The Gaslight Anthem.

Saw them last night. Awesome show. We showed up at the end of the second bands set. Just in time for Gaslight. Good decision. But get this:

So, I get in line. They are checking ID's. It was a 16 and over show, but there was also a bar. So the girl in front of me is drunk, and I guess she wasn't 21. So the doorman wouldn't let her in. He moves her aside, asks for my ID, which states my birthday as 6/24/88, and also gives the will not be 21 until 6/24/09 in red letters at the bottom. He gives me an over 21 bracelet anyway. What? Yes. He didn't even really check my ID, he just took it in his hand and then gave it back. Drinks were obviously outrageously expensive, but I felt like I had to buy them, because I could.

Adam was there too. My legs were sore at the end, from stomping, and tapping for so long. And my wallet was lighter. Worth it. Great time.

Today could be nice.

Wonderfully nice day outside isn't it? I went outside today to bring my laundry to the place that cleans it for me, and I wore shorts and a tee shirt. I admit it's a bit early for that, as I was kind of cold. But it wasn't a very cold cold, just the kind of cold that made me re-think shorts and a tee shirt.

The reason for this attire was that I was cleaning. Spring cleaning, I guess. Again, I may be a bit early. But earlier I had been dressed in pants, which would have been a better choice for going outside. I changed though, for the cleaning, I didn't want to get my pants all messed up. They were the only pair I had left, the other ones were being washed.

Also, I'm going out tonight. With a girl. And I really feel like I should wear pants, and they should be clean (clean is a relative term at this point, I tend to only wear two pairs of pants. I have a Dark pair, and a light pair, and I wear one per wash cycle. It can be up to two weeks at a time. So by clean I really mean, no highly visible dirtyness. I have a third pair of pants should this become the case, emergency pants). And today, mostly due to the fact that I am indeed going out tonight with a girl, right, leaving the apartment with no real intentions of taking anyone home tonight, I decided I should clean. Just in case. Right? Good thinking James. So I start to clean. I started, oddly enough, with the fridge. Why? Well, not because it would very obviously be the last place said girl that may/may not ever set foot in my apartment would look, but because it really freaking needed it. Seriously. There was stuff in there, containers containing things that I just wasn't able to tell what it was anymore. And also stuff that should just be gotten rid of. Like, pickels. Very old pickels. Not really doing any harm. Not cleary gone bad. But just probably not safe to put other good food in the same room with. They are now thrown out.

I then moved to the bathroom. I live with a bathroom used by three guys, all the time. It probably needs to be cleaned more than it is, but whatever, it's clean now. It really does look nice. It really takes other people to make you want to clean like that, you know, cause ok, well, if there is a bit of hair somewhere, well, it's your hair, no bother. BUT! Enter a third party, and suddenly it's not just your hair, to them, it's someone elses hair. And that just wont do.

Next I mopped the floors, after sweeping, of course. There is a shine to them now. Now, I live in a basement, and not to make excuses, but due to living in a basement there are certain things that even though they may be clean, they just don't look clean. My floor is one of those things. It shines now, over all the scuff marks.

Next was my bedroom. This is where it gets tricky. See, taking someone to your place of living, for the first time, you obviously try to make it out to be more than it is, hence the cleaning. But, I just kind of lost it when it came to the bedroom. Probably the most important room. Probably the room I should have started with, when I still had all that cleaning motivation. But by this point it was gone. What came out was half assed. I AM a failry clean person, just not in my room. There is a system a chaos that works for me, it may not be a good system, but it is a system none the less. Cleaning creates problems, as I instantly forget where I put things, because they are no longer on the floor. This, to me, is real chaos. So, I packed up all the dirty laundry, as I previously explained, and that seemed to do a lot already. I felt pretty good about it. I took the rest and shoved it in my suitcase (the thing I still live out of, just to show commitment to my lack of commitment). This did a great deal more for the room, the floor was clearly there. I, again, felt pretty good about myself. Then I swept, a little. Fucking hell, my floor is white. I'd say I spent the most amount of time stacking my loads of books, nicely, neatly, and organized...ly. I thought about how I was really going to show off my nerdyness. My stacks of epic collections of entire comicbook series(There are a lot of them) and all my nice books, filling my big brown box, that hold all the things I like to keep in it (if you do not have a box like this, I would suggest getting one. It is really great having a box to put things in at all times). I surveyed the situation: Floor mostly swept, clean clothes in a mountain almost, but not quite, hiding the suitcase that seperated them from the floor. Dirty clothes being cleaned by the nice mexican woman, that works for the nice Asain American man. Books, stacked. Bed, clearish. Sheets changed recently enough. I thought this was good enough. This is where it gets tricky. I COULD really go for it, and make my room look really nice. I COULD. But, I feel like that would just be lying. As, after this point, being the first time this person may or may not see my room, if it were REALLY clean, it would be the last time she would see it like that. She would come into this under the impression that I had a clean room. Make whatever assumptions one would make after meeting someone with a clean room, and then have her world fall to pieces should she ever see it again, in the controlled chaos almost system that it normally is. And I wouldn't want that to happen. So, instead, I stopped cleaning. It now looks clean, like, normal clean. Like the everyday clean that someone lives in who isnt extremely messy. So, next time, should it be typically messy, it will just seem like possily a bad day, like, "ok, this could use a bit of a clean. But given the state it was in last time, it looks like it's getting to the point where he would clean it soon, had he not been out spending money on me." This is of course not true, but I am ok with that lie. Honesty is a tricky thing, and not always good. It's good, but so is lying sometimes. Dont deny it. So in this case, not really know what I am getting into, I choose the half lie. Happy medium? Yes.

This weekend.

Sean left early this morning for a weekend in Maine. The thing is, Sean generally wakes me up around 6PM. He comes home from work, and the noise and such wakes me up. Today that did not happen. I woke up around 6:30 on my own, but knowing that I was still home alone I decided to just lay there. 10PM rolls around, I wake up again. Oops. Second time this week that has happened. I was almost late for work, which starts at 11:30PM. I don't even know how that is possible.

My friend Karl was spinning at a club in Greenpoint tonight, I had intended to go. My bad.

On the plus side. This morning after work, and after breakfast at Duke, I went to Dean and Deluca (I pass it on my way to the subway) and decided to treat myself. Normally all I buy there is a coffee, and a corn muffin (seriously, great fucking corn muffins). Today I bought some nice bread, a tomato, some crackers, and some brie. Tonight, at some point the tomato will meet a red onion, and bathe in vinegar and I will enjoy it with some bread. Crackers and brie will come later.

Also, just finished reading Good Omens, fantastic book. Light, quick, very funny, and extremely well put together. That's all, if you like books about the apocalypse, but are sick of all the dreadful seriousness, pick it up. As long as you like very dark humor.

Every five, ten fifteen miles.

Last time I was home in Maine I was talking with my friend Mike about my zombie story. I'd just recently lost my story due to computer death. So I was talking about starting it over, and my basic ideas. The idea of course is to set it in Maine. I feel that the only place I really know well enough to write about as a real place in anything more than just a short story. It would really need to feel authentic, and I know my area in Maine like the back of my hand. Even so of the further reaching places I could describe through news casts and whatnot. BUT. Mike kind of crushed my dreams. Maine is kind of Zombie resistant. Population alone would greatly slow the escalation of chaos. "So, what, is there a Zombie every ten miles or something? Big deal. What 4 people die? 3 of them from natural causes."

Thinking about this, I began to realize that Maine would be almost zombie proof. Few people, few small clustered areas. Not to mention 2 out of every 3 people own, and are proficient with shotguns. Those of you who have lived in Maine know this well. People are tough, and don't take shit. Most people are hunters, waiting around for hours for animals that are trying to avoid them. You know those small critters that like to eat gardens and stuff, ground hogs, and the like. People camp out all day with a lawn chair, a beer, some potato chips, and shotguns just to shoot them. Imagine if the animals just came to them willingly. A zombie attack would really just be a field day. 5 or 6 people piled into the back of pick up trucks, fully armed with weapons, beer, and cigarettes just hunting. Things that can, or need to die just don't live that long.

I could fake it I guess. Chaos in Rockland Maine. Maybe 20 people would freak out, for a day or so, held up in some store, boarding the windows, only to find the next day twelve rednecks knocking on the door and all the zombies dealt with.

Maybe I'm too confident in a Mainer's ability to kill something, but I'm really having doubts about the carnage that would ensue were zombies to attack Midcoast Maine.

Stairs.

I recently went to a friends apartment for the first time. Her name is Sarahe, don't try. She lives alone, in a one bedroom in the lower east side. Needless to say I'm jealous. She lives on the top floor, the 6th floor, with no elevator. Her stairs are steep, almost as steep as the ones I had growing up in Maine. Six floors worth of stairs. It was incredible. I've been making a habit out of taking the stairs lately, 4 floors up to Jesse's, or even just at work. I work overnight, nothing is ever rushed, and I can take the stairs. But wow, living with that, would be incredible. I am not in shape, plain and simple. After Six floors of stairs, I was winded, my legs ached, and I deffinetly enjoyed claiming one of the two chairs she has in her place. Before you laugh, the stairs were taken multiple times, on numerous beer runs and what not. I'm not THAT out of shape. But Jesus, I would love that kind of work out everyday, because it's not really working out. I can't get behind working out, I get it, I just don't get it. But fuck, you just make those stairs a part of your life, and you're fucking set.

Somebody poisoned the water hole!

A hot day spent bailing hay, and other manly activities, such as driving tractors, and not wearing sun screen in order to get the perfect shade of red for your farmers tan. These activities should always be followed by the praise of women who were probably watching you do hard work, at least when they were not preparing fresh squeezed lemonade to refresh your laboring self on the most scorching of summer days. The time comes to wipe the sweat from your forehead, and stand in silence, possibly in the shade a tall tree that you have yet to cut down, and admire the extremely well done remains of your hard work, sipping fresh squeezed lemonade(this is also a good time to do such activities as adjusting your hat, or rolling up the sleeves of your t-shirt to show off the newly acquired farmers tan). These are all important things to know about working hard. Also, it's important to have short hair, that is either gray, or obviously going gray. But perhaps the most important thing is what to eat afterward. What could possibly compliment all these things so well? The answer is obvious to anyone who knows a thing or two about a thing or two, it's a cucumber sandwich. A simple man likes simple things.

What to do.
Start with bread, white, of course. A real man worries not for health, and he is already a stunning trophy of health, due to all his hard work. Slather on Mayonnaise, both sides of the bread. This is known as protective layer technique. A nice layer a Mayo on any sandwich will prevent the delicious juices of whatever may be between the bread from making it soggy(Note: In most cases, it should be a dead animal that occupies the space between the slices of starch. The cucumber sandwich is one of few exceptions. See also, Cheese sandwich). Next comes the cucumber, unpeeled, sliced thin, and layered generously across the bread, maybe stacked as high as three slices. The next step is the most important, even more then the armor coating of mayo, more important than the cucumber itself, salt and pepper. Apply as needed, just don't be a wuss about it. All that is left now, is to enjoy. The best way to do this would be by cutting it in half, diagonally of course, but slightly off center, as to leave sturdy corners to grip the sandwich by. Consume.

Some, more experienced cucumber sandwich makers may use this opportunity to impress the ladies. This is where the layering of the mayo becomes important. If you wish the show off your extensive knowledge off all things delicious, not that it's needed, everyone already knows, but you may want to splash some balsamic vinegar on before closing the bread. Just to say, "Hey, I like fancy food too, baby." A nice way to end this activity is to put on a flannel shirt, as the sun has gone down, grab a beer, and tell tourists that you "Can't get there from here" when they ask you for directions.

Youre in my web now.

Things I may someday miss about working overnight, should the day ever come that I can become a normal daytime functioning adult again: Absofuckinglutely nothing. Except maybe getting paid to read, check facebook, blog, steal magazines, eat really good food for free, and spending as much time as possible on youtube. 

Today I went to work at 9am, until 1pm, so some British lady could tell me, for four hours, in about 400 different ways, my job description. Over and over. They called this training. Being that I am now a functioning vampire, being anywhere at 9AM is really a struggle. Asking me to do anything during the day time is much like trying to wake the dead.  I think the sun has actually started to hurt. And now, being that my job is really good about everything, and everything they do makes sense, I am back at work for the second time today, coming in at 11:30PM until 7:30 in the morning. You are jealous, I know.

Also, I guess that guy from that movie, you know the one, is a real twat. 

Maybe I should become a concert musician.