If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em

Nah.
I think it's more like, "If you can't join 'em, beat 'em." One word: networking. That's how it begins. You pick your field of interest, and try to get attention from the people who are connected in said field. Then you bust your ass doing what you can to get them to invite you in, let you hang out, intern, and eventually, hire you, pay you, respect you?!

If after doing your best at this method, giving it all you got, sacrificing a bit of dignity, and still no cigar?! you probably will grow cynical and think, Fuck 'em. Fuck 'em in the ear; fuck 'em in the other ear. And then, you'll find yourself at "Beat 'Em." I'm going to do my own thing, I don't care what they think, I'm better.

Do not ask, like Ty in Clueless "If I'm better than him, then how come I'm not with him?" Because your social networkers, (Cher and Di) who tried to hook you up and failed, will not know what to tell you. They'll just smile awkwardly and rub your back as you cry.

On Why the Downtrodden Economy Inspires More Game Playing

Not the Jewel kind. Well, maybe; I wouldn't know at this particular stage of my life. If you wanted to really mess me up, you should have gotten to me sooner! (John Cusack in the rain.)

Why we like to play games. Playing games is fun.
Obviously, it's cheap. Your friends all come over. You drink a bunch--or not. Sometimes you sip tea and the little brother is invited. (Not the sexy little brother that you used to text...or pretend we're playing madlibs here..damn that was a little while ago...it's an interesting concept, to have "archives"). No, the little brother who doesn't drink or smoke and is damn straight precocious, like before it could ever be confused with "promiscuous."

(aside)Sometimes the plug falls out of the wall...when you're on your macbook in the dark...and you can't see shit. How come that's not an idiom?

Each way has its perks. The problem with drinking while game playing is that you end up playing drinking games instead of game games...you know, just while we're at it, why not a round of Kings, I mean we got the cards, we got the beer. Which is fine, but totally sends the night hurtling in the wrong direction.

My friend once said "games are for college kids with poor social skills." I always agreed with that. It's either alcohol, or games. The drinks take care of the awkwardness. Or the games take care of the awkwardness. You don't really need to combine the two.

Other misuses of game night:
Those nights when the boys wanna play poker so they can smoke like a hundred cigarettes 'til the stubs pile up higher in the ash-tray than the stacks on the table are ever gonna get, affecting dialects to bust balls in between those silent sharp shifty-eyed points-of-no-return, but there's no "No, I thought you said you all right, spida'" to shoot in the foot thereby solidifying the power structure, just a bunch of attention-starved girls scooting up around the table all like, lemme see your hand, let's play teams, before twirling away at the next distraction.

My favorite games: Charades, Apples to Apples, Taboo, Pictionary

Charades is a ball. Challenging, intellectually stimulating, as each player comes up with difficult, multi-interpretable clues. Vary depending on the crowd. When I played with liberal-arts kids my senior year of college, one of the clues was "Justice," and the kid who got it acted out the French electronica group.

Apples to Apples--very cute because you have to get inside the heads of each of the players, thinking, what would he associate with "ridiculous?" "First love," "Bozo the clown," "George W. Bush," or "gorgonzola cheese?"

Taboo--Like charades, with words...and restrictions on which words you can use to describe the word you're trying to get your partner to guess. Say the word is "Stretch Marks;" in describing these, you cannot say "pregnant," "stomach," "baby," "birth," or "scar."

Pictionary--charades with drawing! It's interesting to find out what different minds will configure out of your hasty sketches. A rorsharch test, in a sense.

Have fun, never again struggle to make conversation, and if you like, save more dollars by cutting out alcohol!

Soprano's Meat Market

I fell for the gimmick.



How does one take pictures without a)looking like an asshole b) getting hit by a car?


One dog goes one way, one dog goes the other way...



Where da cold cuts 'n shit?

YURPS...Tap that Ass!

As I wrote in my post "New Orleans Own: 9-5ers, the Next Generation" it's no secret there's no jobs here. Trying to find a mate? The lack of a job-market precludes the existence of yuppies, so who the hell is going to treat you to a fancy blueberry mojito at St. Joe's? You best stick to the child molesters who frequent Mae's. (Ok, there are well-dressed, affluent-looking young men at St. Joe's, but I'm not attracted to them because duh, I grew up here, and they're always with girls that are dressed better than me, and I'd rather drink dollar high lifes anyway!) But instead of shaking our fists in the air and screaming like Karen from Goodfellas, my man is in the can again, he's gotta go to rehab, what the fuck but I'm so attracted to him (maybe I'm confusing situations? I don't know. Mafia hottie vs. Joe Deadbeat?) we ought to tap into the potential of this recent (Post-K) sociological addition to the dating pool: YURPS, or Young Urban Rebuilding Professionals. You better get one 'cuz they're going fast; who knows how long they'll even stick around? Post-collegiate drifters just slumming it like the hippies before they went to law school? Here to tap into our raw materials just as we might want to tap into what they've got? And then back to New England and the Mid-Atlantic? There are articles speculating these young studs' staying power.

Do you care about your city being rebuilt? Do you want a boy who believes in idealism, both the vague ideas and the concrete realities, like, your body?  How hot is a Jew boy with man's hands?  I mean, nobody can resist that.  

Right now I would like to publicly apply for the position of dating/sex columnist for the Times-Picayune.  I am so much smarter than Carrie Bradshaw.  

I think I've said too much here.  Check out the website, join the facebook group to find out about networking events.  And keep your eyes peeled.  You could even tell the difference with your eyes closed...

Food Stamps Anybody?

Let's have a food stamp party, just like the gumbo party on K-ville! But no alcohol, illegal drugs, or tobacco products...

The other day I drove down to the Convention Center to apply for food stamps. The Convention Center is humongous! What is inside there? Surely they don't need that much space. It ought to have been renovated into apartments for Katrina refugees and displaced residents of the Magnolia housing projects.

When I arrived, they sent me down an industrial-looking side street to the back of the building, which of course reminded me of that scene in Goodfellas when Jimmy Conway coaxes Karen down a scary back alley--"G'ahead" "Here?" "No, down there, keep going...G'ahead"--ostensibly for a bunch of designer dresses.

But really, the entire operation was legit. I stood in line, filled out my application, took my interview, and at the end, received my card. While filling out my application, a Latino guy asked me if I spoke Spanish, and I talked him through every question! So the way I view my experience is as a chain of mutual aid and exchanges between the government and its citizens, in which every middle man is an important contender: Gustav handed me a shit sandwich, but New Orleans rewarded me with food stamps, to buy more shit sandwiches...but no! New Orleans helped me, I helped a fellow citizen. I paid for public parking in the CBD, which helps New Orleans and prevented me from losing my car as usual and probably heaping on more parking tickets to the pile. And while I was down there, I stopped by City Hall to register to vote, which helps the federal government, and me, (hopefully) as a citizen!

What a beautiful day.

"Men Resting"

Drive-by-Blogger posted this comment yesterday:

"I was driving on down St. Charles and there was a street dept. crew with warning signs saying "Men Resting".
As I drove by, I could hear the roar of snores."

!!!!!

Just like in Goodfellas, when Tommy DeVito is telling that story at the restaurant:

"What's really funny, is, at the fucking bank job away at Secaucus, I'm in the middle of the fucking weeds laying down, he comes over, says, 'What are you doing?' I said, 'I'm resting.' 'Here you're resting? I'm gonna fucking beat you in a box.' I said, 'I'm resting, I know I'm resting. I'm resting, I'm resting..."