I like funny stuff. Matt likes funny stuff. I'm pretty sure most people like funny stuff unless they're feeling sad or are dead... So when the opportunity to get free tickets to an improv theatre arose, so did our hopes of seeing funny things. I think it would have raised most hopes of seeing most funny things, but I digress.
See, for this improv theatre, the free tickets were on Sunday. We recieved the good news on Saturday, and both of us (of sound mind) decided that we would trek to 26th street to see the improv show "Asssscat" by the Upright Citizens Brigade. This was very good news, because they are a very funny group and do very funny things... So funny that they named their show "Asssscat", a name that people don't normally associate with being funny. They just associate that with pain and odd shaped cats. Or my brother.
We decided to show up to get the free tickets early, because it's probably in high demand (we don't know; more on that soon) and we wanted to get in for free. Money is tight around here, and if you've been here you know that me and Matt don't frivously spend money on things like Cola and popcorn. So the free-er the better.
The free tickets get handed out starting at 8:15, and we decided that getting there at 7:30 would give us opportune time to get a place in line and then the humor would commence. Funny humor. Godammit, funny funny humor.
It being Sunday, the day of Suns, the 1,4,5 trains were closed by our apartment. Thankfully, the 2 was open.
It's starting to drizzle.
I'm nervous in this city most of the time because I'm very unfamiliar with areas that aren't Wall Street or Times Square or the Bronx Zoo (but for different reasons. Panda's need love too). So taking a train to 26th anytime at night was going to make me a tic nervous. Then we found out the 1 was closed (which was our best bet) and that made me even a little more nervous than usual.
It's beginning to drizzle harder as we make our way from the 1 station to the 2 station. Neither of us frequent the 2, so Matt consults a map to make sure where we're going is where we need to be. The train pulls up to the station, we get in and sit down. The train begins to move when Matt just nonchalantly says, "I have no idea where we're going."
Oh. That's cool. I like not knowing where I'm going. I'm an adventurer. Wait, no I'm not.
Now, I trust in Matt when it comes to directions, so I figure he'll figure out a way to get us where we need to be. He probably would have, too, if the 2 train hadn't turned into an express train on account of the weekend. So instead of stopping at 28th, it skipped all stops twain us and 40th, save for 14th. We decided to undershoot instead of overshoot, and got off there. We would take another train to 28th and just walk a few blocks. Cool.
We walk to the Uptown 4 train and stood in line with a potporri of races, genders and sizes for about six hours until the train that wasn't in service took off. And then another train came and boarded passengers. It was pretty crowded and smelly, Matt and I standing very close to the doors because there was no place to sit or stand otherwise. Matt is looking very nervous. He begins to say something. Me being hard of hearing and standing in a train filled with the noisiest quiet people ever, I didn't hear him. He finally raised his volume a tad (because, children, a tad was all it needed to be raised) and I got the message.
"Hey, Michael, check it out. There's a naked guy."
"Where?"
Matt shut up. Why did he do that? Because the naked guy stepped into our car, directly between me and Matt. Or Matt and I.
I should specify. He wasn't quite naked. That would involve being totally nude. He was wearing shades, a fanny pack, white black tennis shoes, brown socks, and white boxer briefs. I know you're saying now, "Michael, that isn't so bad. He's not completley naked." It was fucking raining out. And he was wet, right next to us, wet, and wearing white WHITE FUCKING WHITE boxer briefs. The train doors shut, the air conditing begins to cool, and Matt and I are scared.
The naked man begins to talk.
"Hey, isn't anyone wondering why (indisitinct)? Because I was (indistinct) with a beach ball. Hey. Old people (indistinct) funny. There are some (indistinct) puppy dog liver bracelets."
The train doors slide open once again, and Matt and I fight through a wave of people, orcs, birds and other unsavory charachters to exit the car. We climb the first set of stairs to the street, when it becomes very apparent. It's not drizzling anymore. It was like God was peeing through a strainer after having sixty hundred thousand beers. That's even a real number, but that's how hard it was raining.
"You wanna go back?" Says Matt.
"Nah." I say.
"There's a Duane Reade right there. We can get an umbrella."
"Nah," I say, "Let's just wait for the rain to die up a little."
Hurrah. The rain finally dies up a little.
"We can get an umbrella now," Matt says.
"Nah," Captain Nah says, "It won't start up again."
Four blocks later, it starts up again.
We get to 26th street and begin looking street adresses. We're going in the right direction for our destination, so the little rain doesn't bother us so much. We decide to cross the street because that is the side the venue will be on, and we hear a pleasent mexican family through the paper thin walls of their complex.
"What you doing Marai? Ay! Los dios!" Slapping sounds ensue, Matt and I quicken our pace.
We reach the end of 26th street, which ends in a very friends one way street that is closed to pedestrian traffic. Still, no Asssscat. The rain really begins to pick up and we decide to stand under a bus stop. We stand for about ten minutes trying fervently decide what to do now that we're safe from the rain. Shall we continue on or go home?
An unmarked truck pulls up, with a bald man in a red and black checkered flannel shirt sitting in the front seat. He has a clipboard and is looking at Matt and I as he randomly checks things off without consulting where he is on the paper.
Matt turns to me and says, "I think I'd rather be wet right now."
We exit the bus stop into the rain. I yell something along the lines of "Oh, jizz." And we being to make our way back to the Subway Station on 28th.
Not much happened from here to there, except uh... there was a cute little mexican kid carrying a trashbag for his parents and he kept getting ahead and his dad kept calling him back. Oh, and we both got thourgouhly soaked. Very soaked. I was more than 90% water.
We get to the Downtown 6 sub-stop, right as the train pulls away. We look for a place to sit while the next train makes it's way over, and I pick a very hospitable wooden bench.
"Wanna have a sit-down?" I ask Matt.
"Not next to those needles, thank you." He says.
Oh, I failed to notice the pile of hypodermic needles on the ground. Whatev. We'll stand. But, it would be a good idea to get to the front of the train, because we think this one lets out in our building. We being walking south to where the front of the train will stop, when the train begins to pull in.
The doors open, and Matt and I decide to try to make it into the car, one up from the one in front of us. We begin to walk faster.
"Matt, these doors won't stay open forever," I helpfully chide. Matt is behind me at this point. The next thing I know is I feel someone shoving me into the train car in front of me. I slip inside and grab the bar, and turn around. Matt isn't there. The doors close.
I look through the next car, and see Matt sitting there, juggling pens. No, he wasn't juggling pens, but was content. You get the picture.
"SOMETIMES A MANS LIFE ISN'T FORTUANTE CAUSE YOU KNOW I'M POOR YOU SHOULD GIVE TO ME PLEASE BECAUSE MY LIFE IS SO NOT GOOD AND PLEASE BE GENEROUS LIKE THIS MAN AND DONATE SOME MONEY," a voice chimes behind me. Oh, a begger. I like begger's, usually because when I encounter them on the street with Matt, he gives them a cigarette and everyone's day is better.
Oh, fuck, Matt can't give him a cigarette. He's in the other car. The homeless guy jaunts up to me, cause I look rich or something, and starts asking me for money. I don't have money. I have some corn back at the aparment, but he's sure as hell not coming over. So, I tell him.
"Hey, I don't have money, but guess who has cigarettes? My friend in the next car!"
"OH GODBLESSS! GODBLESSSS!"
He walks over to the in-train door, and goes through to Matt's compartment. I don't know what happened to him.
There's a cute girl sitting near the door, kind of looking at me because I'm soaking we and chicks just dig 2 things: Moist towelettes and Soaking Michael's. "Rough night," I smoothly say as she fingers her... can of mace.
At the next stop I jump into Matt's compartment and call him a piece of shit. We continue.
The train conducter decides to tell everyone to get out because something or other he was hard to understand godammit, so we do.
We don't quite know where we are... Surprise, surprise. Sp Matt asks this rent-a-cop who is guarding the City Hall, and he says, "Ey', Broadway is straight ahead." Still confused, we wander off.
Wait, what is that in the distance? What is that beacon of light that effortlessley cuts through the air, penetrating the technological tounge of every nerd in the City? The J&R! The video game store! Hurrah! Our North Star on this very wet and rainy evening.
In relation to the J&R, we find our way home. The two kings of New York make it back to the apartment safe and sound. I'm soaked, Matt has dried off. It was actually a pleasent evening, but I was creating my own humidity.
My pants didn't dry off because they were my bleach stained stain-defenders, that once a liquid penetrates the teflon layer, it becomes slightly trapped, unable to leave. So, I'm sitting in Matt's room. He's playing Lumines. I'm wearing sweatpants and my Dabney shirt. What are you wearing? Rehtorical.
Anyway, that was just quite an evening.
Mal
See, for this improv theatre, the free tickets were on Sunday. We recieved the good news on Saturday, and both of us (of sound mind) decided that we would trek to 26th street to see the improv show "Asssscat" by the Upright Citizens Brigade. This was very good news, because they are a very funny group and do very funny things... So funny that they named their show "Asssscat", a name that people don't normally associate with being funny. They just associate that with pain and odd shaped cats. Or my brother.
We decided to show up to get the free tickets early, because it's probably in high demand (we don't know; more on that soon) and we wanted to get in for free. Money is tight around here, and if you've been here you know that me and Matt don't frivously spend money on things like Cola and popcorn. So the free-er the better.
The free tickets get handed out starting at 8:15, and we decided that getting there at 7:30 would give us opportune time to get a place in line and then the humor would commence. Funny humor. Godammit, funny funny humor.
It being Sunday, the day of Suns, the 1,4,5 trains were closed by our apartment. Thankfully, the 2 was open.
It's starting to drizzle.
I'm nervous in this city most of the time because I'm very unfamiliar with areas that aren't Wall Street or Times Square or the Bronx Zoo (but for different reasons. Panda's need love too). So taking a train to 26th anytime at night was going to make me a tic nervous. Then we found out the 1 was closed (which was our best bet) and that made me even a little more nervous than usual.
It's beginning to drizzle harder as we make our way from the 1 station to the 2 station. Neither of us frequent the 2, so Matt consults a map to make sure where we're going is where we need to be. The train pulls up to the station, we get in and sit down. The train begins to move when Matt just nonchalantly says, "I have no idea where we're going."
Oh. That's cool. I like not knowing where I'm going. I'm an adventurer. Wait, no I'm not.
Now, I trust in Matt when it comes to directions, so I figure he'll figure out a way to get us where we need to be. He probably would have, too, if the 2 train hadn't turned into an express train on account of the weekend. So instead of stopping at 28th, it skipped all stops twain us and 40th, save for 14th. We decided to undershoot instead of overshoot, and got off there. We would take another train to 28th and just walk a few blocks. Cool.
We walk to the Uptown 4 train and stood in line with a potporri of races, genders and sizes for about six hours until the train that wasn't in service took off. And then another train came and boarded passengers. It was pretty crowded and smelly, Matt and I standing very close to the doors because there was no place to sit or stand otherwise. Matt is looking very nervous. He begins to say something. Me being hard of hearing and standing in a train filled with the noisiest quiet people ever, I didn't hear him. He finally raised his volume a tad (because, children, a tad was all it needed to be raised) and I got the message.
"Hey, Michael, check it out. There's a naked guy."
"Where?"
Matt shut up. Why did he do that? Because the naked guy stepped into our car, directly between me and Matt. Or Matt and I.
I should specify. He wasn't quite naked. That would involve being totally nude. He was wearing shades, a fanny pack, white black tennis shoes, brown socks, and white boxer briefs. I know you're saying now, "Michael, that isn't so bad. He's not completley naked." It was fucking raining out. And he was wet, right next to us, wet, and wearing white WHITE FUCKING WHITE boxer briefs. The train doors shut, the air conditing begins to cool, and Matt and I are scared.
The naked man begins to talk.
"Hey, isn't anyone wondering why (indisitinct)? Because I was (indistinct) with a beach ball. Hey. Old people (indistinct) funny. There are some (indistinct) puppy dog liver bracelets."
The train doors slide open once again, and Matt and I fight through a wave of people, orcs, birds and other unsavory charachters to exit the car. We climb the first set of stairs to the street, when it becomes very apparent. It's not drizzling anymore. It was like God was peeing through a strainer after having sixty hundred thousand beers. That's even a real number, but that's how hard it was raining.
"You wanna go back?" Says Matt.
"Nah." I say.
"There's a Duane Reade right there. We can get an umbrella."
"Nah," I say, "Let's just wait for the rain to die up a little."
Hurrah. The rain finally dies up a little.
"We can get an umbrella now," Matt says.
"Nah," Captain Nah says, "It won't start up again."
Four blocks later, it starts up again.
We get to 26th street and begin looking street adresses. We're going in the right direction for our destination, so the little rain doesn't bother us so much. We decide to cross the street because that is the side the venue will be on, and we hear a pleasent mexican family through the paper thin walls of their complex.
"What you doing Marai? Ay! Los dios!" Slapping sounds ensue, Matt and I quicken our pace.
We reach the end of 26th street, which ends in a very friends one way street that is closed to pedestrian traffic. Still, no Asssscat. The rain really begins to pick up and we decide to stand under a bus stop. We stand for about ten minutes trying fervently decide what to do now that we're safe from the rain. Shall we continue on or go home?
An unmarked truck pulls up, with a bald man in a red and black checkered flannel shirt sitting in the front seat. He has a clipboard and is looking at Matt and I as he randomly checks things off without consulting where he is on the paper.
Matt turns to me and says, "I think I'd rather be wet right now."
We exit the bus stop into the rain. I yell something along the lines of "Oh, jizz." And we being to make our way back to the Subway Station on 28th.
Not much happened from here to there, except uh... there was a cute little mexican kid carrying a trashbag for his parents and he kept getting ahead and his dad kept calling him back. Oh, and we both got thourgouhly soaked. Very soaked. I was more than 90% water.
We get to the Downtown 6 sub-stop, right as the train pulls away. We look for a place to sit while the next train makes it's way over, and I pick a very hospitable wooden bench.
"Wanna have a sit-down?" I ask Matt.
"Not next to those needles, thank you." He says.
Oh, I failed to notice the pile of hypodermic needles on the ground. Whatev. We'll stand. But, it would be a good idea to get to the front of the train, because we think this one lets out in our building. We being walking south to where the front of the train will stop, when the train begins to pull in.
The doors open, and Matt and I decide to try to make it into the car, one up from the one in front of us. We begin to walk faster.
"Matt, these doors won't stay open forever," I helpfully chide. Matt is behind me at this point. The next thing I know is I feel someone shoving me into the train car in front of me. I slip inside and grab the bar, and turn around. Matt isn't there. The doors close.
I look through the next car, and see Matt sitting there, juggling pens. No, he wasn't juggling pens, but was content. You get the picture.
"SOMETIMES A MANS LIFE ISN'T FORTUANTE CAUSE YOU KNOW I'M POOR YOU SHOULD GIVE TO ME PLEASE BECAUSE MY LIFE IS SO NOT GOOD AND PLEASE BE GENEROUS LIKE THIS MAN AND DONATE SOME MONEY," a voice chimes behind me. Oh, a begger. I like begger's, usually because when I encounter them on the street with Matt, he gives them a cigarette and everyone's day is better.
Oh, fuck, Matt can't give him a cigarette. He's in the other car. The homeless guy jaunts up to me, cause I look rich or something, and starts asking me for money. I don't have money. I have some corn back at the aparment, but he's sure as hell not coming over. So, I tell him.
"Hey, I don't have money, but guess who has cigarettes? My friend in the next car!"
"OH GODBLESSS! GODBLESSSS!"
He walks over to the in-train door, and goes through to Matt's compartment. I don't know what happened to him.
There's a cute girl sitting near the door, kind of looking at me because I'm soaking we and chicks just dig 2 things: Moist towelettes and Soaking Michael's. "Rough night," I smoothly say as she fingers her... can of mace.
At the next stop I jump into Matt's compartment and call him a piece of shit. We continue.
The train conducter decides to tell everyone to get out because something or other he was hard to understand godammit, so we do.
We don't quite know where we are... Surprise, surprise. Sp Matt asks this rent-a-cop who is guarding the City Hall, and he says, "Ey', Broadway is straight ahead." Still confused, we wander off.
Wait, what is that in the distance? What is that beacon of light that effortlessley cuts through the air, penetrating the technological tounge of every nerd in the City? The J&R! The video game store! Hurrah! Our North Star on this very wet and rainy evening.
In relation to the J&R, we find our way home. The two kings of New York make it back to the apartment safe and sound. I'm soaked, Matt has dried off. It was actually a pleasent evening, but I was creating my own humidity.
My pants didn't dry off because they were my bleach stained stain-defenders, that once a liquid penetrates the teflon layer, it becomes slightly trapped, unable to leave. So, I'm sitting in Matt's room. He's playing Lumines. I'm wearing sweatpants and my Dabney shirt. What are you wearing? Rehtorical.
Anyway, that was just quite an evening.
Mal
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