I took two weeks off from blogging. Was I busy? I have never been so unbusy, so useless, such a heap of crap as I was during the past two weeks. I'm not sure I can even blame the post-mono fatigue. I was supposed to take it easy. But was I supposed to be too lazy to put a CD on? Swear to god. I would look at the CD on the floor and just wonder if Son Volt was even worth it.
Anyway, my coworker Babak was back from Iraq, and I went out for drinks with him and got slightly blithering ride-through-the-funhouse-of-the soul drunk. Woke up, thought enough of this crap. Lectured self, told self to get to work, pull thumb from self's ass already. As part of the strategy, I tried to work, tried to blog on successive nights. Got words on the screen, but nothing publishable. Stick failed. Carrot needed.
As luck had it, on Sunday I fulfilled my annual NYC ritual: go to Coney Island late in August to tan, talk, relax, swim. Ask everyone else in attendance (this year just my bikini'd lady), "Why the hell didn't we do this every weekend? All those snackbag weekend days spent looking for a new museum/restaurant/brewhouse we could have spent here! Next summer blah blah lie lie!"
But this year had the added attraction of a spanking new "Shoot The Freak" stand. (Attached link is from Newsday's July story, not the NYTimes late-to-the-party story that came out this weekend. (Note to readers: all blogs, be they left or right, must rail against the perceived incompetence of America's "newspaper of record." (sarcastic quotation marks there, not attributed-to-a-source quotation marks)))
You pay $3 to play Shoot The Freak, and then you get to paint ball an extra from Mad Max as he scurries through an alleyway. He pops out from behind a barrier? Pop pop pop. Eat it, freaknik.
When we walked by, The Freak was fairly swaggering. A hapless customer was popping off rounds so pathetically that The Freak pulled out metal chair, sat with his knees apart in Neez Dutz pose, and took his helmet off. Paintflak whizzed past, but The Freak just eyeballed the customer.
The Freak deserves to make it to Broadway. I'm rooting for him.
I should have plopped down the $3 to try to paint one of his eyes out. Didn't. Why? Not sure. Indecisive + cheap = missed opportunities. Story of my frigging life.
But that's the stick talking. Here's the carrot: Always go to your Coney Island, wherever it is. It gets one blogging and useful again.
