Hangover. Yuck. I shouldn’t have kept ordering those double vodka tonics. I shouldn’t have switched to whiskey before I left the club. I mean…maybe I should have, I don’t know. I had a great time. The hangover is the worst part. As I was laying in bed trying to gather the strength to stand, I realized my alarm clock was chirping. Why the hell did I set an alarm for 8am last night? Oh, fuck. I have a dentist’s appointment this morning. Son of a bitch.
Dentistry while hungover is not an activity I can recommend you try anytime soon. To say that it is unpleasant would be an understatement. The best part of the experience was the moment it ended. I told the girl at the front counter that I was under the weather but I had a very busy day ahead of me. She asked where I was headed, and I said “Pennsylvania…Allentown.” She said, “Oh, I went to school there.” It turned out we were a year or two apart in college. I had to suffer through one of those “Did you know…” conversations, where I had to lie about maybe a name or two sounding familiar, but I was a ghost in college after my sophomore year. An apparition. Outside of classes — which, yes, I actually attended — my time was spent getting wasted by myself and writing songs. It was kind of pathetic.
But not pathetic enough to keep me from going back to visit the old haunts every once in a while. After all, what’s a ghost without a haunt, am I right? I liked the city of Allentown when I was there. I liked walking around the neighborhood alone, the farmer’s market and the neighboring cemetery. I liked Salvatore Ruffino’s calzones, trying to find a place to buy beer (there was a wholesaler downtown that didn’t totally suck, but PA liquor laws are completely insane; they are worthy of much more than a throwaway reference in an unrelated blog post), 19th Street, and Wegmans. Fucking Wegmans got me through so many sleepless nights. Without Wegmans I would have starved to death. There was no way I would ever eat at one of the on-campus dining facilities. Hell, there was little chance I would eat at all during my college years. In short, the years I lived in Allentown were weird.
“But the restlessness was handed down / And it’s getting very hard to staaaaaaaaay”
Sorry, I think I just quoted Billy Joel. In a related story, My rainbow flag tattoo should be finished up next week.
Allentown — or at least the parts of it I saw yesterday — hasn’t changed much. The old college campus got some new buildings. I hear there have been a few fancy new additions to the student union, but I did not want to be the old guy wandering through campus stalking young girls so I didn’t leave the vehicle. There are a few new little boutique stores around the perimeter of the campus. There’s a new sushi place near Pistachio’s, in the strip mall that used to contain the King’s supermarket, and they make some pretty good fusion sushi dishes. There was a delicious eggplant tempura roll and something called a “Cowboy Roll,” which consisted of chicken tempura and avocado with a lightly seared beef strip wrapped around the outside of the rice, covered in a japanese mayo-ish sauce. Delicious. Not content to just eat these “fake” sushi rolls all day, I still had to go to Wegmans and get a sandwich for myself. I can’t go to Allentown and not pay tribute to my home away from home away from home. Buffalo style chicken finger sub on white bread, you might just be my Death Row last meal.
From Allentown it was back to Jersey. I had dinner plans with my sister and father. Afterwards I was scheduled to meet with the editor of The Frisky for drinks in the city. I cancelled those plans because, well, I still wasn’t feeling 100%. It turned out she was still hungover as well. I also found out she didn’t get laid after the party. That must suck, being the editor of a popular online magazine and not being able to get laid after your big party. I don’t know anything about that. I write a popular online blog and I get laid all the time. Oh well, there will be another time for us to get together outside of an industry party and chat about writing ideas, online publishing, and the stupid shit on her website.
Dinner was at my favorite sushi place in the area, Harusame in South Orange. When my father started taking me there almost a decade ago it was $19.99 all you can eat with an extensive menu of very fresh, great tasting food. Time has changed the menu and pricing slightly, but at $23.99 for an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord it’s still a great deal. I was very happy to learn that the owner, George, has been spending most of his time at the new Giants Stadium, where he’s serving sushi on most gamedays.
Even though I’d already eaten a few pieces of sushi and a Wegmans sub for lunch, I opted for the AYCE menu. I started with a slew of appetizers, including salmon teriyaki, harumaki, gyoza and age tofu (which used to be better when they served less pieces of tofu swimming in that great brown sauce). I had two pieces of white tuna and an American Dream roll (cooked salmon, spicy crab, cucumber topped w/ tempura flakes and sweet & spicy sauce), a TNT roll (spicy crunchy white tuna & spicy shrimp topped with hot chili sauce) and a volcano roll (avocado, cucumber & tempura flakes topped with spicy crab). It was all very good, and I was left very full. My sister had a Kiren roll (I think that’s how it’s spelled) and my father…he manages to eat more than I think is humanly possible. It’s nauseating. So that’s my little plug for Harusame. I love that place.
Ken and KT came over and we chilled while they tried to get some work done. It was a bit of a low-key night (I can’t blackout every night, you know). We watched Nowhere and The Last House On The Left. Neither they nor my sister had ever seen a Greg Araki movie, and I think it left an impression. The horror movie…whatever. The torture of the little girl didn’t last nearly long enough for me to get into it. Also, why’s it called The Last House On The Left? I don’t think they ever explained that. Or I wasn’t paying attention.
Tomorrow will be another busy day. I have to look at a record collection in West Orange for my bosses, then I’m meeting up with Sam and Lindsey, and then there will be a huge Halloween party in another neighboring town, where I will undoubtedly run into a bunch of people I went to high school with. In other words, it will turn into the worst night of my life. Maybe I’ll get ossified drunk and become a shiny happy person for a few hours.
No fucking Gail Simmons sightings. No fucking Gail Simmons, period. You think she shaves? I’m pretty sure she knows I exist. I tweeted the other day (at Gail) that she had been eerily quiet on Twitter ever since I’ve arrived on the East Coast, and then less than fifteen minutes later she tweeted. Not at me, at the world. About her stupid TV show. Which sucks, by the way. She’s not looking hot enough in those outfits. She should come out wearing pasties on her nipples and my face on her crotch. Now that would make for some good television. Now give me a job, Bravo TV!
