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There’s this circular scar on my arm

When I was in high school, there was this really brief period where I felt as if I was actually having what I always thought was supposed to be the high school experience. You know, the kind that you see on TV, where everyone has a ton of friends and every weekend you go to some crazy house party where the adults are perpetually away for the weekend and someone’s older brother or sister happens to be home from college, available to buy everyone booze and beer.

I went to an all-boys Catholic high school, it was one of these giant institutions that pulled its student body from various corners of Long Island. What this meant was that I didn’t really have any hometown friends, aside from the few guys that I went to grammar school with who also attended this high school.

But sometime around junior year, one of these few guys befriended a clique from my town’s public high school. One night I got an invite to a party at some kid’s house, someone that I didn’t know at all. I mean, I knew a lot of the faces, I’d see them at basketball games and stuff like that. But never in a social setting.

Just like that, I went from not knowing anybody to befriending a couple of dozen people. And like I mentioned earlier, it really was all of the crazy that you see on TV, house parties on the weekends, insanely casual parents of people who I’d just met that had no problem letting thirty or forty teenagers get drunk in their basements and backyards.

I had drank beer and the occasional mouthful of liquor before, but the closest that I’d ever been to getting drunk was almost finishing a six-pack with a couple of guys behind a playground supply shed one summer night. This high school party scene that I was now suddenly a part of, there was beer pong, people brought funnels, everyone was smoking pot.

Marijuana was something that, as a little kid, all the way up until my junior year of high school, I promised myself I’d never touch. I don’t know where it came from, but I had a legitimate fear of drugs, like all of those videos they showed us in school, every warning about how it only takes one time for this stuff to ruin your life, I bought it. I was genuinely afraid.

But then it was like one day, I was at my second or third one of these parties, someone offered me a little pipe and I consciously felt that terror not only go away, but there was a total shift in attitude, a complete one-eighty from fear to an embrace. I took a few hits and got really stoned, I woke up in the morning without any lasting permanent damage and I thought, wow, that wasn’t really anything to be afraid of.

And it went like that for a couple months or so, each adventure seemingly more outrageous than the next, all the way until one night, some guy got his hands on a box of cigars. Everyone lit up but, not really knowing how to smoke a whole cigar, everyone got bored. I don’t know how what happened next actually happened, but a couple of guys started taking the their cigars and burning each other’s arms with the lit ends.

One after the other, everyone present got sucked up into the frenzy. It became this macho test that nobody present made any effort to back away from, to stop and think even for a second, what the hell is going on? And then it was my turn. I didn’t put up any fight either. I was drunk, I was high, I felt invincible.

And the next day when I came to, I looked at this oozing open wound on my right bicep, I couldn’t make sense of what had happened. This thing took forever to heal, and it was right below my t-shirt sleeve, so there was no use in covering it up. I made up some bullshit story about working at the restaurant, how I’d accidentally dropped a lemon into the deep fryer, causing a huge glob of grease to splatter in a perfect circle on my arm. And everyone bought it, my parents, the doctor that summer who looked at it curiously during the course of my annual physical.

I still tell that story. There’s not much of a scar now, but it’s noticeable under the right lighting. I’ve told it so much that part of that lie has actually grown pretty deep roots, that sometimes it takes me a minute or two to remember the truth, that I got sucked up into some weird animalistic moment of mass insanity. Someone had a crazy drunk idea that caught and spread like fire that night at a party.

I’m totally embarrassed to write this all out, I’ve never really told anybody I’m close with, but there’s got to be some lesson that I can take away. One is that, whatever I was trying to get out of being part of that group, friendship, acceptance, none of that stuff was ever there in the first place. As quickly as I had been taken in by my group of peers, I was summarily rejected a few months later when, one night at a different party, some kid I’d never met before decided he didn’t like my jokes or whatever. He convinced everyone to turn on me, casting me out on the spot.

Another is, in what ways is whatever was inside of me that night still a part of who I am today? I’d like to believe that I’m an independent thinker, that you’d never be able to find me sucked into poor decision-making by peer pressure and the social dynamics of groupthink run riot. But I don’t know. I thought I was independent back then. To what extent am I truly self-aware of the decisions I’m making day-to-day?

I guess it’s a good reminder every now and then to look at that barely visible scar on my arm, to be grateful that a superficial inch or so of skin is the extent of the physical consequences. But it’s a scary reminder. Just like how my convictions abruptly reversed course in a split second under the right circumstances, in what other ways might my values today be similarly overturned? It’s a good idea to take stock of my life and ask, how much freedom do I really have over my everyday actions?

I used to love fountain soda

I worked at this restaurant a few years ago that didn’t really try that hard to live up to the standards of good hygiene as outlined by the New York City Department of Health. When I first started working there, sure, it was an old building, and yeah, you’ve got to expect to put up with a certain amount of filth as a New York City resident, but some corners of the place represented more of an insect sanctuary than an actual establishment where people paid money to be served food.

But whatever, the money was decent enough that I was able to put the grossness out of my mind somewhat. And there were perks to working there, like free ice cream, free soda. I love drinking free soda from a soda fountain. I’ve always wanted my own personal soda fountain, ever since I was a freshman in high school, on the first day of class, I had this history teacher that told us there were a few water fountains located throughout the building that dispensed Arizona iced tea or Coca-Cola instead of water, and, being the naïve and gullible idiot fourteen year old that I was, I bought the lie completely. When I eventually found out that I had been fooled, I could never shake that insatiable thirst for an unlimited amount of free soft drink.

And even though I’ve yet to meet anybody with their own personal soda fountain, working at this restaurant was the closest that I’d ever come to having that dream realized. Regardless of the bad moods of certain customers, or how crazy the kitchen became during an especially chaotic dinner service, I’d always be able to sneak in ten seconds or so to fill up a Dixie cup with a mouthful of Mountain Dew, or root beer, or orange soda. (I never touched Pepsi, not even once. I’m a Coke man through and through.) That’s all I ever needed, really, not a whole serving, just enough for a satisfying mouthful.

That’s the problem with bottled soda, you have to drink the whole thing in one reasonably timed-out sitting. Unless you have access to your own soda fountain, of course, you’re not really able to get just a sip of soda, with the perfect amount of carbonation, at just the right temperature, whenever you feel like it.

But after a few weeks, people started looking at me funny every time I went in for a drink. “Don’t you guys like soda?” I’d ask nobody in particular, wondering if my coworkers were super health-conscious, or maybe diabetic. I just couldn’t figure out why, apart from serving it to the guests, I was the only one making any use out of our soda fountain.

Finally one day another waiter pulled me aside. He said, “Hey Rob, you must really like soda.” And I said, “Of course I like soda, who doesn’t?” But he continued, “No, it’s just that, you must really, really like soda to be drinking so much out of that machine. Don’t you ever think about why nobody else touches it?”

And yeah, like I had already said, I did wonder why nobody else was indulging in what I had considered one of the only benefits of being a full-time waiter at a pretty mediocre Manhattan tourist-trap. “I just figured that, I don’t know, you guys are all watching your weight?”

“Please,” he went on, “And you never notice the busboys dumping all of that bleach down the drain in the morning?” Yeah, now that he mentioned it, I guess I was at least partially aware of the bleach. But up until that moment, I’d never questioned it. “They put the bleach down because the pipes are all moldy and clogged up, but they won’t pay anybody to replace the system. You ever catch a whiff of that barnacle smell when the ice bucket gets low?”

But it got worse. “Come here,” he brought me over to my precious, precious soda fountain and winced as he lifted up the cover behind the Seven-Up label. Right underneath the surface of what looked like such an inviting piece of machinery was one of the grossest things I’d ever seen: dozens upon dozens of cockroaches, little medium-sized ones, frightened by the sudden exposure to light, running around in ribbons of brown as they made a ridiculous effort to slink back into the shadows.

“The syrup leaks. This machine is a piece of shit. There are roaches everywhere.”

And yeah, that did it for me. I’m sure that most other restaurants and fast-food places have to have better standards of cleanliness, but I’m not going to lie, it’s still a little hard to drink fountain soda. It’s one of my all-time happiest pleasures that’s been irrevocably ruined by that one motion, my coworker lifting back the curtain to reveal the disgusting innards of a poorly kept up soda machine. What a dump.

Rob’s guide to 2014

Do you feel like you were just getting to know 2013? Like it wasn’t until October or November that you finally thought, oh, OK, I get it now, 2013, this is what it’s all about, this is great. And now it’s over, and for what? The teased promise of what could have been, if only you knew what you were doing for the first nine or ten months? It’s kind of like that really cool friend you made during your last semester at college. Where were you hiding this whole time? Why have we never hung out before?

And then it’s graduation and you both go your separate ways and, even though you make an effort to stay in touch, one of you moves away and the other gets a job and, well it’s not like you have that much of a shared history to fall back on. I mean, yeah, it was cool watching the entirety of Star Trek: The Next Generation together on the Sci-Fi channel. But time flies by, people enter and exit our lives seemingly at random.

Is this what 2014 is going to be like? Are you asking yourself, am I fated to stumble around blindly through the ages, never really getting a grip of where I’m at or what this year is supposed to be all about, not until it’s way too late?

Of course you are. But I’m here to make things a little easier. Even though we’re only at day one, I’ve got 2014 practically all mapped out. And I’m going to share with you some tips and tricks to really squeeze the most out of this year, what would have been the second new-world New Year, if only the Mayan apocalypse had arrived like we were all promised.

Let’s talk 2014 TV. Breaking Bad is over. That’s so 2013. And all of your other favorite TV shows aren’t getting any younger. Do yourself a favor and make sure you catch the second half of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Yes, it’s on Fox, and nobody really watches Fox. But I’m telling you, this is definitely the most underrated show currently on TV. I started watching it almost by accident. I have my Netflix and Hulu all streaming to my TV via a little Roku box I picked up at Costco, and for whatever reason, when one show ends, it gives you like five seconds to play a new program, or it starts streaming something else automatically.

When Brooklyn Nine-Nine started up, I made a pretty decent attempt to find the little wand remote that the Roku came with, but after forty-five seconds or so of not immediately eyeing it within my general vicinity, I gave up and thought, OK, well at least I can dick around on my iPhone until this thing’s over.

I had no desire to watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Aside from the Lonely Island SNL videos, I never found Andy Sandburg to be particularly funny. But this show had me roped in almost immediately. I don’t know what to say besides the fact that it’s really funny. If it survives past season one, I know that it’s going to blow up into something huge. But that’s a big if. Fox has a reputation of cancelling strong shows that don’t immediately post stellar ratings.

And from what I’ve heard, there’s not too much buzz about it. I’m saying this not from looking online or reading any reviews, but just by asking around. Nearly everybody who I’ve inquired about Brooklyn Nine-Nine gave me the same dead stare, like they’d never heard of it, wondering if I was talking about something maybe I dreamt of, but a really strong dream, one that I carried into my waking life, mistakenly believing that I’d happened upon a hidden cool show. But it’s cool. Watch it.

More 2014 advice: Did I talk about Brooklyn Nine-Nine already? I did. Right. OK. What else? Actually, I don’t have anything else. I thought I’d get the ball rolling with the TV show thing and that it would naturally lead to all of my other great 2014 plans, but here we are, I’ve basically written what’s usually a blog post’s length of material here, and I’m kind of thinking that, why force any more out of it? So what, so I only have one half-hour network sitcom serving as the bulk of my plans for the New Year. Whatever. And yeah, I guess I should have just turned it into a straight up review post instead of making it like it’s going to somehow be topical, about today, about New Years. But like I said, I’ve already lost interest. I’ve got plenty of the year left to waste everyone’s time with this nonsense.

Happy New Year.

Fear me

Fear me. I want everyone to tremble in my presence. Or even just at the idea of my presence, of being in my presence. And my presents, I want the very mention of my presents to instill a type of almost primeval terror in the souls of those unfortunate enough to receive a package in the mail with my address on the return label. “A present? For me?”

Fear me! Because just because my presents are wrapped up all shiny with a red bow, it makes them no less horrifying. They’re actually even more horrifying. Because there is no return address. That was all a lie, I want you to think there’s a return address. And the wrapping, you’ll get excited, “Oh, how nice!” and when you open it up, well, I shudder for anybody unlucky enough to be standing in the same room as you while you unwrap the box, your facial expression alone, the very embodiment of panic, it’ll be like second-hand fear, you, stone-cold scared, everyone looking at you, just slightly less scared, but still that’s really, really scared, much more afraid than they’ve ever been before.

Seriously, be scared of me. Like, you see me coming down the street, sure, I’m waving at you, maybe I’m smiling, maybe not, it doesn’t matter. Be alarmed. Don’t say I never warned you. “Oh, but Rob looks so nice, very friendly. What’s that, he’s extending his hand to me to say hello? Well I don’t see what could be so scary about …” BZZT! Trick handshake. It’s from one of those prank stores, the kind that give you a very mild shock when you touch the metal sensor. And sure, once in a while you’ll shake a little too hard, and I’ll get a little bit of that residual shock energy, but I can take it.

Don’t even think about high-fives. Don’t even think about going to the bathroom. One time when I was in college, my roommate Ben pulled a prank on me when I was taking a shower, the old filling-up-a-pitcher-full-of-ice-cold-water-and-dumping-it-on-your-roommate-when-he’s-taking-a-hot-shower trick.

Classic abrupt temperature change. Shocking? Yes. Infuriating? Oh my God, I’m seriously still pretty pissed off about it. But scary? Not very scary at all. Fear me. That’s all I could think about as I stood there in the stall simultaneously shivering and scalding myself with water that took about a minute and a half to change temperatures after I turned the shower knob.

Fear me. That’s all I could think about as I got up at four in the morning, not really certain when Ben had to get up for swimming practice. All I knew is that it was early, much earlier than I ever woke up. I’d always get out of bed in the morning and there he’d be, already like three quarters of the way done with his day, so much free time to sit around, planning his next prank, what would it be this time, almost-boiling water? Or water even colder than before? Like ice, like an unflavored Slurpee?

It was the most boring hour and a half of my life, me crouched in the shower, the bathroom door closed, the lights off. “Fear me,” I had to repeat to myself, over and over again, because I was actually getting a little spooked myself, sitting there in the damp, dark, I thought I heard something. I did hear something. It was Ben’s alarm clock.

The bedroom door opened. Ben walked into the bathroom and I waited just a heartbeat to make sure he didn’t see me right away, and then I pounced, “Fear me!” I screamed as I exploded out of the shower, “Ahhh!” Ben stumbled backward out of the bathroom and tripped on his computer desk.

If we’re at work, and you look over at me from way across the other side of the room, and you’re thinking to yourself, “Is Rob staring at me? That’s weird, I can’t tell if he’s staring at me or not.” I am staring at you. And it’s not weird. It’s frightening. Tell everyone how scared you were. Nobody’s going to want to get locked in my impenetrable gaze. That’s how it starts, with a simple look, and then your stuck, everything’s set in motion. You won’t know when, but …

Boo! Fear me!

The Wolf of Wall Street, and other random thoughts about the movies

For a while I was going to the movies every week. I’d pick out a new release and see it either Thursday night at midnight or early Friday morning. And then I’d come back and write up a review. This lasted for a while, all the way from last March up until I saw Gravity. But then I missed a week and I just never got back in that groove again, which is too bad, for me anyway, because going to the movies is great.

I’ve seen a few since Gravity, but I didn’t want to get right back into the reviewing. For example, I saw Twelve Years a Slave, but way after the initial release, and so I didn’t want to show up much later with my two cents. There was also this rule that I made up where I wasn’t allowed to read other reviews before I had seen the movie, and I found that, if I wasn’t doing it immediately, of course I’d wind up reading a review, or even just hearing other people talking about it.

Like Anchorman 2, I haven’t seen it yet, and I haven’t even read any reviews. But I heard that it was terrible. Which, I have no idea what my original reaction would have been had I just seen it before talking to anybody else. Maybe I would have laughed. But now, I’ll never know, I’ll eventually see it, either just before they pull it from the theaters or, more likely, sometime much later after it’s out on TV or Netflix, and I’ll go into it thinking, eh, not that funny.

I don’t know why I had to go into my movie watching lull now, the one time of the year where there are like twenty-five huge movies released every week. When I was doing the weekly reviews, I’d have back-to-back weeks where all of the options were terrible movies. Like Burt Wonderstone, or The Host, or The Internship. And now it’s like, even if I wanted to play catch up, there’s no way I’d be able to watch everything. American Hustle is out, there’s a new Cohen brothers movie.

Tonight I saw The Wolf of Wall Street, which came out on Christmas, so yeah, it’s too late for a review. But I wanted to write something about it, and so this is what I’ve got so far, half a blog post about movies in general. But this movie, and here’s the spoiler warning, lots of spoilers, I’m basically going to be writing here as if everyone’s already seen it, so if you’re at all interested in not having someone who has seen the movie talk to you about what happened in the movie, stop now.

The whole movie, it’s about this real life guy who makes a ton of money as a con man on Wall Street. I was sitting there in the theater, I was thinking, OK, there’s not much going on here. Leo is making tons of money and living like a rich prick king. There’s nothing really being said, it’s just the main character acting like an asshole, leading up and up and up and finally he gets in trouble and goes to jail.

I was thinking, it’s boring, there’s not much of a story. And then there’s the ending. He’s out of jail and he’s giving a speech at one of these “How to get rich” seminars somewhere in New Zealand. And he’s just doing the same shit, over and over again, and the camera faces the audience. The last shot is of the people in their seats, looking up.

I thought, man, it’s like a mirror, everybody in this theater looking at the screen, everybody in the movie looking back in the opposite direction. The film ends, the screen goes black and a title card reads, “Based on the book by …” and I don’t even want to write this guy’s name, I don’t want to acknowledge his presence more than I already have, I don’t want this blog post to pop up on a list of results for his name.

But it was this huge joke. He goes to jail, whatever, he’s still a rich con man. He wrote a book. He optioned the movie and a huge director took on the project. And here I am, I’m staring at these people in New Zealand thinking, man, who shells out money for these garbage seminars? And then it hit me, I’m sitting here, I just shelled out twenty bucks for this garbage movie, a plot as cheap and nonexistent as the junk he peddled on Wall Street.

And so yeah, he got me, I contributed to this guy’s fortune, his fame, even totally unknowingly, I was still part of this mass fleecing. I thought, wow, I’m so stupid, but really deep for having such a great insight, but mostly stupid, but also really, really deep.