Poverexic in NYC

Last week I got a forward from my puta J asking “are you going to this?” to an invite from our high school that was like, “I wanted to invite you and a guest to join us on Wednesday, October 12th for dinner to thank you for your support of Greenhill School and reconnect with fellow alumni.”  Um, am I going?  I didn’t even get an invite, and I was confused and offended, despite the fact that I knew they were just hosting this dinner only to get money from alums.  I mean, I was 30% of the reason why the school’s rankings were so high in everything (I was Asianly ambitious in high school, naturally), so why wasn’t I on their free dinner mailing list (answer: probably because I don’t give).

Anyway I thought about it for two seconds and was like fuck it, they owe me a free dinner, and I made the decision to get myself invited.  I emailed the alumni director demanding I be put on the mailing list, and in contrast to my bitchiness she was incredibly nice and overly excited that I had reached out and encouraged me to let her know of any and all other alumni she had left off the mailing list.  I took that quite literally and proceeded that very day to forward the dinner invitation to 20 other people who were three years younger than me.  Interestingly enough, I recently reconnected with high school class of ’05/college ’09 people through Texas sports watching in NYC.  I don’t give a shit about Texas sports, but I do enjoy beer, wings and a room full of dudes, so obviously I partake.  Also ’07-09 have always been the better classes over ’06 so I was confident that when our powers combined we could turn this stuffy, “business attire” reunion dinner into a complete open bar shitshow.

So the dinner was this past Wednesday, and we successfully turned it into a complete open bar shitshow.  Arriving to Trattoria Dell’ Arte in Midtown West, I was curious who all would be at this event.  Would other random people from my high school be there that I hadn’t seen in a decade?  Has anyone gotten fat?  Has anyone gone gay?  Answer: nope.  I get there and literally the only people there are myself, my puta J, the headmaster (who hadn’t aged a day in the 10 years I hadn’t seen him), my choir teacher (who of course before he even says hi to me is like ARE YOU STILL PLAYING THE PIANO?!?!?), and then the 20 class of 09ers I had invited to this dinner.  Proud.

I thought this dinner would be family style, but it was quite the nice sit-down dinner with the open bar I expected, a starters table with plenty of antipasti, and then penne pasta to start, three choices of entree, and cannoli and chocolate mousse for dinner.  I had a glass of red wine during the headmaster’s speech, a glass during antipasti, a glass with my penne, a glass with my medium rare steak, and a glass with my chocolate mousse and I was having a grand old time.  I suddenly really liked my high school that night.  Probably a temporary feeling.

Lately I’ve been going out a lot more during the week and doing a lot more day drinking on Saturdays and Sundays, which I can’t figure out if it’s a good thing or a bad thing.  I have mixed feelings about going out hard during the week.  On the one hand, it helps to break up the work week, but on the other hand, I’m exhausted by Friday, especially knowing that I’m going to start drinking again on Saturday morning.

This past Thursday we had an impromptu roommate dinner, which we hadn’t done in a long time.  Roommate M had a Groupon to this place Bento Burger, which sounded fascinating — Japanese burger fusion.  Having never been to this place before, I of course immediately turned to the world wide web.  Their website looked pretty awesome, but what was even more intriguing was what came up on Google Images for “bento burger.”

Frog Bento Burger

Monkey Bento Burger

Bear Bento Burger

Obviously I chose to believe what I saw on Google Images over what was on the Bento Burger website because that made more sense.  I coordinated after-work meet-up with roommate M at King’s Cross next to B Bar with A, who apparently was holding a NYC Triathlon Meet Up event there and picks the weirdest bars to go out to.  There were a total of 3 people there, including A, and neither of the other 2 were triathletes.  This bar was also one of the saddest places I’d ever been to in Manhattan, where we were literally the only customers there.  Upside?  The bartender was so grateful he had paying customers that he got us all free shots of Avion Tequila (can you say… Entourage?), which was a great way to kick off our Thursday night.  The weird part though was that the bartender encouraged us to try out Avion by — instead of taking it as a shot — sipping on it slowly and enjoying the flavors by mixing it with some iced water.  What?  Who was this guy.  If you’re a tequila, act like a tequila.  Don’t try to be a scotch.  This made me hate Entourage even more.

After we were done with King’s Cross, it was off to anime-land to get our bento burgers.  We arrived all excited, and when we finally found the restaurant, the first thought that crossed our mind was: rape town.  I mean, we were right in the middle of nowhere East Village, and this restaurant was dark and hentai with the only people there being one bartender and one waitress (and they were WHITE).  There were definitely no anime bears and frogs and hello kitties, and this place definitely wasn’t run by the Japs.

We sat down and ordered some drinks, which were actually quite delicious, and we started out with some calamari and tempura green beans, which were awesome.  To make our meal even more enjoyable, Corona was having a promotion at this restaurant, and since we were the only customers there, they gave us free Corona after free Corona after free Corona.  We win!  After that we all ordered our bento burgers, and I ordered mine medium rare with Asian rice bun.  I assumed that meant they were actually going to be buns that were made of sticky rice, but instead, it was just a burger patty, and a side of rice.  Hmmm… regardless, it was incred.

My Burger Bento

After our burger experience, our next stop was Brother Jimmy’s for the Yankees game.  I don’t give a crap about the Yankees but I do enjoy beer so our Thursday night continued and I stumbled home shortly after the Yankees lost.  Successful Thursday night.

Thursday I organized my first Harvard 06 mini reunion at Brinkley’s, aka Martignetti’s.  It was awful but amazing because we all just got smashed.

I knew this event was going to be a failure going into it because I had inadvertently organized it on Rosh Hashanah, and half of Harvard is Jewish.  Yeah, fucking Shana Tova people.  This is when I really wanted to pull a GET A LIFE JEWS and wave my swastika pillow sham at them.  Ugh, whatevs.  As an honorary Jew, I should have known.  It was really my fault… actually, I fully blame this on my Jewish friends who should have told me.

Needless to say, the only people who showed up to the event right at 7pm were myself, because as the organizer I had to, and M, because as a best friend of the organizer I forced her to and she wasn’t Jewish.  And S who showed up a few minutes later because he too is a good friend.  So with nothing else to do, we started drinking heavily by ourselves.  For the past few years my “thing” at Brinkley’s has been getting dirty martinis in a tall.  I can’t remember when, but one of the times I was there, they served me a dirty martini in a tall because they had run out of martini glasses, and I fell in love.  I loved how the olives floated around in the tall glass, and ever since then, that’s all I’ve ordered at Brinkley’s.

Thursday I started out with 2 dirty martinis in a tall before my other friends started to show up, both of which S bought for me because he felt bad for how pathetic this event was turning out to be.  W, N, F, and my roommates showed up a little later (clearly since this was my event I didn’t just invite “Harvard 06” people — obviously I invited 05-09 and my non-Harvard friends)… and some other 06 people I didn’t recognize.

Some lessons I learned for my next event:

1. Don’t call it a Harvard party — it’s an oxymoron and no one will come
2. Make sure I make it clear that these events aren’t actually organized by the “Harvard Activities Committee” — the “Harvard Activities Committee” = just me, and was just a term I made up to make myself sound legit… that obviously backfired
3. Don’t organize it on a holiday
4. Start event later so people get that it’s supposed to be “going out hard on a Thursday” vs. happy hour

Despite points 1-4, my party did get HOPPIN” around 10pm and tripled in size when the entire Harvard 07-09 football team in NYC showed up.  They always know how to have a good time.  It was pretty much like being back at the Kong again.  By this time I was definitely on tall martini #5, none of which I had paid for at this point (not sure how I pulled that one off).  Everything gets blurry after that, but I’m pretty sure I had at least 2 more tall martinis after the boys arrived and, before I knew it, started engaging in some shameless heavy petting action at the bar with an 09er.  None of us can remember what happened after this.

Apparently we all blacked out because the next morning I got at least a dozen emails from friends being like “GREAT PARTY.”  I guess any party can turn into a great party when you’re on 10+ drinks and in a room full of football guys.