I was happy when the weather turned foul this afternoon. I had to work early, and it appeared as though it was going to be a beautiful day, which was annoying because I had the Sunday Times and there's a basketball game I'd like to watch without feeling guilty for not being outside. So when it began to rain I sighed a sigh of relief and decided that making perfect bloody mary's would be an appropriate way of taking full advantage of a Sunday indoors.

So, according to lore, a Frenchman named Fernand Petiot was the first to mix vodka and tomato juice, at Harry's New York Bar in Paris. When Mons. Petiot came to New York, specifically to the King Cole Bar in the St. Regis Hotel, sophisticated New Yorkers asked him to spice it up a bit. Mons. Petiot added pepper, cayenne, lemon, Worstchester and Tobasco, and a legend was born. I like mine with a little olive juice and celery salt, and instead of Tobasco I love Chalupa. Rob at the Redhead makes his with a chipotle infused mixer. A bar on Avenue A infuses their vodka with bacon. Some like to substitute Clamato for tomato juice; the hint of shellfish seems to work well with the spice.

The best bloody mary I've ever had was at the Cliff House in San Francisco. Tom and Jerry's on Elizabeth St. has two for one specials every Saturday. How the bloody mary became the de facto morning after hangover cure, I don't know. I think that maybe it's because they're often garnished with celery, olives, sometimes a shrimp, so even those whose stomach won't allow them a regular meal can receive some sustenance. Whether or not one could survive on bloody mary's alone is up for debate; what is not up for debate is the level of attention required to make a good one. This is why there is always a momentary pause when asking for a bloody mary. Is the bar too busy? Is the time right? Some bartenders won't make them past, say, 3 in the afternoon. Others relish the opportunity to show their skill and will keep you in the action all night long.

Mons. Petiot named the drink as he did because it reminded him of a girl he knew at the Bucket of Blood Club in Chicago. What about this cocktail was reminiscent of this girl, we are left to ponder. What we do know, however, is that Mary I of England did not kill children so that she may bathe in their blood to preserve her beauty. According to the historians, she had no beauty to preserve.

I remember my first: a pair of tortoise shell Ray-Ban Wayfarers, a gift from Dad on my 16th birthday. I believe he purposely bought them in tortoise shell rather than black to evoke the southern-California of his childhood. I used to drive around in my VW Bug, left arm enjoying the freedom of an open window, tortoise shell Ray-Ban Wayfarers straight killllling it. Thus began my love affair with sunglasses.

Alas, sunglasses are fickle, and have a tendency to leave before you ever really get to know 'em. My relationship with those Ray-Bans was bliss, but lasted an all-too-brief 6 months. I don't know what happened - I awoke one morning and they were gone. I cursed the sun.

Distraught, I did what any young man would do: I traveled to Tijuana looking to score a cheap replacement, and in an affront to the memory of my first, I picked up a pair of knockoff Oakley's in a light shade of tan. They were gaudy; really we weren't a fit. And the Oakley's would soon be replaced by a series of sunglasses picked up at gas stations, truck stops, 24 hour mini-marts. Sunglasses of every shade and shape. Brief flings with non-polarized pretenders. I was in a downward spiral.

I began to trust sunglasses again when at 18 I bought my first pair of Arnette's. For a punk kid trying to make it on the California-scene, Arnette's were the way to go, and together we looked fucking baddass. Light weight yet durable, just the way I like 'em. We could get little rough, but I didn't worry about them breaking. I remember the day like it was yesterday: We were in Santa Cruz - we spent a lot of time together on the beach that summer. I made the mistake that I knew never to make: In the course of my conversation with a couple fine looking ladies, I turned my back to the sea. And just when we were at our best the sea came from behind and took them away from me forever.

It wasn't long, however, before I got another pair just like them. Relationships of about a year, each much like the other - a sudden swoon, an even more sudden departure, generally happy - continuing over the course of about 8 years. There were mistakes, certainly - how can we forget the blue rims and yellow lenses incident of '99? - but these were years in which my relationship with sunglasses emerged from its adolescent experimentation and began to mature.

It's funny how things tend to return from whence they came. What was hip in the 50's and 60's is hip again in the 80's, and again in the later years of the first decade of the 20th century; Ray-Ban Wayfarers are currently enjoying a vogue unmatched since the halcyon days post-Risky Business. Likewise, it was back to Ray-Bans, back to the beginning, as I got older. Back to the beginning, but different. It's impossible that I shouldn't bring something of my experience with Arnette to my new relation with Ray-Ban. So instead of Wayfarers I decided on something sleeker, more tailored, mature. I believe they were called 'Predator', and together we set out with New York as our prey.

As I write this I find myself in a state of confusion and dismay. Last night, last night...I though they were with me as I stepped out of the cab, but I looked and they were gone, and as the cab sped down the avenue I knew I'd never see them again. We cut a fine figure, those Ray-Ban's and I, and though right now they're all I can think about, and I feel like I'll never get past this hurt, I know that soon I'll find another just like 'em.

Once the train to New Haven leaves Grand Central Station, which it does approximately every half-hour, it travels underground until it reaches 125th St., Harlem, where it emerges from the depths to travel overground, amongst the buildings either half-constructed or dilapidated, buildings which themselves rest on the rock unit known as the Cambrian and Ordovician Inwood Marble. But it is not until the train moves beyond 125th St., and into the Bronx, that you begin to notice geography, specifically the northeastward-trending structure of the region. The New Haven line traces this natural curve and spoons the coast at it travels through the south-Bronx and into Westchester County. Once it crosses the Harlem River the train balances upon a narrow sliver of the Cambrian Manhattan Formation, until it reaches Fordham and cuts east across a small portion of Cambrian and Ordovician Inwood Marble. The eastward bounding train traverses a bit of the Preterozoic Fordham Gneiss before continuing upon the vast Cambrian-Ordovician Hartland Schist, which makes up the majority of the northeastern seaboard between New York and New Haven.

From the window of the train you can see rock outcroppings jutting from the earth at every imaginable northeaswardly-trending direction. These outcroppings somehow display a combination of necessity - chance - and order that mirrors that strange alchemy of the city one has just departed.

The city, urban life as we know it, is dependent on two things: Rocks and Elevators.

My boss's father had the fear of getting peanut butter stuck to the top of his mouth - Arachibutyrophobia. Seriously, this was something that concerned him, something that may have caused him to lose sleep. Other unusual phobias:

Fear of Thousand Island Salad Dressing
Fear of Ramen Noodles
Fear of Undercooked Tater Tots
Fear of Pie

This is how someone describes their fear of pictures of sharks:

I have another form of Selachophobia (Fear of sharks) If I touch a
picture of a shark's head (especially with its mouth open) it can still
bite my fingers off. I remember once in fourth grade we were reading a magazine, and I was holding it up the whole time I was reading. And since I was a faster reader than any of the other kids in the class, I got to the last page and dropped the magazine, kicked over my desk(hitting the child in front of me and injuring her) and scrambled onto the kid behind me's desk, all the while screaming bloody murder. I had been touching a shark's picture the whole friggin' time! Three teachers came running from different classrooms. I got into so much trouble just because it was "ONLY a PICTURE of a shark." I also have the phobia of a shark popping up in the pool and I won't take baths. Lakes are avoided at all costs and...the ocean? Yeah right.

I have only normal fears: success, commitment, the opposite sex, etc.

What the fuck's the deal with putting large flat-screened televisions in every restaurant? Not only are they now ubiquitous, but they are actually put forward as a selling point: "Come to our restaurant, ignore your date while watching SportsCenter!" WTF?

There is a man who haunts Washington Square Park with a troupe of trained pigeons. Nobody knows - I don't know - if these are birds which have come from a home, perhaps his own home, where they are trained, their performance cultivated, or if instead they are indeed "wild" birds that have become so accustomed to his presence that they can't seem to stay off his arms and shoulders.

The question, bearing as it does on the indeterminacy of markers distinguishing the natural from the manufactured, opens upon the question of the meaning of home. Whatever.

Today on 13th St., between 5th and University, I witnessed a 'hobo' passed out in a planter while his companion rummaged around near him for the cigarette that had fallen out of his hand. Not 25 yards further down the road, there gathered a crew of about 5 young adults who thought that in front of the doggy gym was good place to smoke a joint. What struck me was the mutual indifference shown by both the group of young ruffians and the passersby and the business owners. Nobody seemed to give a shit, and that made me happy. I love 13th St.

Friend tells me she got eye-raped by Adrien Brody while walking down Spring Street last week. She noticed him from about a block away, looking her up and down. As they passed, he actually lowered his sunglasses and smiled. An odd experience, she said; apparently, though she's quite attractive, visual assault is not something that happens to her on a regular basis.

This is funny because I remember being like 19 years old, sitting outside a coffee shop on busy Friday night downtown, and making extended, unflinching eye contact with a girl in a convertible as she was stopped in traffic. It was noticed by my friends, who suggested that I had just made visual love to this complete stranger. At the time, I felt the same way - like me and this completely random, though smokin' girl had some kind of cosmic connection, and if only we could have met...

Alas, now I'm starting to think that I, actually, eye-raped this girl. I comfort myself by imagining that if we had met, she would have suffered from halitosis.

Fuck Titles

Seriously, I think titles may be the one obstacle that prevents me from blogging more often - well, that and the fact I don't own a computer. The pressure to come up with a witty, appropriate heading for whatever bullshit I might have to say has stood in the way of my sharing my unique and fascinating world-view with others, and I'm over it. So, now that friend has loaned me her computer for the summer, I am eschewing titles - get ready, world, for random musings not gathered under a title, subtitle, or any other organizational heading (alright, well, date, but only because it's programmed into blogger).

And yes, I realize that this is indeed titled. Last one, fuckers.