Hersey sponsors the US Olympic Team

My favorite bit is the cigarette.

Track 02 Update!

Ok, for all of my ranting against iTunes, we had a pretty special moment today. You may or not remember my plea for information on a random mp3 that appeared in my iTunes library after a rash of music blog acquisitioning. I loved the song, but had no information on it at all, and that really does not sit well with my OCD. I’ve deleted lesser tracks if I couldn’t identify the artist or album. Heck, sometimes even a lack of album artwork (my #1 iTunes obsession) is grounds for removal. But Track 02 was really lovely and I couldn’t bring myself to dump it. So I attempted to Google the lyrics, a usually fool-proof tactic, to no avail. A few weeks ago, after another mass-download and open day, it appeared again in my library! Track 02; same sweet tune, still no identifying info. I tried to back-track my steps that day to see if I could find the actual blog it came from, but still no dice. This track was seriously messing with my already irritatingly disordered iTunes library.
All that changed this morning as I was working my way through a new batch of tunes, rating and researching missing album artwork. I was looking up a new Sea Wolf song, Middle Distance Runner and upon clicking See All Tracks by this Artist, there it was. The Garden You Planted. A key line in the chorus of Track 02 and certainly a phrase I used in my attempts to reverse-Google the lyrics. Sure enough, The Garden You Planted IS Track 02!!!
Is it sad that this is maybe the best thing that’s happened to me all week? Wait, no, I saw Max again on 47th St (sighting #4, bee tee dubs. Not that I’m bragging) yesterday, so that wins. So this will have to settle for being the best thing that’s happened to me while sitting at my work desk this week. It’s not as easy a title to claim as you might first surmise. Does this mean I can claim my own $15 iTunes reward? Because there are some soundtracks on sale that I’ve been eyeing…

Back to the Max thing for a moment – there are friends of mine who work in my same building that I randomly run into with less frequency. This has got to be the work of higher forces. How are we not BFF yet?

Freakshow of luck

I win a lot of stuff. This has not always been the case; I won Optimus Prime in a drawing at Shop-Rite when I was 7, and then pretty much nothing else until college. I’m also leaving out anything merit-based in this assessment. Sure, it was awesome to snag a first place in the 6th grade monthly writing contest but I would really like to think that had nothing to do with luck.

But starting around my junior year in college, I’ve had an uncanny touch when it comes to winning random contests, raffles and drawings. All of this is not to gloat – luck is not an ability; by its nature luck is something that we have no control over and therefore nothing that I can take credit for. However, I am starting to believe it is a genetic gift, and I would just like to share my gratitude.

My father’s mother, my Oma, is the luckiest person I have heard of. From major life events to the smallest happenstances, she finds good fortune at every turn. There is almost no way for me to fully explain about my Oma’s extraordinary luck without including an extremely depressing back-story, so I’ll just put it this way: her life-long lucky streak makes me believe in things I would rather be cynical and dismissive of. I am no where NEAR as insanely lucky as she is, but I am getting warmer.

In the winter of 1999 I won TWO separate radio contests on two different stations, approximately one month apart. In the first one, the prize was dinner and two tickets to a Uconn Lady Huskies Basketball Game. Pretty sweet and I had a wicked bad cold when I won, so that cheered me up considerably. The second prize was two-fold: first I won tickets to a Rod Stewart concert. I promised to take my best friend to the show, and when MH protested, I told him he could come with me if I won the grand prize trip to Los Angeles to see a taping of the Tonight Show. Well, he and I still think Burbank is generally a waste of space but that Darrell Hammond is a gifted impersonator.

Lately, the Edge Theater Company has been the source of some of my more memorable wins. From a $200 gift certificate to Bluefly.com handed to me by Philip Seymour Hoffman, to an alleged dinner at Medieval Times with the band Run Run Riot (still waiting to hear from those folks…), I called both of my wins ahead of time, adding another ring to the freak show.

Today I received notice that I won The Morning News’ Headlines Pop Quiz. (Side note: I love this site, and reading through most of the stories linked in the headlines makes me feel just a little smarter at the end of the week.) I am still delighted when stuff like this happens, if less surprised than mere mortals might be.

My To-Do List

• Get manicure
• Book room in Portland, ME for wedding…in 4 weeks
• Buy Ziploc bags and dryer sheets
• Finish blogging about the Personality Matrix
• Look up A-Rod’s current HR total; realize I failed to match my number of blog posts in June
• Blog about how I suck worse than the Yankees
• Re-read Harry Potter 5 & 6 before 7 comes out…in 2 weeks
• See Once and Ratatouille in theaters
• Clear out sacks of old clothes from under the bed; donate to Sal’s Army or the freegans
• Haircut?
• Get my photo taken with the very large poster of Max outside of the Brooks Atkinson, thus killing two birds: making up for lost cell phone photo tragedy AND replacing tired MySpace pic that I am sick of looking at.
• Blog more

Personality Matrix

Click to see larger.

How my summer was made

It was Tuesday and an M-F’ing hot day. I left work around 6 – technically 30 minutes later than I should but nothing too far out of the ordinary. Rocking out to my iPod, blasting past tourists on 42nd St, when I catch a glimpse. I’m not positive, but I HAVE to investigate. So I do a 180 in the middle of the sidewalk (something I am normally extremely opposed to), lift my sunglasses and start scanning the crowd. Sure enough, in the group of attractive young folks standing outside the Yoshinoya, dressed in a white t-shirt and UM track pants, was Slacker Danny and NYOne Crush of the Summer ™, Max Crumm. Naturally I walked right past him. I collected myself (mostly unsuccessfully, as you’ll learn), queued up his songs on my iPod, and made my way over.
I led with the oh-so-original “I just have to say, I love you”. Max was, of course, super sweet and gracious. I showed him the songs, TMI’d that I also named my iPod Max, but not entirely after him, because it’s just a really good name in general…Mm hmm. He asked my name and did the cute thing, “Hi [NYOne], I’m Max.” Yes, dear, yes you are.

(Side note: Have you ever found yourself watching Last Call with Carson Daly or an especially weird sketch on SNL and found yourself thinking, I can’t believe THIS is the only thing on the National Broadcasting Channel right now. This right here is what GE is spending millions of dollars to send out over the airwaves. In the same vein, I can’t believe that for two shining minutes, I was in that moment, actually talking to Max and he was talking to me.)

Back to our story – I managed to salvage a shred of good sense and asked for a picture with my cell phone. He said “Of course!” and asked his friend (who had been listening to me ramble without once laughing at me, as far as I could tell) to get us both. He apologized for being sweaty from rehearsal, which was seriously not a problem. (I’m not being gross; it was hot out, we were all sweaty). My hands were very obviously shaking as I handed the cell phone over. So lame! But they get a little shaky just thinking about this again. My heart seriously races just from recalling the specifics. I am too embarrassing for anyone to be friends with me.
Picture snapped, I thanked him again and wobbled away. You have to realize that almost all of this, but especially the last part, is a blur. I still had the phone in my hand, but must have closed it when Max’s friend handed it back. Without hitting SAVE, which you need to do on my stupid, God-forsaken cell phone if you want to keep the photo. So yeah, I lost the picture, which is pretty heartbreaking if I let myself think about it at all. BUT instead, I chose to focus on the fact that I MET MAX CRUMM. I was dying for it to happen, and it did. And he was dreamy. Hopefully, I only came off as mildly insane and hey, at least I didn’t cry. I only hope that I was able to brighten his day a fraction as much he did mine.

What? I AM ALLOWED TO BE COMPLETELY CHEESY. IT WAS MAX CRUMM.

Next week we return to your regularly scheduled sarcasm. Maybe.

Just wondering

Question: Why doesn’t white-out work anymore? Back in [falsetto] the year 2000 [/falsetto] we used it daily in the BTF Box Office (Our motto: “Computers are for sissies”) and it worked fine. Ok, it did resemble Elmer’s Glue in that it dried practically clear, but that was Quill brand and all of their products are crap. But here in my current office, we have BiC ® Wite-Out ® Brand Super Smooth Correction Fluid. I am here to tell you there is nothing super about this other than its utter uselessness. It’s not dried out and crusty, it’s more of a stretchy, congealed glob connecting the sponge brush to the reservoir of gelatinous goo in the bottle. I guess the lesson here is that years of disuse is no good for the shelf life of Wite-Out, much like nail polish and one’s ability to recite the state capitals.