while you have a conversation with the social worker about negligence.”

How did we get this far as a species? Why do little kids want to put stuff in their mouths? When is all of this snow going to melt?

10 essential tips for dating Spider-Man

  1. Don’t mess around with his web-shooters

    Seriously, they’re not toys, OK, he needs them for fighting crime. Besides, that webbing could potentially be kind of dangerous. What if you press the button and it covers your nose and mouth? It takes like at least an hour for that stuff to dissolve. You’d suffocate. Spider-Man cares about you a lot, he doesn’t want to see you suffocate. All I’m saying is, you get really mad when Spider-Man goes through your purse to look for those mints you always carry around. Respect his personal boundaries accordingly.

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  2. You won’t know who he’s hanging out with at work

    Spider-Man spends a lot of his time with other adults dressed up in various superhero costumes. While of course he would love to introduce you to his crime-fighting coworkers, there’s the whole secret identity thing that you have to keep in mind. That’s just the nature of his business. If people figured out who you were, they might be able to trace the link back to him. The next thing you know, Mysterio shows up at your house to kidnap you and draw Spider-Man into a trap. Do you want that kind of guilt hanging over your head? Besides, isn’t it kind of cool, the secret nature or your relationship? It’s like a hidden treasure, something only the two of you get to share.

  3. It’s not that he didn’t like the surprise birthday party you threw for him

    It’s just that, with his built in spider-sense, it’s really hard to pull a fast one on Spider-Man. Even if it’s the most well-intentioned secret, as soon you start getting past the idea stage into the actual execution, his alarm bells immediately start ringing. And yeah, he tried to act surprised, but everybody knows that Spider-Man is a terrible actor.

  4. If he’s being a dick, maybe it’s the alien costume

    All you’re trying to do is make plans to do something special on Saturday night, and he’s all not paying attention or putting in any effort to show that he even wants to spend time with you. Even regular boyfriends get in weird moods sometimes. But has Spider-Man been acting even more difficult and aggressive than usual? Maybe it’s the alien costume. It’s kind of a long story, but a while back, Spider-Man was sent to an alien world with a bunch of other superheroes to battle a collection of the earth’s nastiest bad guys. While snooping out some high-tech lab, he found an alien costume that shifted its appearance just based on his thoughts. But it turned out to be an evil alien parasite, slowly filling Spider-Man’s mind with hate and violence. The next time Spider-Man gets his spandex in a twist, maybe suggest changing into something more comfortable? If he gets really defensive, it’s probably the alien costume.

  5. Or it could be the clones

    This is kind of like the alien costume problem, but without as much overt Spider-Man being a dick. It’s like, you make plans with Spider-Man early in the day, and then when you see him later in the afternoon, he’s like, “Plans? What plans?” Don’t jump to conclusions. There’s a pretty good chance that there might be a bunch of Spider-clones running around, and the Spider-Man who you talked with in the morning might be a different Spider-Man from later in the day.

  6. Try not to get upset if he doesn’t return your calls right away

    Spider-Man disappears all the time. The X-Men need help in Antarctica and there’s no time to explain. The Green Goblin blasts him with a shrink-pumpkin and he has to figure out a way to return to normal size. Remember what I was talking about with alien costume? He was on that other planet for weeks. His girlfriend at the time simply couldn’t understand, and she dumped him. If you’re dating Spider-Man, you’ve got to get used to long stretches of time where he doesn’t return any of your calls or texts. But try not to get too worried. He usually makes it back home in good shape.

  7. Stay away from the Brooklyn Bridge

    He does his best to protect the ones he loves the most, but every once in a while, even Spider-Man falls short. Years ago he was dating this girl Gwen and, well, she fell off the Brooklyn Bridge. It was kind of the Green Goblin’s fault. Still. Just stay away from bridges.

  8. Avoid keywords that might trigger a long boring speech

    Power. Great. Responsibility. Uncle Ben. Nobody likes tiptoeing around their words, but unless you really like listening to that, “Great power, great responsibility” speech, do yourself a favor and don’t mention any of these triggers. In fact, if you feel like a conversation might be steering in this direction, try changing the subjects. Worst case, mention that you thought you heard someone screaming down the block. Because it’s a really boring speech, and he won’t shut up about it.

  9. Don’t offer to do his laundry

    You might think you’re being helpful, getting that gross smell out of his Spider-Man costume. But it’s impossible. Do you know where he goes in that thing? Sometimes in the sewer. Other times he’s fighting bad guys at the dump. It’s a nasty job, and if you mix any of your clothes in the same load as that costume, all you’re going to do is make your stuff smell like garbage too. And do you think Spider-Man wants to date somebody that smells like that? Come on, he gets enough of that at work. Just do your own laundry, and Spider-Man will do his.

  10. Don’t expect a happy ending

    Just try to enjoy the ride, because it’s not going to end well. Even if you somehow manage to not get thrown off the Brooklyn Bridge, even if things wind up going incredibly well, like you get married, maybe you’ll be expecting a child, it’s only a matter of time before it all blows up in your face. Doctor Octopus is going to steal the baby, and then it’s going to turn out that you weren’t really pregnant in the first place. At least you’ve got that marriage to fall back on, right? Wrong. Something might happen to Aunt May and Spider-Man might be forced to wish away your years of marital bliss in a deal with the devil in return for the safety of his elderly aunt. I’m just saying, the universe doesn’t want Spider-Man to be happy, and the closer you are to Spider-Man, the higher the chances that you’re going to be a part of that misery. Get out while you can. Why not try talking to the Hulk? Or Batman? Batman’s rich. Really rich. You should call up Batman.

Originally published on Thought Catalog

Shake my hand

Handshakes are weird. I can’t wait until society evolves past the need for human beings to extend their right hands in hopes of a mutual embrace, because it’s not working anymore. It should be one of the easiest and most straightforward things that I have to deal with in my daily life. But it’s not. It’s always a new opportunity for confusion, missed social cues, and entire days afterward spent in isolation, fixated on that terrible feeling of an unnecessarily awkward moment.

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“Always make sure you give a firm handshake,” I remember by Aunt Mary-Kate instilling this advice upon me from a very young age. “Nobody wants to feel like they’re holding onto a dead fish wrapped in newspaper.” And yeah, that’s some very descriptive imagery, and so it stuck with me, that feeling. Every time I’d shake hands with someone weaker of grip than I, it would be like a trigger, I’d not only feel that fish, but I’d get a fishy smell, I could feel individual scales falling off, somehow getting through the cracks of the newspaper and getting stuck on my clothes, my shirt sleeves, I’d absent-mindedly put my fingers to my lips later in the day and I’d get one of them in my mouth.

Gross. Totally imaginary, but disgusting nonetheless. And let’s be real for a minute, are actual handshakes any less gross? We don’t know what everybody’s doing with their hands. And I don’t want to spell out any more fabricated scenarios, but I’m telling you, I could come up with ten things off the top of my head that would make you physically ill. And number one on that list might very well be hands that have just finished gutting and scaling a fish. Maybe you even washed your hands. But how thoroughly? Did you get that fishy stuff out from underneath your fingernails?

OK, I’m moving on. But a firm handshake, yeah, a lot of the world ascribes to that point of view. Most of the time it’s harmless enough, I’ll go in for a shake, you’ll go in for a shake, the difference in strength will be minimal enough that the resulting clasp is almost equal. But that’s not always the case. Every once in a while I’ll overdo it.

I might see someone coming my way, I’ll automatically assess their potential grip, and I’ll try to match their strength accordingly, all while still making sure that the first word that other person thinks of when they grab my hand is, “Firm.”

Like I said, it gets awkward sometimes. In my overzealousness to prove to the world that I’m the strongest of hand, I’ll be holding that dead fish and I’ll be squeezing it just hard enough that its eyes will be bulging out of the sockets. Believe me, this is about as fun for me as it is painless for you. I make a quick up, down, up, and then release. There’s so much nonverbal communication going on in this action that I’m left stuck in my head for a few minutes. Like, did that person understand why I was shaking so hard? Does this person now realize that a proper handshake is a prerequisite to beginning any sort of face-to-face interaction?

I can only hope so. That’s what I’ve been taught anyway. Maybe they just think I’m a huge macho asshole. But I can’t help it. Even though I really don’t like the handshake, I have to respect its proper form. Firm. Shake. Find the nearest bathroom so I can get that false scent of trout or flounder out of my head.

Then there’s the flip side, when I see somebody coming my way and they might as well be wearing a custom screen-printed t-shirt that says, “Get ready, I’m about to dole out one of the firmest shakes you’ll ever handle.” And so I wind up, I’ve got a bullshit smile on, my elbow is cocked back a full forty-five degrees, and then right as we both go in for the grip, I really jab it in there. I want that flap of skin connecting my thumb and index finger together to make an audible slapping sound, all before coming down on the other person’s hand with a strength that starts in my neck, builds as it picks up steam down my shoulders, my biceps giving everything they’ve got to my forearm, and then, clench, there it is, the handshake to end all handshakes.

And not all of the time, but every once in a while I’ll meet my handshake match, someone who came to win with a five-fingered intensity I often forget others beside myself are capable of possessing. I’ll feel the initial squeeze as an elite shake, and I’ll react accordingly, summoning everything that I’ve got, doing my best to squeeze the life out of my counterpart, all while maintaining the casual smile that says, “Hey! It’s so great to see you!”

It’s on, we’re both in it for something more than just hello at this point. Grip, up, down, up, down, up, down, now it’s getting awkward, and the both of us having made about as much of a show of hand strength as is appropriate in a public setting, we’ll loosen the grip, recoil our hands making sure not to massage the knuckles with the lefty.

Now is the moment when one of us would say, “Wow, that’s some handshake you’ve got there.” But I’m not going to say it, so if anybody’s going to do it, it’s going to be the other party, to which I’ll smile and say, “Thanks.”

It’s such a dick move, I know it, making such a competition out of what should be nothing more than a pleased-to-meet-you. But it’s how we do it. We shake hands. The ones who are really good at it, it’s like we’ve constantly got something to prove, everybody we meet is a potential hand rival.

I can’t take it any more. I’m thinking about wearing a cast just so I can excuse myself from these silly formalities. And why can’t we switch to high-fives? Everybody loves high-fives. If you do it just right, anyone within earshot will benefit from the sound of two people really saying hi. And it’s more than just hi. A high-five is “What’s up?” it’s, “All right!” it’s, “Yes!”

Let’s do away with the handshake and replace it with the high-five. Fist bumps are cool too, but every time I try to go for one, it’s either only in my head, or only in the other person’s head. And so it turns into one fist that’s kind of awkwardly cradled by the would-be handshake of another person.

You know what? Just wave. I’ll wave back. It’ll be cool. Let’s save our hands for something else.