2004-08-27 - 4:19 a.m.

I've been meaning to get to this, and like all things big I put off stuff to deal with after, so I don't write about it right away.

I'm glad about that, kinda, 'cause it means that it's okay if a detail gets spared.

Basically, the NYC trip was soooo good. We had two nights, which I think is probably the new standard. Vacations are at a premium for me, but two nights is definitely the way to go regardless.

Two nights (as opposed to one night, mind you), takes a ton of pressure off, and it goes like this:

One night:

Get off the bus jonesing for a butt.

Get to the hotel as soon as possible.

Pass by closing/closed stores and try to compile a scavenger hunt list of the things you want to do the next day.

Have an awesome night.

Wake up hungover in a hotel, try to wrap up a few things you promised yourself you'd do.

Get on a bus, jonesing for a butt.

Two nights

Exactly the same--on the same scale--but then it's day one and day two. If I've spent two nights in a city outside Europe, I don't remember it. Usually it's nothing but an area code that begins with zero. And I really love traveling. Every mission outside (617) is try to get to know the place and at the same time I wonder what it's like to live in this place.

Two nights can really let me live the dream. Day one is arriving and learning, day two is acting like a local.

And that's why two nights is the new standard, and I'll have to learn to live with the vacation day ravishing.

And I conquered Manhattan. I had a map handy at all times, but I got it down. Downtown doesn't mean close to the center of town, as it would almost everywhere else. It basically means south.

I dunno. Usually Sean (formerly S., but I decided to use names since nobody reads this and I got a few years older anyway), but usually Sean runs the show and things just go whizzing by and I go home very much impressed by the size of the city.

I now know that it's not that big. I figured out Manhattan in a day, enough to get around on my own.

Brooklyn, the Somerville of New York, I'd probably have problems with, figuring-out-wise.

I�ll never move to New York, I say right now. NYC is the last stop on the grade school-high school-college-job line, if you want to stay in America. As antsy as I get at Christmases and birthdays, I�d rather save some mystery for later, because mystery can be exhausted.

But I love taking a peek.

There�s a ton of things I can�t get in Boston--flea markets ripe with stolen digital cameras and Japanese wood stools that resemble the symbol for Pi, going for $250 in Boston, going for cheap there. I bought a sturdy belt by Cambridgeside for five bucks, and I persuaded the Roommate to get one in Boston�s Chinatown for $6, and the second we got to NYC, her belt was available for $3 (I wonder how many hipsters wore those belts to protests, or in some way delivered passionate speeches condemning foul trade in Asia).

I dunno. I spent a ton of money on CDs I can�t get in Boston. They follow:

Big Star: What�s Goin� Ahn (bootleg)

Robert Pollard: Waved Out

Devendra Banhart: Rejoicing in the Hands

Elliott Smith: Spaceland (bootleg, and I think there�s a bunch of songs there that he was working on for his last album--I cannot talk about this)

Jad Fair and Bill Wells: Whale (I feel really bad that I bought this because I know somewhere somebody wants this album. It�s Jad Fair and some guy shout-singing weird things and that�s it, with a little petal work. Biggest disappointment. Mike Patton already did this.)

Mike �Sport� Murphy: Willoughby (This album is probably ten years old--that�s why it�s so great. If it came out today I�d hate it, but this is before Dave Matthews--this is a cool scenester who probably loved hippy girls and hated dickheads, who loved Python and who hated Python fans, and who loved Billy Bragg unequivocally. I have no idea who this guy is or if he�s alive (I checked). But he wrote (and sang) Oh, arguments will rage between committed individuals... about substantial issues (and then phbbbbt), and in a thousand teenage bedrooms human passion will erupt into a thousand kleenex tissues. Nobody writes that. This guy isn�t one of those geniuses that get discovered years later by agenda proving historians. This guy is one of those geniuses that will never ever get discovered except for already by his buddies (who happened to be the right buddies to make such an album happen), and they know it and that�s why Sport Murphy can make that album for a few buddies and that�s why I�m so glad I have it for the same reason a shithead plops a couple quarters in a shithead juke--because everyone wants to be there when brilliance puts itself on display.)

So the Roommate and I had ourselves a great time. I�ll have to remember the rest myself, �cause I�m done.