Waiting to Get There. Usually on the A/C/E in Chelsea, New York City.

The second I saw his black and white striped wrist-warmers, I knew I would spend the entire dinner hoping he wouldn't notice me spying. He was waiting for his dinner date to come back from the men's room when our waiter, sporting a white belt and striking black dangly earrings, seated us right next to him. For a second I considered telling him his wrist-warmers looked cozy, but then I didn't because it would have blown my cover. Apparently, he and his dinner date slash boyfriend had just moved in together. His boyfriend reminded me of Sean Penn playing Harvey Milk, although with less height and charm. They debated the bedroom furniture arrangement (desk, TV, bed, or bed, desk, TV) right before the two of them started lovingly arm wrestling. Milk won. I considered asking him where he'd found his maroon tone-on-tone eyeglasses. I'm in the market for spectacles. The pair I got from See on Greenwich Aveneue fling themselves off my face at the slightest Looking at Someth...

As soon as we stepped off the PATH I told Tom to make sure he didn't go balls up after too much draft beer in plastic cups because I would seriously consider leaving him in Hoboken. It'd been fifteen years since my last Hoboken-a-go-go topped off with a Belgian waffle at the diner alongside the church crowd, but I vaguely distinctly remember the pitfalls inherent in one square mile of bars. Where even the menfolk hold each other's hair while they vomit curbside. Four bands that hadn't played together for a decade mostly remembered their old songs for a reunion show at Maxwells. The MellowTraumatics did it up right. Poppily songs, tight play, sultry singer. The crowd went wild. An unbenownst-to-me star of Ugly Betty fronted the next band and several music critics in the press box had a field day. Me and Glenn agreed there are two forms of inaccessible: the math rockers and sludge-core maniacs who are actually decent musicians but hellbent on some sort of inexplicable mu...

Asking my father for fashion advice is always a risky proposition. Especially since he started wearing around a woodland-print cardigan he found in the basement and telling anyone who asks that it is a quality woolen. "We're going to a party, what'd you wear in the 60's, Pop?" "Fornication pants." "What? What??" "Fornication pants. High-waters. With shit kickers, a wide tie, and Woody Allen spectacles." Praise Jesus the only thing he brought up from the basement was a woodland-print cardigan.

These two youngsters at left are playing a nice game of Plinko at the Children's Museum of Manhattan just prior to the area lapsing into a snake pit of anarchy and warmongering at 1:30pm on February 2. After hustling from the brouhaha under the watchful glare of nearby parents, Uncle Tom, 40, said, "After the whole room broke out in a free-for-all street fight, I just left." According to Tom, he had been innocently playing with Nephew Jackson, 1, who had crawled behind the Plinko machine to the backside where a high ledge and exposed electrical outlets didn't appear to be entirely child-friendly. Tom would call out a color and Jackson allegedly found a Plinko ball in that hue and handed it over the top of the machine to his attentive uncle. "It was good fun until this show-off kid started it all. Every time I named a color, he would find a ball and chuck it at me. Sometimes multiple balls. That kid really had a keen eye as well as a powerful arm. The other childr...

My biker gang rode up to the church on Sunday around ten a.m, right before services ended. We parked our banana seat rides behind the maintenance shed. Our ammo, hairy legged Japanese beetles, clicked around in glass jars with air holes punched in the lids. We were after the pantyhose. With a lot of loud yet completely stealthy whispering, we crouched under the shrubbery, waiting for the congregation to stream out onto the sidewalk. T minus two minutes, we broke out the drinking straws. Except we called them blowdarts. We rammed a japanese beetle inside the muzzle of the straw, waited for a set of pantyhose to stride within firing range, and blew like a trumpet player into the straw. Thunk. Total panty-monium... some dowdy lady, high kicks and shrieking. An eight year-old's ultimate dream. Although. Fraught with a dangerous underbelly that to this day makes me cringe and gag convulsively. One Sunday, it all went terribly wrong. I was premature. I went for the straw bef...

No time for fornication but once I quit my paper route she'll want my body Did he really say that? Yeah, I think he did. Going in, I had no expectations other than some chick named Jill told me she was friends with the drummer. But Breaking Laces totally put a little salsa on my tortilla chip. It was top-shelf spicy sauce magnified by the Rockwood, a tiny tiny brick-walled hole in the L.E.S. How tiny is it? If someone in the band did a high kick they'd probably take down the bartender. The bass player looked like Dave Faulkner should he become a surfer. The singer had a Death Cab for Cutie moonfaced vibe going on. Although unlike the lead singer of Death Cab during the autumn of 2005, he did not feel the need to demonstrate he can play the drums by firing up a seven minute solo on a miniature drum kit, which I did not feel accentuated my overall concert experience at the time nor subsequently. In addition to his mad pipes and feisty lyrics, the frontman of Breaking Laces also...