What’s Wrong With Me (Thumbs Up Edition)

The silliest thing happened earlier today.  I found myself in Manhattan (SoHo to be exact), and all out of sorts.  I was tired.  I was sweaty.  I had just spent nearly two hours in a waiting room only to be told I needed to reschedule the appointment.  I also sort of suspected my pink eye was coming back.  These factors paired with the fact that I have no idea what I’m doing with life–I began to cry on the sidewalk.  Or, maybe more like bawl.

I stood against a building, out of the way of pedestrians.  I watched the traffic pass on Bleecker Street.  I wiped tears off of my cheeks and wondered if anyone would stop and inquire.  For a few moments no one did.  I wasn’t all that surprised.  I don’t think I would’ve stopped and asked me what my deal was.  We’re a solitary, earbud wearing bunch these days.  But then, someone did stop: A middle-aged Asian woman who didn’t speak English.  She got really close to my red, swollen face and said the same word over and over again.  Turned out she wasn’t concerned about me at all.  She was just trying to get directions to the M22 bus.  Which is one of the few New York buses that I have had the chance to ride.  But even so, I couldn’t help her, so she walked off.

After that encounter I really lost it.  I was still crying, only now I was laughing, too.  Basically–I was hysterical.  But I was also pretty close to pulling myself together and carrying on with my day.  Before I had really finished that task, though, another person took the time to acknowledge me.  This time the person spoke English.  He pushed a stroller, wore a hat, and asked, “Are you okay?”  He didn’t slow, but at the same time, he seemed sincere.  And also, he seemed to be Jim Gaffigan. 

I’m fairly certain it was him.  It’s really too fitting for it not to have been.  He is, after all, the stand-up comedian behind the album “King Baby”.  So that’s cool.  Except I totally blew it.  How can a crying, defeated woman possibly make things more embarrassing for herself?  By telling Jim Gaffigan, “I’m good,” and emphasizing that by giving him…a thumbs up. 

Yeah.  As soon as my thumb did it I was like, really?  Why did you just do that?  Thumbs up are awkward even when you don’t have snot running down your face.  It’s a terrible, outdated gesture that no one should make.  If I’d made it to the middle-aged Asian woman it would have (maybe) been acceptable.  But not to Jim Gaffigan.  I swear: he wasn’t embarrassed by my crying–it was the thumbs up that convinced him I was a lost cause.

Pietro Bembo: Secure in both his masculinity and his spirituality?

I take pride in the strange search terms that are often used to find my blog.  I want to stencil them on a wall or stitch them into a throw pillow, and then use them as physical proof that I am, in fact, strange.  Maybe I don’t need to prove that.  It’s kind of a strange impulse to feel the need to prove one’s strangeness–in the same way that some people go to extreme lengths to prove their manhood by buying big fancy cars or shooting big fancy guns. 

Anyway, someone typed “how money is a red cardinal bird worth”, and ended up here.  First of all, I like the omission of the word “much”.  And I also like that someone is trying to sell a “red cardinal bird”–so specific!  Had they just said “cardinal”, then someone may have thought they were trying to sell the female variety which is more of a brownish color, OR someone may have thought they were thinking of auctioning off a senior ecclesiastical official in the Catholic Church.  Personally, I think birds are way more attuned to God than oh, say, Pietro Bembo over here.  And therefore, an all-around better investment. 

Cardinals aside, the only other noteworthy search terms of late have been “vagina” (still) and “Gary Busey”.  I guess I also take pride in being inane.

Gary Busey and other studs

It’d stand to reason (and I’d really prefer) to have “Man In The Mirror”,”Rock With You”  or another MJ song stuck in my head, but instead, for intermittent days on end, I’ve had the 1988 Poison classic “Nothin’ But A Good Time” in there.   

I think it started after Bret Michaels nearly died while performing at the Tony Awards a month ago.  I catch myself humming the chorus over and over.  Then I’ll stop, take a moment to figure out what song that is, realize what song that is, and rack my brain over why it has grabbed a song by that walking infection of a man and refuses to let go.  Eventually I give up and decide that I’ll stop pressing the issue and just ignore it–praying that this won’t be the time that the red bumps form.

Keeping with the graphic imagery, earlier tonight I had an exciting revelation about Gary Busey.  Conan had Kevin Connolly of “Entourage” (a show I don’t really watch) as a guest.  Connolly recounted the time when Busey guest starred and proceeded to chase him around the set, catch him, hold him down, and tickle him.  After the interview I realized that Busey and one of the contestants on this season of “The Bachelorette” (a show I make a sad, conscious effort to watch) share similar features.  Not just any contestant, but my favorite contestant–Michael.  He got kicked off already, but he’s a break dancing instructor who apparently lives, like, two minutes from my apartment.  Now that Jillian has sent him home it is clear to me that I need to get my hands on his address, sit on the curb across from his door, hold a red rose boutonniere, and hum the choruses of 80s hair band tunes to myself until he notices me.  It doesn’t matter that he looks like a younger version of an infamous Hollywood mad man–all that matters is that his apartment is potentially within walking distance to mine so that I never have to stay the night after we bang.  I mean…stay the night after we watch Lethal Weapon and floss our teeth.  Because that’s what people who look like this have no other choice but to do:

A few more years, a few more kilos--it'll be effin uncanny.

Adventures with radical bird folk

June 13th was the day of a significant occasion, yet one that I was unaware of until the last minute.  I came dangerously close to missing it, which would have been a tragedy because the occasion was…  National Pigeon Day. 

And no, it’s not just an arbitrary day for pigeon lovers to come together and make noise about feeding regulations and building spikes that prevent nesting (though there was that).  June 13th commemorates the death of Cher Ami, a homing pigeon that saved 200 lives while serving with the 77th Division of the U.S. Army in France during World War I.

Pigeons are fierce, man.  So fierce that there are falcon nests installed atop the Tappan Zee Bridge to scare away the winged things and the rust and ruin inducing droppings they bring.  Come on.  That’s something.  Can your poop bring down a feet of engineering?

Anyway.  It really was a cool thing and I’ve been meaning to mention it and I’ve especially been meaning to share a couple photos I took at the Central Park event.  It was like I had been a lonely religious zealot for years and suddenly I had found a group as fanatic as I.  Or maybe much more fanatic…

The life of the party (and the subject of my dreams, now and forever).

UNTIL the hen showed up.

Requiring and reveling in all the attention.

From humans and canines alike. That whore.

As much as I felt a kinship to the people at the event, part of me didn’t know if my breed of pigeon loving was the same as theirs.  It’s like, I’m perfectly content admiring and contemplating them from a park bench, but I’m not sure that’s enough if I truly want to be accepted into the National Pigeon Day group. 

My love is more passive, I guess.  I like carrying a tote bag with a pink pigeon screened on its side.  I like reading books about them. And of course singing along to lyrics that mention them (Ben Folds’ “Annie Waits”: Annie sees her dreams / Friday bingo, pigeons in the park; Tom Petty’s “Mary Jane’s Last Dance”: There’s pigeons down in market square / she’s standing in her underwear).

So, in conclusion, pigeons make me happy, I love them, but I’ve yet to wave an angry poster as their advocate at City Hall or boycott a supermarket that tries to keep them from calling the “O” or “A” in their neon sign home.  We’ll see.

By the way–there’s totally a link to my pictures here, on the organization/holiday’s blog, which brings me way more joy than is normal or healthy (qualities no one should strive for, anyway).