Party Notes from a West Village Walkup

EV took time off his busy Latin American art sale schedule to revel with other yogi partygoers and antagonize tie-wearing guests. His dancing bear beverage gift, born from "gnarled vines grown in adverse conditions,” was an appropriate metaphor for his against-all-odds rise to greatness.

HC was kind enough to procure a coppertop bottle of "handmade" Texan vodka. VLA "knew" Texas and "knew" vodka but never the two in combination.

Despite the jeers and controversy surrounding "The Quiz" AT and LM proved their love by finally prevailing in sudden death. The dynamic duo of SC and KW might have pulled it out had they remembered that "half-moon" was favored to "plow."

AWA and BC's gifts coincidentally coincided: one bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Label with a set of "perfectly cubed" rubber ice cube trays. Upon viewing the bottle of Blue Label ST appropriately commented that KH "SURE has friends in this town!"

JG, dressed in a beautifully vintaged over jeans dress, came with "desert island treasure" tucked away in a magic marked manila envelope.

VLA's post-graduate level mastery of the English language prevented KH from understanding many of her quick-worded, quick-witted comments. Apparently, she and SC are now finished with law school.

An initially almost unrecognizable, shaky handed, trench coat clad VLO brought the corkscrew stemmed orange boutonniere of KH’s dreams. A few de-petaling hugs later SC and VLA helped him repin; this time with the pointy pin side up.

JR dazzled the kitchen crowd with his razor sharp mental math, dividing KH's 360 second time limit into minutes. 6 minutes.

Despite MA’s giddier than usual state, he failed to force KH into the XXXL sized gift depicting him as cured child bathing in brine.

SL and KH failed at making each other feel guilty for being "unavailable" during SL's looooong gardening leave.

MC to GT in regards to GT's upcoming vegetarian bbq: "You can't win friends with salad."

After spilling wine on the soon-to-be thrown out host sheets J kindly left his calling card and credit card beneath the "highly sought after" three dimensional Mario Brothers refrigerator magnets. KH WANTS THOSE MAGNETS.

After consuming one (or two) whole bottles of Knob Creek, CN lost, then quickly found his "perfectly fitting" jet black Agnes B. suit jacket.

JG took KH's "moistness wanted" feedback and delivered in SPADES. The cake was SO moist that some attendees mistook it for birthday pudding.

Though MC was about 2 minutes late on the cake delivery her AMAZING rendering gift more than made up for it.

KH was coerced into re-posing for what is apparently the most hilarious/ambiguous photo of him on the internet. Except this time it was while holding a raspberry blue FLA-VOR-ICE instead of a Rocket Popsicle.

VV was KH's many-years-ago massage therapist, not masseuse. Massage therapists are not masseuses.

"A" astounded and allured the crowd with her voluminous head of crimped hair and psychedelic colored tights.

With a little non-attendee help KH successfully guilted DA into coming by with her new beau.

SV seemed preoccupied with his then weeklong shopping preparation for an upcoming country western themed wedding. KH was surprised that he had never heard of a bolo tie.

MS, B, EC, and others aided in the process of de-walling the apartment's paint encrusted transatlantic telegraph wire.

In the Cocteau Twins discography AW pointed to "Blue Bell Knoll" as the album that defined their sound. KH was disappointed for never having heard this album but then acquired it the following day.

CF kindly complimented KH's personable "stranger in a strange land" demeanor before inquiring his availability for future party jobs.

LJ's ghost within a child's mind within an artist's mind will be framed and prominently displayed in short order.

*KH had a great 30th and is very grateful for all his FANTASTIC friends.

The Secret Lives of Restaurant Food Delivery Tippers

Tipping protocol is a constant subject of conversation, debate, and controversy in New York. Parking lot attendant extortion, unsolicited "help" hailing yellow taxis, doorman ties to the mob, the massage parlor "invisible hand," gypsy cab negotiations (and whether this term is offensive to the gypsy population), dedicated sommelier tip lines, Christmas gifts for the highrise building family you never knew you had, and the bartender binary bill conundrum are a few of the many gratuity topics on the mind of today's metropolitan citizen. Most of the notes I've read on the topic are generalized guides, outlining the appropriate instances when prescribed roundabout percentages are owed to certain recognized service providers. But with the recent rise of purveyor instituted tip jars -- accompanied by gratuity induced prices engineered to maximize coinage returned from paper bill purchases -- it's become increasingly important to develop a more granular and robust thought process for gauging these subjective matters of social protocol.

Friends commonly ask me for opinions on appropriate tipping procedure expecting a singular hard-and-fast rule in reply. Very few tipping situations are as uniform and static as the posers of this question would like to think. And many, like the one I’ve outlined below, involve multiple considerations in order to tabulate the proper outcome. To give you an idea I’ve outlined a cursory “thought process” examination of the high-frequency, multi-variable tipping scenario of restaurant food delivery.

>Long a Floor / Short a Cap
Importance: High

The blind application of a flat tipping percentage will at times result in a payment shortfall or overage. On the low side, remote patrons who are consistent placers of near minimum charge meal orders should be tipping more than 15-20%. On the high side, the toro sashimi takeout party you and your ten closest friends decide to have shouldn’t require the full 20% on top of an already pricey bill. A floor/cap of $2/$10 for a reasonable payload carryable by one delivery person should override an otherwise 15-20% of bill baseline rule-of-thumb.

>Distance
Importance: High

Requesting delivery to the outskirts of a maximum territory boundary prevents workers from churning out additional orders. Reward distance. Conversely, don't feel guilty offering up a low side tip on deliveries from restaurants located within shouting distance of your front stoop.

>The Multitask
Importance: High

Reward delivery journeys that appear dedicated to your order alone. If the person shows up with multiple bags it’s likely that the oven-to-door time has been extended against your interests (though this is not always the case).

>Weather
Importance: High

Though braving the elements is technically part of the job description, an additional tip is appropriate to compensate for safer/slower delivery speeds, especially if the payload arrives promptly. This booster is countered partly by the fact that during bad weather there is likely more orders to deliver, thus more tips.

Sidenote: The opposite theory applies in regards to bad weather when considering tips for taxis. Yellow cabs generally operate "in stride" during inclimate weather. And since there is usually no shortage of riders I feel less compelled to bump up gratuities.

>Tonnage
Importance: Moderate

Unwieldy pizza boxes and heavy orders of cheap brothy soba deserve more credit than a lightweight bento box or portable dish of Thai protein. Reward tonnage.

>Stair Stipend
Importance: Low

Climbing two flights of stairs is easier than four. Delivery to the door of my fifth floor walkup apartment deserves a small scaling consideration. Reward height.

Yoga Pop: Volume 6

Designed to play for the duration of a 75 minute vinyasa practice.

Song. Artist. Album
(Order is important / Time crops noted)

1. Everywhere All At One Time. Cloud Cult. The Meaning of 8
2. A Heart-Warming and Beautiful Flower Will Eventually Wither Away and Become Dirt. Susumu Yokota. Love or Die
3. Tesselation, Formerly Plateau One. Mahogany. Connectivity!
4. Please Sing My Spring Reverb - B.Fleishmann Mix. Mum. Please Smile My Noise Bleed
5. Abbesses. Birdy Nam Nam. Birdy Nam Nam (6:13)
6. Ready Set Glow. Atlas Sound. Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel
7. We Own The Sky. M83. Saturdays = Youth
8. Neon Rider. Junior Boys. Last Exit
9. Send and Receive. Tycho. Past Is Prologue
10. Alienation. Lali Puna. Faking The Books
11. Ambulance For The Ambiance. Broken Social Scene. Bee Hives
12. Hazeldub. Alpha. Come From Heaven
13. I Know You Are But What Am I?. Mogwai. Happy Songs For Happy People
14. Aircastles. Our Sleepless Forest. Our Sleepless Forest
15. Last Orders. Richard Hawley. Cole's Corner

Music for Any Predilection

Modern day music trawlers would have a hard time subsisting without sites like Allmusic.com. Artist genealogy, discographies, influences, genre trees, and historical billboard chart inclusions are a few of the things you’ll find at this online music equivalent to The Library of Congress. But there’s one database attribute that makes this site unique. An attribute that puts this virtual library on my short list of internet obsessions: MOODS.

Each band in Allmusic's mammoth encyclopedia is assigned with as many moods from this list as are applicable to their musical sound. One can use mood as either a search characteristic or an umbrella designation to view critically acclaimed bands / albums. First, the thoroughness and accuracy of this database is mindboggling. Second, my hat goes off to this mysterious crew of professional mood-assigners; most likely the same people who review the music (right?). I don’t know who you are but know there’s at least one person out there who cares about you deeply. Third, as much as I enjoy thinking about music this way it’s pretty difficult not to snicker at the absurd precision implicated by some of these moods. I can't imagine that there are many people out there thinking “Boy, I’m really in the mood for an album that's uncompromising yet wry.” Other favorite ridiculous moods from their list include: clinical, earnest, sardonic, stately, ramshackle, austere, naïve, and brittle. Fourth, I do so wish that my music collection (read: my life) could be organized and sorted by mood. Let’s all hope ITunes and the many cultural collators to come co-opt this database methodology allowing users to apply MULTIPLE genres, moods, and (who knows what!) attributes to single pieces of file-away media.

Party Notes from a Park Slope Townhouse

SK didn’t mind sporting birthday jangles at first but later decided to turn off the blinking kissy lips broach after one guest had a fit of epilepsy.

KH strained to locate the apiary but when he found it AW was quite pleased. Little did either of them know that KH’s intended destination was actually the aviary.

PC’s serendipitous pear, strawberry, Guinness, and coffee cocktail brought only jeers and confused looks from the creatively unappreciative audience.

MB opined on the cocktail party uselessness of his chemistry PHD but then was nowhere to be found when PC and KH tried to recall the spicy food chemical “capsaicin.” (KH should have invited PM).

SK and KH were secretly happy they forgot to wear cowboy shirts.

T, L, A, and J all sported glossy “linen” nail polish applied in preparation for their recent trip to Key West. J wasted no time in “perversely” biting her’s off, thread by thread.

JS and KS became regrettably entangled in TW’s ten minute “6 degrees of Adelaide separation” tale as they were hurriedly leaving the party. Mysteriously, KS and TW were connected via the lead singer of The Coors.

SD attempted to figure out JD’s “physicality” type but could only conjure up celebrity comparisons that were lost on him and the crowd.

MO’s quandary over “finding a boyfriend” seemed odd given that her male specifications of “tall, thin, and having a sense of humor” encompassed about 85% of the population.

LT’s embarrassedly blushed cheeks answered KH’s question of whether she had ever bathed nude or would consider it. Surprisingly, LT and LT2 never knew that they lived blocks from a ferry that would take them to such a beach.

The Quinoa Challenge

There was plenty of time to share stories during our chilly Sunday stroll from the toucan inhabited cemetery spires of Greenwood Cemetery towards the DELICIOUS clutches of Franny’s Potato Croquettes. As EB and I crossed the magical and ever moving border between South Slope and Park Slope I decided to share a tale of vain admittance. A few weekends back a group of us sat in a Williamsburg brunchery pondering the age old question of sweet versus savory. The inconsequentiality of my decision gave birth to a pitiful plan of personal praise. Since everything appeared equally appetizing I would order the Quinoa Crusted Chicken simply so that the waitress would recognize how smart and cultured I was to know its proper pronunciation. The sound of EB’s incredulous laughter interrupted my story. “A LOT of people know how to pronounce that word,” she jokingly commented. Though my memory of the waitress’s blank stare affirmed her assertion I staunchly stood my ground and disagreed. In order to accurately gauge my friend’s estimation of quinoa awareness I retorted with this hypothetical scenario: “If you stood on the corner 5th avenue and 57th street in Manhattan on a Saturday afternoon and asked 100 people to read a sentence with the word 'quinoa' in it, how many would pronounce it correctly?”

In a suprisingly confident voice she answered "50."

Do you agree that 50 or more people would successfully pronounce quinoa in the context outlined above? Well, if you do and would like to wager a consequential deed or asset on its outcome please contact me with your proposal. If I find your proposal suitable we’ll begin working out the logistics for administering The Quinoa Challenge.

Souvlaki Trailer

I don't bicycle to work very much during the winter. The problem is that I haven’t worked out a system to shield my shower wet hair from the cold while both protecting my skull and not looking more disheveled than usual upon arrival. But despite all my undeniable wimpyness I decided a brisk February morning ride would do my not-looking-forward to work despondency some good.

{Don’t forget your helmet or the two bike lock keys. Stop ignoring the garbage and just take it downstairs; you can replace the bag liner the next time you throw something away. Don’t close the door until after you tap your pockets to check if you took your apartment keys, wallet, and phone. Ok, close the door. Turn the deadbolt key counterclockwise one rotation until you hear the click. Click. Heel toe down sixty stairs, hairpin left onto the humidity warped linoleum towards the rat infested garbage canned backyard, and don’t get startled when the door hinge makes that weird brakey noise. Undo the ten pound chain lock first and be careful as you drag it through the already damaged front tire spokes. Wrap the chain four times around the head tube without getting your hands greasy or choking the brake cables. Watch out for all the mysterious broken glass!}

There are only so many ways to get from Manhattan’s east single digits to its east 40s. That morning I decided to take the longer but less treacherous bike-pathed route: Westward via tree-lined 9th Street, up 6th Avenue (not “Avenue of the Americas”), back east across 46th Street (a.k.a. The Little Brazil that couldn’t), then up Vanderbilt Avenue. As I approached the company sponsored bike rack a member of our crack security team, acting as if he’s never seen me before, began reciting his lines as I preemptively patted myself down in search of i.d. “This bike rack is ONLY for employees” he says in a mandatorily stern voice. Before I have the chance to become annoyed the “I’m only doing my job and though it’s boring and unfulfilling I don’t mind because it’s enough to support my family” look in his eyes forces each prickly inclination in my head to stand down. After locking up the bike I replace my helmet with my work hat but not before giving my now matted down hair a two handed tussle in front of the window’s glared reflection. I prove myself again to the indoor security guard before stepping onto the escalator where I decide to uncharacteristically stand rather than climb. A tiny but earned reward for this morning’s harrowing journey.

Preparing to leave my desk, I am quickly reminded that the tattered Helly Hansen fleece which was inadequate on my ride to work will be even more inadequate in this evening’s windy chill. After completing my P.M. security guard serenade I set off for my semi-annual dentist and doctor checkups.

Most visitors to this city would wrongly assume that delivery trucks, yellow taxicabs, or the unwieldy multi-sectioned MTA buses sit on top of Manhattan’s street traffic hierarchy. Anyone who’s lived here long enough or has ridden a bicycle once during rush hour knows that it’s the hardened bike messengers who are the lions of this kingdom. With their grizzled glares peering through duct taped vintage eyeglasses they zoom past soon-to-turn-green avenue lights atop their sanded down fixed geared skeleton frames. If you’ve never noticed them before you will now. But while messengers are our fearless generals it’s the endless platoons of food delivery bikers who are the true unsung heroes of this war. The speed, recklessness, and grit that characterize messenger bike culture is mirrored by the endurance, temperament, and humility of New York’s food delivery cavalcade.

With blood extraction bandages on both arms I cruised past Broadway’s Carpet Row, bumped along the cobblestones of Union Square West, then hooked a left onto 14th street. After parting throngs of NYU students at the pedestrian owned intersection of Broadway and 14th a food delivery biker, previously heading north on 4th Avenue, turned right and led me and another commuter in a mini-peloton towards The East River. It was at that point when my vividly rare New York moment began. The delivery payload sat within a black strapped dirty red padded bag, lined with space-aged shiny aluminum insulation. The bag was carelessly dropped unfastened in a stripped black wire basket atop the rear wheel of his ravaged late 90s model mountain bike. His unwavering swerve was accompanied by the metallic clank of sloppily affixed chain lock against frame. As we passed 2th Avenue the wind flapped open his bag and I awoke from my daze to the appetizing smells of Chicken Souvlaki! Under normal delicious food whiffing circumstances it would have hardly registered. But against the backdrop of MTA bus exhaust, those darn sewer smells, and piles of pizza store garbage it was a nothing short of a sensory revelation. My nostrils flared and relaxed as the wind continued to blow the bag open and shut. After parting ways upon his delivery destination I walked my bike the rest of the way home feeling happy to live in New York.

Hotel Bathroom Mysteries of Our Generation

I just discovered this weekend that some hotel bathroom mirrors have built-in televisions (that's me watching cartoons while I brushed my teeth). Since when did society demand such technology? The only significant step forward in bathroom engineering I know of are those elliptical shower rods that provide a roomier bathing experience. That and fancier shower heads. Speaking of bathroom curiosities, whatever happened to those weird timed red heating lamp lights classy hotels like The Holiday Inn used to have?

One more thing.

It's funny how corporations can all of sudden become "environmentally responsible" when coincidentally, they save money by doing so. Changing the towels and linens everyday is undoubtedly excessive but I get a bit bothered when hotels take the moral high ground by pointing out this "bottom line benefit" in disguise. I'd be shocked if someone could prove that these environmentally intentioned savings on laundry soap and housekeeping salary hours were translating into anything but higher company profits.

Not Having the Time of Your Life. And You’ve Never Felt This Way Before. I Swear.

A periodic portion of my real life job (or my “adult job” as friends like to call it) involves traveling to Universities in the Northeast to give job interviews. These thirty minute trials of courage are a freeform mix of hard and soft, allowing sage questioners like me to say and ask practically anything. Don’t get the wrong idea; I take my white collar decider-of-fates role quite seriously. Not only because I want to admire the people I see at the water cooler but also since the ultimate successes and failures of my chosen hires are a direct reflection on my own tastes and values.

Given that one important prerequisite of my job is a penchant for all things analytical it’s common during the interview to pose a question whose answer requires some combination of math, spatial reasoning, and outright common sense. This is the part students fear most. Our hypercompetitive society buries kids $250k into debt to have a shot at this singular not-until-you-answer-this-riddle moment. Imagine The Showcase Showdown, Final Jeopardy, and Double Dare Obstacle Course all rolled into one. Except what’s on the line here isn’t a tricked-out RV, trip to Paris, or cash windfall; it’s what you believe to be your future. And it’s not that we don’t care about all the other things they’ve accomplished but if two other students who are also trilingual, kite surfing national champions, Fulbright scholars, and graduating three years early get this question right, who do you think we’ll be logically obliged to choose?

“How many degrees separate the hour and minute hand on an analog clock reading 3:15?”
“If you painted the surface of a cube made up by 1000 smaller cubes, how many of the smaller cubes would have paint on them?”
“Which investment is most attractive: one that doubles in two years, triples in three years, or quadruples in four years?”
“If there’s an equal chance of rain or sunshine, what are the odds of three consecutive days of rain over the course of five days?”

Depending on how your mind works these questions might sound really difficult, really simple, or just really silly. Exercises like these are one of the prospecting tools used by financial companies, consulting firms, and political think tanks to sieve the not-so apparent analytical dynamos from the sea of “fools gold” straight-A bookworms.

The motivation for this note was to share a question of this sort that’s fascinated me since the day I heard it. “What are the odds of a once in a lifetime event happening once in your life?” First, I must express my condolences to the students who’ve been asked this in an interview. Questions that are infinitely more simplistic and discrete consistently confound the smartest of students. This one is tough. To technically answer this problem you’d have to read up on Simeon-Denis Poisson, the 18th century French mathematician whose work focused on the modeling of improbable events. I didn’t quite get that far in my studies (or was sick that day) and have chosen never to seek out how one would answer such an interesting theoretical query.

Romantic notions of fate and destiny are routinely suppressed by the clockwork nature of my analytical psyche. A psyche that rarely yields at the opportunity to expose unpopular truths or debase myth, superstition, and hindsight bias. This mental framework has blessed/cursed me to see the world as a cold, chaotic set of fluttering stereo equalizer-like probability distributions where strange coincidences are simply tail improbabilities bound to occur during the course of our lives. The “once in a lifetime” conundrum sheds a rare and strange light on the seesaw that balances my conception of hope vs. uncertainty. I’m thankful that my unrelenting analytical pitchfork is willing to leave this notion answer-less and wonder-full.

Clawing for Premium Brand Toiletry Kits

Dear junior advertising associate,

This photo, taken at a Staten Island roller skating rink, reflects a fascinatingly dense maze of important social, political, and economic concepts. Of the academic, artistic, commercial, and journalistic applications this photo invites I will suggest just one. Your firm will pitch a new ad campaign to Coach targeting ironically conscious but fashionably confused affluent females ages 22 to 32. Companies are always looking for ways to penetrate markets outside their core demographic and if presented correctly, this campaign's oblique sensibility will attract both "savvy" label mavens and "savvy" label maven haters. Keep in mind that Coach's market value has been halved during the last six months. What this means for you is that suits in Coach's boardroom who are under the gun for new ways to grow profits will be more receptive than usual to ideas that radically alter their sacrosanct brand.

Congratulations in advance on your promotion.

Sincerely,
M.M.