cutting great neck

i moved into great neck, long island, ny last wednesday. yep. i wanted to start this blog a long time ago. i wanted to start it in san diego even. just to describe my life in new york. you know, if in the end i turn out to be a friendless jerk who's a social failure and sociopath who can't even crank out a good gpa and in the end turns out to be a meaningless blob in a stupid all-american, capital punishment hotdogs and ketchup state, then at least i would have documentation of my slow disintegration, and maybe a friend (even if blog) to turn to in troubling times. so basically this blog'll be about my difficult move here and also about my visits to manhattan, the sights, the restaurants, and of course school life and the pimply adolescence in jewish great neck.

so anyway. i'll just start from wednesday.

wednesday, we got off the five-hour plane ride which was alright but, i mean, was more than enough, and sharon and i waited for dad to get the car, which he got in forty five minutes, and we practiced our ny accents (co-afeee, do-aag) on the ride. we came into the house and realized mom gave us one key instead of two, thinking the other was just a duplicate. oh, shit. thankfully, the owners of the house, who are very nice people, were in the neighborhood, gave us a pair of keys and answered all my dad's numerous questions even though they were on the run to the owner's aunt's house, where she already had dinner on the table, so blah blah blah.

empty house. those last couple nights slept on good mattresses though. grass green. skies blue. empty house.

about half-an-hour after (fourtunately) getting into our new home, we sped away towards manhattan to hang out with our best friends from israel, mr. avi& mrs. judy broder and their children, sai, elai and their not-even-one-year-old son yali.

so. much. fun. manhattan is literally the big apple of my eye. its the capital of the world. we basically spent the whole time with them either in the hotel room, eating or walking to and from the place of eating. which is not that bad, considering we were inside one of the most amazing cities ever. we ate in carnegie delli, where they slaghtered an entire cow for our table alone, me taking the vast amount in a corned beef sandwhich the size of my face. YUM.

Yali is so amazing. he is much more adorable than i expected him to be. he has big fat cheeks and a big smile. aw. sai and elai were so fun and easygoing, so cosmopolitan, it was incredible. we were basically talking about american culture and it prevailing in israel (mostly, THE DARK KNIGHT, mmm, which all espouse.) anyhow, they live in a hampton inn right up the street from times square. they had marvelous fun in ny, i expect, but now that they're off in florida i hope they won't have as much fun (so they'll [please?] return here again soon.)

on thursday we drove down to new jersey to get ginger from newark airport and jesus motherfucking christ! too much traffic. three hours to get there (basically going zero miles per hour) doing nothing nothing and we got to the airport and went to the gate and waited for about an hour until we went to the pet room upstairs and waited there until ginger would arrive to her new home. she was SO excited. so excited. to see us. her ride was also five hours, imagine, spent locked up inside a cage, awake, in the turbulent belly of an airplane, in boiling temperatures, water's already been splashed out of the cage, and no pee, no poop for twelve hours...gack. so that was a happy day, bringing her back home. here is ginger about fifteen minutes after picking her up. she was trying to get all passerby to pet her big fat fur. lazy.

anyway. friday--what'd we do? I don't really remember. we went to sign up at the schools, which was nothing special, just a same old secretary giving us forms to fill. we signed up at the library, where all was jewish (shabbat shalom, moishe tseidel), and the books are numerous and old and it's huge! and i like the library. it's very nice. we dined on a nutritious lunch at a nice zagat-rated mexican restaurant in great neck. i was REALLY tired and i took a two hour halcyon nap. which was long and warm and spectacular. and then we watched a movie (well, three-fourths of it anyway). which was bad. and when i mean bad, i mean cliche and old and boring and tedious and talky and oh-i've-seen-this-thing-done-too-many-times-old, Paris J'Taime. Acting--meh, stories--blah, directing--well, the talent was there, but the performance? poooop. (i fell asleep at three in the morning. stupid fucking nap.)

saturday, we went to flushing meadows park, which was really fun (and ego boosting, since i chose what to do the whole day.) it was raining furiously the night and morning before, the windowshield almost smashed, splatters the size of a river, so the air was crisp and the birds were singing and the weather was perfect. ahh. big globe was also marvelous. (the rain was an ephemeral hiatus from this dreadful soggy heat that we must get innured to as soon as possible before we have a stroke.)

we went to the queens museum of art which was meh, but the panorma exhibit was WOAHHH! the new york city model was superbly detailed and beautiful and simply woooooow. i loved it. i love ny. every building was 3-d'd and there, brooklyn, bronx, manhattan, staten island, just beautiful, really builds an admiration for this wonderful city.

night, we went to moti and noami in new jersey. it was fun, good food. will likely happen many more times in the future.

yesterday we went to manhattan. sing to me oh muse of the raw modernism and classicsim clash of manhattan, of the glorious green growing fields of central park flowing with frolicking tourists with their little tourist baby strollers, of the rivulets flowing, of the lake and the beautiful buildings, ahhhh. we crossed from upper east side to upper west side, where we came upon the entire population of manhattan + about the three million european travelers who are stealing manhattan by storm (according to the sunday nytimes), all of whom were sunbathing and touring central park after the long, unending rain flooded the grass fields and wiped the city of its scum.

in upper west, we came upon a fair. good food and shopping, i liked it, tired feet. i usually like upper west side, but i guess the walking and the fair and the swiftness of it all detracted from the usual quixotic experience. we cut through times square. glorious m&m shop, delicious, could smell the chocolate in my noseeee, mmmmmmmmmmmmm......... new yorkers are genius, i have to give it to them, even though their tough exterior and cynicism kills me [how stereotypical of me. oh well.]. good food. ahh. i love new york.

and then we hiked up all the way back to 67th street...where our car was parked in an ingenious spot. simply beautiful.

anyway. woke up late today after goingto sleep early last night after long run to future high school + back. can't wait for more visitors. didn't do anything today.

weather at the moment--sun almost setting, hot, humid, blah. sister= "i want the computer, it's not fair you get it for so much time i barely got it two days ago and its not fair lah blah blah im stupid."

i read a lot today.

oh and p.s.: the nytimes is amazing. i'm reading it and rereading it day by day. simply astounding.

now fireflies are going to come. oh farewell.