The Streets (Part 1)

Preface: The Superhighway

Early in the afternoon yesterday, I was surfing the information superhighway, when I paddled into a tsunami of a discovery; 'The Streets' and "Dizzee Rascal' were playing a show in New York City that night. These are two of the hottest hip-hop acts in the last ten years. As they are from England, they rarely come to the United States and this was my big chance to see them in person.

This is the story of my attempt to see The Streets and the overwhelming experience that followed.

Act I: Irving Place

Irving Plaza is a gig at the intersection of 15th Avenue and Irving Place, where 'The Streets' were playing that night. The show had sold out a long time ago, so the first part of my plan was to go up to the box office and attempt to buy a ticket.

"Sold-Out!" a muscular bouncer told me as I approached the box office. This was the beginning of my topsy-turvy relationship with this bouncer.

Well, my only other option was to look for someone selling an extra ticket to the show. I was willing to pay up to 50 bucks to get in, so I figured that it wouldnt be difficult at all to find a willing seller. At this point things start to get ugly.

A thirty year old bald British woman walked up to me and asked me if I had any extra tickets. I told her no, and she said she was desperate to get to the show. I told her I was too, and we decided to work together and try to get tickets for ourselves. As we waited for scalpers to hone in on the venue, her boyfriend walked up and told her that "Hurray!" he had gotten one ticket. I asked him if I could see it, so I know what a real ticket looks like and he quickly obliged.

Suddenly, an incredibly shady looking character bumped into me and asked "You looking to buy tickets?"

"Of course," I told him, "how much?"

"Fifty Bucks," came the quick, nervous reply, and it like he's read my mind.

The British woman's boyfriend also tells me he wants one, and the mysterious black man tells us to walk quickly at his side.

"Hurry man, there's police around here." Against all my better instincts, I hurry. Why should selling a ticket be illegal though. I know, certainly, that a New York policeman has better things to do, than to break up a $50 ticket transaction. But I'm desperate to get to the show, and the presence of the British guy assures me that nothing shady is going on.

As we walk quickly down the sidewalk, I hand the man $50 and he hands me a ticket.

"Is this real?" I ask, although what could I have possibly expected him to say in reply.

The boyfriend also gives the guy 50 bucks and the guy, in the first of many signs that I'd been taken practically sprints away. I look down at the ticket that I just spent 50 bucks on, and I'm dissapointed to say that it looks a lot like Kindergarten arts and crafts project by a semi-retarded child. That is to say, it is not very good.

"Hey," I tell the British girl's boyfriend, "I think we got conned."

He then stares at the ticket for what seems like an eternity, and I wonder why he does seem more upset.

"Let's go after that guy!" I suggest.

"Hold on," he says, and then stands there for a few more moments.

"COME ON!"

"Alright," he finally agrees, and he slowly walks in the general direction of the guy that had just taken our money.

Needless to say, we never found the guy, and needless to say this wasn't an accident. As soon as we gave up seeking him out, and as soon as the couple had left, I realize that I had been the victim of a medium sized con. In the history of cons, it didn't compare to "The Sting", but was much more painful than the time we convinced Timmy that they were giving out free laxative at the supermarket.

In hindisght, I realzied, that the couple had convinced me that it was safe to buy from the shady character, and then stopped me from chasing after him when I realized I'd been conned. I found my only consolation in the fact that they would have to split their take three way, and 50/3 dollars wasn't much of a salary to live on.

At this point, I was devistated. I was now the proud owner of an obviously fake ticket and no money. Sulking outside the plaza, I was just trying to stay positive.

In the next episode: my hilarious run-in with Alfonzo, the red-shirted kid, and a surprise twist!

Some Things

Nothing substantial has happened really in the last week, and, sadly, after two weeks of filing and scanning, I have exhausted all the work they had for me for the entire summer. Yep that's right, after two weeks of filing and scanning , I have done everything they had planned for me for the whole summer. It makes me wonder what the big boss was thinking when he accepted me for this internship. Maybe he figured that I only had one hand, or at least was missing some fingers which would explain why he expected filing a moderate stack of papers to take 8 weeks. But no, I came in for an interview, so he would have probably seen my hands.

At one point in the last two weeks he did mention his ambitious plan which involved me scanning and re-filing every single sheet of paper in the companies vast file archive. That certainly would have taken a long while, but he gave that idea up, because after I scanned about 50 documents, the computer's memory overloaded and crashed and the techy in the office had to reformat the hard drive on the computer I was using. It wasn't even my computer, it was Ann's computer who is a lady that works here and was on vacation for the week, so I felt pretty guilty. But not guilty enough to not change her desktop background to a picture of a faded old newspaper headline-"Knight-The Pirate that Breaks all the Rules" when her computer finally sputtered back to life.

I had to use Ann's computer, because I don't have a computer. Some things they forgot to give me when I came to work here were a computer, a desk, and a chair to sit in. I sit on two cardboard boxes which I placed in a corner of the room.

But there is some silver lining to the cumolo-nimbus cloud that is this internship. The other day Bill Clinton came to town and signed a whole mess of books at the local Border's book store. Well I showed up a little late to the signing so I didn't get to meet him, but I got one of the autographed books. It was slightly suspicious how Bill Clinton "left behind a pile of signed books before he left the store", but if I didn't see the forgery take place, it's real to me!

I went to Time Square the other day, with no particular plan, because I heard that fun things happen there. I wasn't dissapointed, because they were carrying the olympic torch through the streets of New York City that night, and I could spectate. But, imagine my surprise when I ran into a girl that I remembered from high school, Emily Henahan (?) and Ally Powell (?). Talk about a coinky-dink!

Also, I went to the Mets game the other night, and that was something!

Files (Part 2): Let the Scanning Begin

It's Thursday, and the big boss in the office approaches me to discuss my accomplishments so far.

"Yep, I've just been filing away, taking pieces of paper and transfering them to these rectangular metal cabinets, sometimes in alphabetical order, depending on my mood," I tell him.

"Mmm hmmm, good good. Glad to see that things are going well so far," and then he begins to smile, as if he has good news. "Next week we're gonna mix things up, and start throwing some of the files away."

He pauses and waits for me to thank him for introducing this exciting new wrinkle to my career. What I'm wondering, though, is why I would be filing papers that are destined for the recycling bin anyway. It's like when the manager of the Boston Red Sox shuffles up the batting order. Sure it gives him something to do with his spare time, but wouldn't have been easier just to toss the whole thing away, without wasting time on the order.

I manage to utter, "Good! Nothing will give me more pleasure than throwing these suckers away."

That's true at least. In the span of a week, I have grown to hate the files. These files are not exciting like the X-files (The X section of the filing cabinet is empty), they are boring, boring, boring! All day I put them in alphabetical order, with a sneaking suspicion that I will be the last human to ever read them. Fox Mulder will not uncover these files and make a Fox TV series about them, because there is really nothing interesting in them. A TV show about these files would be called CSI: Bad Files or Law and Order: Especially Uninteresting File Unit (EUFU). Noone would watch them, and they would be cancelled during week two and be replaced with another sequel to Big Brother, which , let's face it, would actually be an improvement.

What I'm trying to say is that filing is not my favorite thing. Imagine my excitement, then, when I came in on Monday, and they told me about my brand new assignment.

"Today you will be scanning," the boss says, and I am giddy with joy. Anything to stop the filing, even if it is scanning.

They sit me down at a computer and tell me how the scanner works. It's pretty basic really, I put a paper in the scanner, press a button, and save it into the computer's hard drive. Then they present me with a massive stack of papers.

"Here are some papers to get you started."

I begin scanning, and decide that it's actually not so bad. Very little physical exertion required, just clicking a mouse and typing on a keyboard. No more impossible drawers and walking back and forth. But slowly, the scanning starts getting to me. The scanning program takes an eternity between documents, and the computer seems to be constantly teetering between functioning and crashing. Scanning is even more mindless than filing, because I don't even have to think about the alphabet anymore. I am a robot, putting papers in a machine, and then putting them in a pile on the floor. Truth is, I realize, I hate scanning more than I hate filing.

Looking for some purpose, I ask them, "What exactly is the point of all this scanning?"

The big boss tells me, "We are trying to get all of our records on the computers. We are going to scan all of our documents and eventually get rid of the filing cabinets."

I think about this highly illogical plan. All told I would guess that this company has about one million files stored in their filing cabinets. Each sheet of paper takes about thirty seconds to scan, so working at a steady pace, for eight hours a day, it will take me about three years to scan all their documents. Furthermore, the company is generating hundreds of thousands of files a year, so according to my calculations, I will be scanning until I die.

Furthermore, the big boss undermines the logic of his plan when he tells me to "go ahead and file those scanned papers anway...just to be safe".

"Fine," I say, and head to the cabinets, forgoing any attempt to understand corporate logic. I'm just happy not to be scanning.

Files

My name is Tom Knight and I am a filer.

On the first day of my summer internship in New York City they asked me, "Could you file these documents please?".

"Sure," I said. Who was I to turn a task down on my first day? And after all, how bad could it be? I would just be putting papers in little files. In my country we call that easy as pie.

Immediately, it was a bit harder than I had anticipated. The filing cabinets, unfortunately, had been dropped recently when they were moved down the hall. So now, opening them required Herculean Strength, and the coordination of Jesus, and if you haven't read the bible, Jesus was very coordinated.

"Basically, what you do," they told me, "you apply some pressure to the left, just sort of nudge in that direction, then you push down and simaultaneously pull out on the drawer. Also, the secret password is 'open sesame'"

To make matters worse, the drawers were built in such a way that once one drawer was open you couldnt open any of the others. I tried really hard to figure out what jerk engineer decided that this was the best way to build a filing cabinets:

In an office supplies factory far-far away:

Jerk Engineer (looks a lot like Timmy): Hmm, I will design this filing cabinet so that only one drawer can be open at a time.
Sensible Boss (looks like me): Could you please explain why.
Jerk Engineer: Could you please stop standing on my foot?
Sensible Boss (looks down, he is accidenatlly standing on the engineers foot): Oh sorry, I didn't mean to (lifts foot).

And so the sensible boss was distracted and embarassed because Timmy's foot was now broken on account of his incredibly fragile skeletal system, and the engineer got away with his diabolical plan.

Basically what this means is that every time I file a paper I have to heave open the impossible drawer, place the paper in the appropriate file, and then, tears freely flowing, undo my work and close the drawer.

Day 2, they eased my pain, by bringing in some fully functioning cabinets, and then brought the pain back by telling me to move all the files from the old cabinets to the new ones. This took about three hours. I made myself feel better by telling myself that what I was doing was actually not that different from what stock brokers do. The old cabinets were people selling their stocks, and the new cabinets were buying them. My imaginary brokerage firm did a really good job, and all of the stocks were being quickly bought up. These are the pathetic self-deulsion of a professional filer.

To be continued...

Franz Ferdinand

I am in New York City doing an internship, if you're wondering where I went. Yesterday something funny happened to me, so naturally I will write about it in the blog.

After work ended at about 5 o' clock I decided that I wanted to go swimming. Walking around in NYC in a button-down shirt in 90 degree weather made me feel disgusting, like I'd just been covered in Gak (you know, Gak from Nickelodeon?). I got on the subway after one of the workers here at the office told me how to get to a public pool. Well, when I got there it wasn't open, and I was a bit dissapointed, but I was determined to have a good time. I noticed a HUGE line at Virgin Mega Store, so I wandered over to see what pathetic pop act they had come to see.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the crowd had gathered to see none other than "Franz Ferdinand" the hot new band out of Glasgow, that had won me over with their delightful eponymous debut. I couldn't believe it at first, so I asked the guard, "Franz Ferdinand is really playing here??" . "Yes. But you have to buy their cd and go wait in that line." Well I'd already downloaded their cd, and the line was about a few kilometers long, so forget that! I noticed that the stage would be easily visible, and hopefully audible, from the DVD section of the store which did not require a ticket to get into. Pretending to be interested in purchasing the "Friends: Season Finale DVD" (a difficult acting job indeed) I staked out a spot and prepared for some awesomeness.

Let me just say now that I hate Virgin Megastore more than any other store in the world. I hate it more than Best Buy, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Bob's Big ol' Boat Barn. Combined! The jerks at Virgin decided that only people that had bought the CD and waited in line deserved to see the show, so they wandered around the DVD section yelling "IF YOU ARE NOT SHOPPING FOR DVD'S, YOU NEED TO LEAVE THE DVD SECTION". Also, they turned up the background music playing in this part of the store (Jessica Simpson) so that the show would be inaudible. Their methods closely resembled those of an effective anti-terrorism unit. I decided that I would rather hear the band than see them so I left the DVD section and was quickly herded to the second floor by a group of very large security guards.

On the second floor I could hear the show perfectly, but not see the band. Noone was dancing downstairs anyways, but I really wanted to see the band play. I decided it might help my chances if I tried to strike up a friendship with one of the securtiy guards.

"So why won't you jerks let us watch the show?" I asked.

"Fire Hazard," he replied like a robot from "I, Robot".

"So what you're telling me is that there are 500 people down there, crammed into a fairly small space, and as of now they are perfectly safe?"

"Yeah, there's two fire exits."

"And also, you claim that if the rest of us, all 50 of us, go down there, that creates an immediate and deadly fire hazard?"

"Yep."

So, what I did for the rest of the show, I just stared at the guy. I could tell this made him very uncomfortable.

Well the music was good, as expected, and after the show Franz was sticking around for some autographs. Excitedly, naively, I ran outside to join the autograph line.

"You got a ticket?" some jerk asked.

Well, that was it, I had just about had it with all of this. I walked over to where the band would be sitting, and noticed a window that looked directly in on the band. I quickly thought of a plan for my revenge, pulled out a piece of paper and marker from my back pack, and wrote a message for the band:

"I illegally downloaded your album!"

I don't exactly know what I was trying to accomplish with this, but I knocked real loud on the glass, held up the paper to the window, and they looked over. The lead singer laughed and so did the bass player, but it looked like a real angry laugh. I had then imagined that they would pull me inside sign an autograph, and become my friend. But, pretty much, they just turned around and started signing autographs for the jerks with tickets again.

That night, Franz was on Conan, and I decided to watch. As they played, I imagined myself their best friend, waiting backstage to exchange high-fives. Then I opened my eyes and remembered that I was sitting alone in a small one-bedroom apartment in NYC. As despair set in, though, I noticed the paper from earlier that I had posted on my wall as a trophy for my accomplishments, and, again, all was good with the world.

Poker Diary (Part One)

As a regular feature on my blog, I will be doing a hilarious diary about our poker games: the funny things people say and the funny things that happen. First, though, I've got some catch-up to do, giving the history of our game, and reliving the classic moments.

Introduction:

The ol' gang got together for their first game in awhile as a semi-complete entity. The gang is Shannon, Riaz, Timmy, Panda, Mark, Matt, and Tom. Also as far as the young kids go Chris, Andrew, Brendan, Fathi, Joey, and many others sometime play. Occassionally Jack, Adam, and various others join along. We have played poker for about a year, and been through many fun poker moments. All we ever play is no-limit Texas hold 'em with a 20 dollar buy-in, but maybe someday that will change. When we first started playing, we watched "Rounders" and thought it was the coolest thing ever, which I think happens to anyone who starts playing poker these days. We quoted the movie constantly while we played until we realized that this is THE MOST ANNOYING THING EVER. Anyone that quotes "Rounders" while playing poker is not welcome to sit at our table. Rule 1 of poker club is "Don't Quote Rounders". Rule 2 of poker club is "Don't Talk about Poker Club". Rule 3 of poker club is "Don't make stupid jokes about Rules in a tired allusion to Fight Club". Our rules, as the careful reader may realize, are quite contradictary!

An accusation often leved at our group is that we are just being trendy and playing poker like every male between the ages of 15-21 these days is doing. For some reason the World Series of Poker, which is a great event, has become immensely popular recently, attracting band-wagon fans faster than a succesful sports team attracts Erin Sale. But we played before poker got so big! We got our first idea for a game after Ryan Dunlop told us how much fun it was. We played with plastic chips at Mark Burroughs kitchen table. I was the big winner that night. Justin Khalifa, in the first of a string of stinging losses was down 30 dollars for the night.

We got hooked quickly. We started playing weekly games, and they became twice a week games, and eventually started playing every night. It became clear that the addiction was dangerous when, after Jay Paul made us stop playing at his house at about midnight, we drove to Shannon's house to play a quick 5 dollar game.

Poker replaced essentially all other forms of social events. We read poker books, we watched the World Series on TV and dreamed of the day when we could become professional poker players. But who were these Mavericks of poker? These young guns shaking up the world of poker like never before? I'm glad you asked...

Shannon: One of the original members and most dedicated players, Shannon plays a conventional, skillful style of poker. His catchphrase at the table is undoubtedly the noise he makes when an amazing hand unfolds on the table. He exhales real loud. Not much of a catchphrase huh?

Riaz: A true maverick who plays very loose, because "he loves to see flops". Because of his incredibly risky style, Riaz will often loose huge amounts of money, but lately, because of unbelieveable luck, he has made hundreds. His catchphrase is an uncanny impersonation of Dareck Monteron, aka "Panda".

Timmy: The laughing stock of the table. Timmy brings joy to the table with his complete lack of knowledge of the game, and keeps everyone elses spirits high by continually losing his money to them. Timmy's image began to change when he won the first major tournament (more about that later), but he's still always good for a laugh. Catchphrase- MEH!

Panda: The "rock" of the table, Dareck Monteron, known affectionately as "Panda" will only call a rasie if he has two aces in hands. After the hand Q9 got Panda second place in the tournament, it was named after him. Panda doesn't have a catchphrase, because he does not actually speak.

Mark: Mark has taken over the role once occupied by Timmy, loveable loser. Mark has gotten much practice dealing cards as he is constantly defeated in every game of poker he has ever played. Fortunately, he is backed by the deep pockets of his dad, so he is always there ready to lose more money. As he is always performing the functions of a dealer, Mark has adopted the catchphrase "Changing 500".

Matt: One of the "Big Three" Matt is truly dedicated to the game. Upon winning over 100 dollars on a single hand (royal straight), Matt set the record for biggest win on a single hand in the history of the group. I can't remember if Matt has a catchphrase, which means that even if he did it's not that memorable.

Tom: The leader of the gang. Handsome, brilliant, and a master of the game. In a word...Perfect!

That's all for now. Please come back later, for some more poker diary!