Winging It (Part Two)

(Blogger has decided I babble too much in my posts - just like in real life! - so I had to do this post in two parts. Check out the archives for the first part of Myopic and Roger Mexico's Excellent Adventure in New York.)

We moved the car uptown, and again found a spot located near where we would be for the evening. I don't know what we did to appease the parking gods, but I'm not complaining. After walking around Midtown for a few minutes, we decided to have dinner at Ishihama, a Japanese restaurant that seemed to be reasonably priced. I was starving at this point, since I'd only had a hot dog from a street vendor all day. I darted off to the bathroom to change clothes, telling Roger Mexico to order me a Diet Coke. When I returned, my drink was waiting for me and Roger Mexico was grinning slightly to himself. "I ordered us an appetizer."

"OK. You gonna tell me what it is?" Obviously, it wasn't any of the sushi, since Roger Mexico is a vegetarian. After a few minutes of me questioning him, he finally told me.

"I ordered the hijiki. It's seaweed. I ordered cooked seaweed."

After my mind stopped retching, envisioning green slimy salt-water smelling stuff on a plate, I agreed that I would least try it. (Roger Mexico seems to have a talent for making me try food I would otherwise not consider. He's introduced me to tofu, Thai food, and every fake meat product under the sun. He even made me eat a mushroom on my pizza the other night.) And after the server brought it to the table, I hesitantly sampled it. It wasn't green or slimy. It was fabulous. The only thing that distracted me from devouring it was the arrival of the miso soup, which was quite yummy as well.

I ended up ordering the yaki udon (pan fried noodles with chicken and vegetables), which was equally good. I decided to forgo the chopsticks, though. My chopstick dexterity leaves something to be desired, and at one point I ended up dropping a bite of hijiki into my soup. Roger Mexico had never braved chopsticks, so I passed on my somewhat shoddy knowledge until the waitress brought the Ugly Americans utensils they could handle. I ended up only being able to finish half of my meal, and left the restaurant with a happy little "I ♥ NY" bag full of Japanese noodles for the next day's lunch.

After dinner, we walked up to Times Square (which must be viewed at night to get the proper effect), and after staring at the pretty lights murmuring "Wow" like a couple of slack-jawed yokels, we took the subway back down to SoHo for the Add N to (X) show at the Knitting Factory.

I'll admit, I wasn't too thrilled about the show going in. I'd heard of the band before, and I'd allegedly listened to one of their albums at Roger Mexico's apartment months ago, but I couldn't recall anything about them. (To be honest, most of the music I listen to at Roger Mexico's is stuff I've never heard. Listening to music with him is like Electronic Music 101. Before the show started, I was corrected on my pronunciation of both "Moog" and "Theramin." I never said I knew everything. "That's why I keep you around," I remarked.) To his credit, the band rocked. Not that I'm going to run out and buy the entire Add N to (X) catalog, but I was pleasantly surprised. The only letdown was I missed the encore of Iggy Pop's "I Wanna Be Your Dog" because I was in search of the bathroom.

We hopped the subway back to Downtime, which as far as I can tell houses music performance space during the day. Some of the floors had been converted into an industrial/goth club (Albion/Batcave, from the two so-named clubs that were no longer in existence). Three floors, three dance floors with different formats. Whoo hoo! The main dance floor was a bit too techno-y for our tastes (and the dancers onstage were laughably bad. Ooh, look! Goth vogueing!) The second room seemed to be a living shrine to Andrew Eldritch, since every song was either by Sisters of Mercy or a band that sounded just like them. Don't get me wrong. I like that music, but in small doses. I'm all about the variety thing.

So was Roger Mexico, apparently. He suggested we go check out the "Not Sisters of Mercy Room." Good choice. The music in the third room varied from Frontline Assembly to 80's alternative (Alphaville! Adam Ant!) to Lords of Acid, so we decided to stay there. I lost him on the dance floor during a Depeche Mode song, at which point I realized there were about 10 tall guys with little or no hair on the dance floor, all wearing black shirts. And they all danced like Roger Mexico. I gave up and started dancing on my own. I would have been out there all night if it had been up to me, but Roger Mexico yanked me off the dance floor at 2:15 am. The day had finally caught up with him, and we still had a long drive ahead of us.

The radio selections were equally as bad on the way home, so we just gave up and turned the damn thing off. We were both excited about the great day we'd had, but exhaustion was sitting in the back seat, poking us in the back of our heads. "Hey, at least I'm not hallucinating yet," Roger Mexico remarked, and launched into a story of a practically non-stop drive from Pittsburgh to Denver he made when he was 16 where the lines on the road criss-crossed in front of him. Great. How reassuring. Thanks, dude.

(Actually I can't say anything, since I used to hallucinate police cars and hitchhikers on a regular basis when I drove home exhausted from 1470 West in Dayton.)

We had to pay a toll to get back into Pennsylvania, and I decided that all of the tolls we'd been paying were actually fees to get out of New Jersey. We'd never had to pay to get in, but we paid tolls to enter the Holland Tunnel and to get home. Coincidence? I think not.

We'd considered going back into the city the next day, but we ended up sleeping late. After sending off an apologetic email to Crew (who'd tried his best to track us down, but was unable to reach us since we'd ditched the scary hotel and I didn't have my cel), we went to WalMart to buy a replacement taillight bulb for Roger Mexico's car, and stopped off for hot fudge sundaes at the local ice cream place. Big exciting times, people.

And now thanks to Blogger eating my post a billion times (thank you, copy function, for saving what I wrote) and trying to watch The Mists of Avalon on TNT, it's nearly 2:00 am, and the alarm is set to go off at 5:30. My plane isn't scheduled to depart until 2:25 pm, but Roger Mexico has to take me back to Philly and still manage to be at work by 9:00 am. I feel bad that he has to get up early and drive me so far, but unfortunately there's no other option.

I don't want to sleep. It means my vacation is over.

It'll be good to get home, though. I miss all my friends back in Cincinnati. (And their cats.) I miss my car. I miss LaRosa's pizza. And in 16 hours or so, I'll be on my way to Zappagirl's for coffee and Bring It On therapy.

Guess I should attempt to get a few hours of sleep. After I repack my luggage. Argh.

Aw, crap. Now TNT is showing Excalibur. I'm never going to get to sleep. Good thing there's still some coffee left.