Last week, Tuesday. Wake up, check the clock. Around 1:30 PM, pretty standard for a non-class day. Doze off for a bit; again, pretty standard. Wake up again, this time to loud conversation in the living room. Something like, "Hey, is the power out for you too?" Lovely.
3 hours and the longest heads-up match of poker of my life later (my roommate Keith won, and now I owe him my pride... shucks), the power was still out. It being 5:30 PM now, and it being New Jersey where the sun doesn't like to linger in the winter, it was fast getting dark out. The funny thing about power outages? No WiFi, and no email. So I packed up my bags, got my laptop, and decided to head to the Frist campus center to set up my new office/home away from home. Before I left, I decided to make a few phone calls, to let people know how miserable a condition I was in with my lack of electricity. Among them was a call which was inspired by a random idea I'd had: with my one and only final coming up Saturday morning, I was going to have nothing to do for the rest of the week but maybe possibly glancingly study on Friday. Therefore, it seemed a perfect opportunity to call up dear Dinah all the way up in frigid Boston, and suggest a visit. She agreed it would be a mah-va-lous idea.
12 hours later, after spending the entire night in the campus center playing online poker (down $250 at one point, finished down $20), I headed back to my dorm after receiving a "Hey, power's back" email. Napped from 8 AM to abou 12 PM, at which time I woke up to take a shower, and then pack some clothes for my trip to Boston. Luckily, I ran into a friend who was going up to NY Penn Station too, to catch a train home to Connecticut. We left campus at 1:30 PM (cue travel time clock).
Coming out of Penn Station around 3 PM, we ran into two guys wearing jackets with "ESPN" and "Cold Pizza" lettering on them ,and one of them was holding a camera. Yup, an ESPN camera crew. The guy approached us and asked if we wanted to do "a little trivia game." Of course, why the hell not? Getting on ESPN = every boy's dream, even a Chinese boy's. Anyways, my friend went first, and I wasn't allowed to look. Then came my turn.
"Ok, I'm gonna show you two pictures, and you're gonna try to tell me who they are, ok?"
"Yeah, sure."
First up, some non-descript, athletic, football player looking white male, mid 20s. No idea who he could be, but the guy kept pressuring me to say a name.
"Come on, just say a name."
"I have no idea who this guy is."
"Just guess, come on, you gotta say something."
"I dunno!"
"Say a name, just say it!"
"... Mike Piazza."
Of course it was not Mike Piazza. I actually do know who Mr. Piazza is and what he looks like. I knew that was not Mr. Piazza. But the guy just kept pressuring me and pressuring me. I can tell right now I would not stand up well under torture or interrogation.
The second picture was, obviously, Peyton Manning. After the two of us had left and walked a couple of blocks, my friend suddenly turns to me with an epiphany (he had guessed Eli Manning for the first guy, a much more reasonable assertion).
"Oh my God, we're such fucking idiots... the second guy was Peyton Manning, right? I'll bet you anything the first one was fucking Rex Grossman!"
But really, who would recognize the Bears quarterback's headshot like that? I mean, it's Rex fucking Grossman, who the fuck cares? Still, I felt like an idiot, like somehow I should have been able to preemptively guess that based on predicting the second photo was going to be Peyton. Didn't help that I was caught on ESPN film, wearing a Princeton sweatshirt, loudly proclaiming to the world, I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT SPORTS AND THINK THAT REX GROSSMAN AND MIKE PIAZZA LOOK ALIKE, oh, and I GO TO PRINCETON.
Still, I had to trudge on, even burdened with the knowledge that my first time on national TV, I would come off as a geeky looking Chink who knew nothing about sports or about the upcoming Super Bowl. Beautiful. It was 3:25 PM by now, and I was planning to catch the 4:00 PM Chinatown bus (Fung Wah, not Lucky Star, because Fung Wah was the one with the bus drivers who couldn't speak English, the buses that caught on fire on the interstate, and even the one bus that flipped and killed a few dozen people... me, I like adventure). I found my way from Penn Station to 34th St. and Herald Sq. station, and after studying a subway map for quite some time (HEY EVERYONE, LOOK AT ME, I'M FROM OUT OF TOWN), decided I could safely take either the B or D line train down to Grand St. Lo and behold, within 5 minutes, the D train came, and I sat down by a window so I could look out and check the walls of the upcoming stations, cuz you know, you can never trust the subway guys on the intercom, who could either be too drunk to know what's next, or could just be messing with people like me.
Sadly, I found Grand St. with no problem, and when the doors opened up, a flood of Chinese faces rushed in (I'm not being racist, I know how we look, they were ALL CHINESE). Yup, I was in Chinatown.
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In next week's exciting installment, I eat a $0.92 hot dog made out of God knows what kind of meat, and manage to not die. Yay!
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1 comment:
you're cute, cody.
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