Thursday, February 18, 2010

Mattmas 2.0

(A month later, but never too late)

26. 26 years young. 26 years old. The Big 2-6. 26 years after being born. 26 years that much closer to death. However you want to say it… celebrating being born was GREAT! So many fun things happened in my 6 day celebration that to tell them all would be impossible, but to mention some would be ideal. So that’s what I’ll do.

I was blessed enough to have both, three friends from Alabama fly up, and NYC friends to help celebrate. To have a bit of home here for my birthday was almost all I could ask for. I decided that I didn’t want to make plans so that my birthday would be completely stress free and worriless… mission accomplished. I’ll go through some of our adventures to give you a glimpse:

1) I actually had to work a New School event Saturday morning, which only lasted till about 1:30pm. After work I made it back to my apartment and waited on Peach, Christen, and Emily to arrive. When they got to Mt. Everest (The name me and my roommate, Joe, gave our apartment) we made a run to the local Rite Aid to pick up some essentials consisting of Coors, frosted animal crackers, Mountain Dew, blankets in the shape of pigs, and deodorant. Yeah… essentials. I had told some friends that I wanted to karaoke at my favorite place in the city at 9:00pm. After about a 2 hour subway mishap, we finally made it to Iggy’s where my wonderful NYC friends had been waiting since the original arrival time. After my apologies and the mixing of NY and Alabama friends, the dance/karaoke party began. Later in the evening I got to sing my “go-to” song, “When You Were Young” by the Killers. Christen was supposed to sing “Mercy” by Duffy (remember this) but they put her name at the bottom of the stack for some reason. We decided to leave and on my way out, a girl pulled me over to her table. Her exact drunken words to me were, “I like your style. They way you look, the way you sound, the way you move. You wanna grab drinks or somethin’? Can I have your number?” I willingly gave her my number becoming regretful about 2 minutes after. I typically prefer not to make date plans with a drunk girl in a dark bar. I guess I got lost in flattery. Rina texted me the next day following up on my “interest” in getting drinks. I know this is where I sound like a jerk… but I did not reply. Sorry Rina.

2) Sunday was very chill. We woke up late, grabbed brunch at what I’m sure will become one of my favorite spots, hit up some Park Slope (where I live) shops, and checked out a local market. After getting back to Mt. Everest, my roommate Joe suggested that we check out a place called Crocodile Lounge. We got there around 8:30pm or so and just relaxed and had a few drinks that came with your very own personal pizza. Each drink equals one free pizza… you got that? Let’s just say we ate a lot of pizza ;). There were also two skeeball machines in the back where Peach and Emily discovered two guys who realized that one of the machines was broken and if punched correctly, gave out free games. Fast forward a few hours and several “pizzas” later, we had created a skeeball tournament with about 30 participants. We were regulating the free games, keeping the order the skeeballers themselves, and creating the high score benchmark. It was an awesome night of fellowship with new friends and complete strangers. After hopping to a few other joints… the night ended in a dance party. SCORE!

3) I had Monday the 19th off of work (thanks Dr. King) and took some of my friends to Seredipity3 for some lunch. I got to see Mr. Bruce- the owner who I hadn’t seen in a while, one of my favorite ladies in NYC- Miss Lynn the manager, and other great people that work there. Now remember I said my friend Christen had put in a request at karaoke to sing “Mercy” by Duffy cause Christen is somewhat of a HUGE fan. Guess who was sitting at the table right next to us? Duffy was… that’s who. We waited to talk to her while she finished her meal, so as she was leaving Christen turned around and stated that she was a big fan. FYI… Duffy is extremely nice. She said thank you and told us that it sounded like we were having tons of fun (which we were). Then Peach blurted out that it was my birthday though it wasn’t, but close enough. Duffy came and sat on my lap and sang me “Happy Birthday”. Ok… no she didn’t… but she did wish me a happy birthday and asked if I was 18. See folks, I still act like a child.

There you have it. A very short recap of Mattmas 2.0. It was so great to see my friends and have them spend this special birthday with me. I can’t thank or love them enough. Since I couldn’t get to everything that happened… enjoy these quick blips and use your imagination to find out what happened:

  1. Overwhelmingly smelly homeless man urinates on our stopped subway car with no escape.
  2. Stole a skeeball from Crocodile Lounge.
  3. Girl at Karaoke face plants.
  4. Love followed me everywhere.
  5. Introduced to the movie (500) Days of Summer… phenomenal! The soundtrack… also phenomenal!
  6. Cupcakes galore
  7. Made new contacts