A Lifetime of NYC

 

New York City is awesome. It is to me at least. I've been going there once every three months for the last 2+ years, yet it feels like I've spent a large chunk of my life living there. And, in some weird way, I have.

Last August marked my two-year mark being cancer-free, but the confirmation of that freedom was accentuated by Monday's CAT scan which officially cleared me. It felt like a homecoming of sorts. The always-impressive Dr. G greeted me with his usual 'let me soak my hands with Purell before shaking your hand so we can all be squeaky clean' before telling me the good news. He then recapped what I'd been through, and reminded me that, from now on, the chances of getting sick again drop significantly. It was a relief, it always is. Despite the fact that I sometimes feel like that part of my life ended two years ago, I still get anxious to see the results. Even though it's another three years until I'm officially "cured", it feels good to keep surviving every day.

I do miss my badass skinhead look.

 

Another one of the things I love about New York is the fact that you can find pretty much anything there, and that's what I did Wednesday night. I went out to a bar with my friend Xavier where we had previously dominated the ruit table for hours three months ago thanks to our Gettysburg preparation. However, we weren't so lucky this time around. We got knocked out in the first game against a guy who goes there every week (and has done so for the last four years). We took solace in the fact that our late-game baskets burst their over-confidence bubble and made them focus. Nevertheless, we were disappointed. We decided to make the best of the night by walking around for an hour and had a great life talk about girls, job applications, college, job rejections, and food (basically a summary of every 22 year-old guy's life). We even got an early preview of the parade:

 

 

 

 

Xavier expressing his love for multi-racial goldfish.

 

The rest of the week was just as good. Thanksgiving was pretty low-key. Supermarket turkey with family can be just as good, and Friday I got my culture fix with Dvorak's New World Symphony(a masterpiece best known as the soundtrack for Ridley Scott's masterpiece: Bread) played by the New York Philharmonic and they were outstanding. The week in the city was capped off by a classic Saturday night of Mexican food, margarita pitchers, and getting to see other Gburg grads surviving the post-grad life.

The week was an overall win and it was a celebration of what the city has offered me. It reminded me of how our experiences create not only who we are, but also a template for us to go forward with. And just as scary as the uncertainty of the future can be, there is a certain sense of comfort in knowing that one can be living in a brand new canvas the next day.

Kind of like this postmodern rendering of Karl in the city.

Twenty-something year-olds

I've always been fascinated by the versatility of great actors and their capacity to create or recreate people. I've also been intrigued by these artists' ability to entertain through nothing more than simple words and actions. In order to learn more about how these actors shaped their talent and prepare their roles, I started watching many Inside the Actor's Studio episode where they reveal a summary of their entire lives through James Lipton's masterful abilities to read people and get to the core of who they are. However, the part of his show that I always look forward to the most is his version of the Proust Questionnaire--a series of questions adapted from French cultural talk-show host Bernard Pivot.

Although neither one of these men invented the questionnaire, they both use it as tools used to learn an extraordinary amount of information about their guests with simple questions that are met with deceivingly simple answers. Just like Pivot uses the Proust Questionnaire to learn a great deal about the personality and nature of the literary and cultural figures that he interviews, Lipton uses it to pick on the brain of some of the greatest actors of our generation with the following questions:

1. What is your favorite word?
2. What is your least favorite word?
3. What turns you on?
4. What turns you off?
5. What sound or noise do you love?
6. What sound or noise do you hate?
7. What is your favorite curse word?
8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
9. What profession would you not like to do?
10. If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?

I have always admired this technique because of how effective it is at showing how these students of humans have developed throughout the years. I decided to blatantly plagiarize the same set of questions, but with a different purpose. The more I talk to people my own age(people in their early-20s with a somewhat vague sense of direction, uncertainties, and ambition), the more I'm interested in learning about people who are just starting the real world. Well, long story short, I asked these questions to 9 of my friends, and I was just as comforted as I was surprised by how many people had almost identical answers in some questions, and completely different on others. Anyways, here is what happens when I try to play James Lipton on a group of random twenty-something year-olds of both sexes:

1. What is your favorite word?

a) Pootie Tang.
b) Kachu.
c) Blase.
d) Honor.
e) Fuck/Neophite.
f) Cavitation.
g) Cacophony.
h) Sarcasm.
i) Bright.

2. What is your least favorite word?

a) Haphazardly.
b) Zapote.
c) Retarded/gay.
d) Statistics.
e) Swag.
f) Pet-peeve.
g) Cock.
h) Mountain.
i) Hangar

3. What turns you on? (I kept having to tell people that "turning on" is supposed to represent what excites you in general, not just in the bedroom. I guess that should give you a good idea of what twenty-something year-olds think about. These are the answers I got after the clarification.)

a) Mah buuuuudddddiiiiieees.
b) Knowledge.
c) Being productive, being involved, being busy.
d) Helping people.
e) WOMEN.
f) Naked women and sex.
g) I dig music.
h) Adventure and being spontaneous.
i) Feeling strong emotions.

4) What turns you off?

a) My lack of ambition.
b) Kahkiness (people full of themselves).
c) People that are rude or mean/people who smoke.
d) (Currently) mathematics.
e) Fat women and pregnancy talk.
f) Naked men and people that don't have a sense of humor.
g) Negativity.
h) Lies/hypocristy.
i) Things that don't make sense.

5) What sound or noise do you love?

a) A funky drum beat.
b) Oooooh siiii.
c) Music of any kind.
d) Rain.
e) Old school dial up modems.
f) Leaves rustling.
g) Music.
h) Beach and rain/waves/violin.
i) The sound of a violin.

6) What sound or noise do you hate?

a) The sound of silence.
b) Fart.
c) Squeaking/tires screeching/ambulance sirens.
d) Rapidly spinning fan on my computer when it's overheating.
e) Woman who sits next to me at work singing.
f) Creaking.
g) The scraping of metal on metal.
h) Static.
i) People eating disgustingly.

7) What is your favorite curse word?

a) Fuck.
b) None.
c) Shit.
d) Fuck.
e) Fuck.
f) Fuck.
g) Fuck.
h) Fucking.
i) Skank.

8) What profession(or major) other than your own would you like to attempt?

a) Being some sort of doctor, maybe a pediatrician.
b) Culinary arts.
c) Being a news anchor or event planning.
d) Air Force Pararescueman.
e) Being the guy who hits the ON button of te LHC(Large Hadron Collider - some sort of huge magnet that destroys elemental particles to create mini black-holes whatever that means)
f) Physics.
g) Photography.
h) Criminal psychology.
i) Soundtrack composer or professional writer.

9) What profession(or major) other than your own would you not like to attempt?

a) Computer science.
b) Chemistry.
c) Wall street/business/engineering.
d) Math teacher.
e) Gynecoloist.
f) Law.
g) Physics.
h) Business administration.
i) Doctor or anything related to health care.

10) If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?

a) I'm proud of you.
b) Welcome.
c) You lived a good life.
d) Yes/no, it was(n't) worth it.
e) He just stays quiet and gives me a slight nod with a ton of special effects in the background.
f) I didn't think you would make it here.
g) You're allowed inside.
h) You were one of my best creations, and you totally achieved your purpose in life, which was ______. Welcome, now, be happy.
i) Welcome.


Although the questionnaire technically ends here, I decide to ask one more question that's more relevant when thinking about the immediate future of us youngsters.

11) Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

a) With a good job in a country I've never been in.
b) Working.
c) I wanna be working in a small liberal arts college and I wanna be with my baby.
d) Hopefully in CSAR (Combat Search and Rescue).
e) NO FUCKING IDEA. I dont know where I see myself in 10 days.
f) With a degree and a job and in a relationship and happy.
g) Honestly, I see myself with a beautiful wife and a decent job, living somewhere down south. Maybe a kid.
h) Happily married, with at least one child, maybe living in another country, with a high occupation with an important company.
i) Hopefully writing.