The Bronx, Burgers, BBQ Sauce, and Blade Runner

What, you may ask, do these three things have in common? Well, other than beginning with the letter B, each played an interesting role in my day yesterday.... which was LONG, but (on the whole) lovely.

I woke up at the CODA (Crack of Dawn's Ass) to head to the Bronx for the final performance by my outreach program. However, it seems that I am an idiot and read the call-time wrong, and was hence aiming to arrive half an hour late, and to add insult to injury, my 5 train decided to start running local in the Bronx, AND terminated 2 stops before where I needed to get off.

A note to the general public: power-walking in Crocs? Not fun.

And before you lambast me for sporting this most heinous of footwear, relax. They are the ballet flat version. If I didn't tell you they were Crocs, you'd never know.

The performance itself was ehn. The kids were rowdy and the accoustics in the space only served to amplify every fidget and whisper to epic proportions. Their teachers really did nothing to keep them in line, thus I blame the staff more than the students, but it was still irritating.

Afterwards I made it home for a brief nap before heading back into the city for a meeting about all of my study-abroad programs this Summer. All I can say is... YAY!! This is going to seriously kick ass.

After the meeting we had some time to kill, so Slater and I found a pub with outdoor tables and sat on the sidewalk having burgers and beers. During this lovely lunch/dinner (Linner? Dunch?) I decided to "come out" to Slater about the blog. He was actually intrigued, and flattered that he made it in here and earned a nickname :) (Though he and I are in agreement that the nickname I've given him probably conjures up a mental image that is quite far removed from his actual appearance... which I think makes it doubly amusing).

I love sitting at sidewalk tables, though I often wonder what passers-by would make of the snippets of conversation they hear as they pass by--"What was I saying? Oh! Right! The Chlamydia story!!"--and I think we were panhandled by at least 3 different people, but such is the price we pay to enjoy an excellent burger al fresco.

We left and tried to find a spot to camp out in the tragically diminished Washington Square Park (do not get me started on the insane bullshit that is going on over there... closing half the park to move a fountain TEN FEET??? FOR A PHOTO OP!?!? GAH!!!), so Slater could listen to the monologue I'd just barely memorized. Fortunately he told me I didn't sound like an ass, and I went off to my audition, which went well (knock wood).

After the audition I headed over to rehearsal for Slater's directing piece (yes, we spent well over 50% of the day together). One of the performers in his piece is actually a professor in our program, and after rehearsal we all trekked over to her apartment to order pizza, check out her massage chair (incidentally, if I had one of these things in my house, I don't think I'd ever leave), and kill time before the midnight showing of Blade Runner (the final cut) at The Sunshine.

And where does BBQ sauce fit into all of this? Well... there is this girl, let's call her Mama, and Mama basically has no filter whatsoever. Whatever pops into her head, she says... with the most simple, soft-voiced, deadpan delivery, that if you didn't know any better you'd swear she was screwing with you.

She is not.

So the pizza arrived while I was out on a beer run, and Mama asked the professor if she had any BBQ sauce. When the professor responded in the negative, Mama responded:

"Oh. You see, because I am black, I tend to put BBQ sauce on everything."

It helps to imagine it being said in the same tone of voice in which Queen Elizabeth II might say "Lovely weather, fancy a spot of tea?"

Now, with a comment like that, you would think she was from somewhere down South... Georgia, or Alabama perhaps.

She is not.

She is from Trinidad.

Perhaps you had to be there... trust me, if Slater is reading this right now, he is laughing his ass off.

Sadly she did not come with us to see the movie... though when we were turning off our cell phones Slater got a text from the girl who walked to the subway with her, stating "Mama just told me that the massage chair made her gassy."

Oh, and seeing Blade Runner on a big screen? Ridiculously awesome.

Finally managing to hail a cab on the LES at 2am on Friday night, only to have the meter break and have to get out a block later? Not so awesome.

And finally, to wrap-up this long-winded and Seinfeld-esque (i.e., really about nothing) post...

I have a date on Tuesday!!

Whether or not he knows it's a date remains to be seen... but I think/hope so.

His nickname shall be: The Silver Fox. No, he is not 60.