My favouritest German intern of all time, Jessica, recently came back into town after being back home in Düsseldorf for nine months. In honor of her visit–and because she bugs me about it at least once a week–here are the greatest photos from the night we said goodbye:
I like how Beth apparently had no idea that this was supposed to be a funny picture
and not a try-out for “America’s Next Top Model”.
These are funny because I’m, like, the not-drunk-est person everyone knows.
Please notice Anthony’s face in the background.
I don’t remember why this was being done, but I do know it was offensive.
We all rode the bull. It cost $15. Someone paid for me, because that’s how I roll.
I broke my thumbnail on it.
Sonya puts this much feeling into literally everything she sings. This was probably “Barbie Girl”, Jessica’s absolute favourite song to do at karaoke. She likes to sing the boy part even though she’s the girliest girl you’ll ever meet.
One of my office’s gamblin’ German interns, Niko, finished up the extreeeeemely important work he was doing for us and moved back home on Monday, so nine of us went to Atlantic City two weekends ago to give him a proper sendoff involving a motel with a pamphlet of instructions on how to store your gun, scuffles over moist towelettes, and the finest rear ends I’ve ever seen on a lady.
Emily, Niko, Beth, and Jeff outside the Trump Taj Mahal
The first time I went to Atlantic City last month, my trip was paid for, and I thought it was maybe only fun because I didn’t spend any of my own money. But no! It turns out that I really do like cheesy theme casinos and their atrocious carpet.
Beth cuts a rug. (Get it?!)
Jeff drove Beth and me to Atlantic City on Saturday afternoon, and it was just as exciting the second time seeing the strip and all of its bright lights come into view. We checked into our cheap (but clean!) motel and then immediately went to the Virginia City Buffet in Bally’s to meet the others. We were already standing in line when everyone walked up, and one of the guys tried to get Niko to notice us by pointing to a sign on the wall that we were standing directly underneath. I started jumping up and down to get his attention, but he evidently had real interest in the sign. When he finally did spot us, hugs and laughs were exchanged, and Niko was genuinely surprised, because he’d been told that everyone already had plans for the weekend and couldn’t come to AC. Delightful!
We went back to our rooms after dinner, cleaned up real pretty, and took a cab from the strip to the Borgata for some dancin’. The casino was a totally different experience from the others I’d been in, as it was full of young sluts in formal wear instead of old people in sweatpants. Although maybe that had something to do with it being midnight instead of 2 p.m. Beth had suavely gotten us on the guestlist at Mixx, which meant we got to skip the line to get in but still had to pay $20. And I should mention that there wasn’t actually a line to get in. But still!
The club was actually really fun, and the DJ played a mixx of hip-hop that I’d of course never heard in my life and 80s alternative that I did a lot of happy screaming about. (Sorry, Beth and Jeff.) Beth and I are pretty much the whitest people you know, but we still thought we were really tearing up the dancefloor after a couple of drinks. Jeff disagreed. Still, we stayed until 3 a.m., and he danced with us the entire time, so I’m going to continue to open up the curtains in Kamran’s apartment and shake it for the neighbors every night.
The next day, we met for a fairly awesome brunch buffet at the Marriott across the street from our cheap (but clean!) motel and then went to the Taj to watch the guys in our group lose all of their money at the poker tables. Beth, Jeff, and I stuck to the slots, and I won $20 on one, while Jeff won . . .
yes, that says one penny.
I talked Beth into trying a machine called Kitty Glitter because of its ridiculous name, and she immediately lost half of the $5 she put in. Then she immediately won back a few dollars, so I started telling her, “Cash out! Cash out!”, because I come from the walk-away-as-soon-as-you’ve-made-any-amount-of-money school of gambling. But she refused and lost all of her winnings again, so I basically washed my hands of her. And that’s when she won $36. I was PUMPED. She of course continued playing until she lost $4 of that, but whatever.
Look at them kitties.
The three of us spent the rest of the afternoon walking along the boardwalk with Emily and Niko, eating Rita’s Italian Ice and Nathan’s hot dogs and caramel-covered marshmallows. It was the first time the sun had shone all winter, and we were so unaccustomed to it that we had to take off our coats and relearn how to sweat.
It was getting late by the time we made it to the opposite end of the Boardwalk, so Jeff stopped this guy who was pushing a cart and asked him to take us back to our hotel. I was under the impression that these guys were food vendors of some sort who just hadn’t stocked up their carts yet, but no, it turns out that their whole function is to push lazy people around. Here’s a video of our ride, though I assure you it’s not worth watching except to hear my extremely sexy, unusually high-pitched voice:
I do not care about the Super Bowl. Aside from backyard basketball games involving the word horse, I think sports are pretty stupid. Especially professional ones.
I went to a Super Bowl party last night, though, and I went all the way to Jersey for it. And by “all the way”, I mean that I took a bus 15 minutes to my friend Jeff’s apartment, but I couldn’t use my MetroCard to pay the bus fare, so it seemed like a big deal. I did watch the game, unexpectedly, and I casually cheered for the Colts simply because Indianapolis is much closer to my hometown in Ohio than New Orleans is.
And also because I thought all of the pregame crap about how much a win would mean to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina–which happened five years ago, people–was unnecessarily sentimental and trying to make a story arc where one wasn’t needed. It’s a football game, and its outcome has nothing to rebuilding a city and everything to do with giving the kind of people who stand behind on-air newscasters and scream and show off their replica team jerseys an excuse to get drunk and light things on fire.
Anyway. I found the bidet in Jeff’s roommmate’s bathroom about a hundred times more interesting than most of the Super Bowl commercials, but there was one that really pulled at my heartstrings, and no, it wasn’t the Budweiser one with the Clydesdale and the cow. It was, oddly, a promo for the NFL itself, telling its fans how much better they are than are than NHL and MLS fans:
Funny what a little well-placed Arcade Fire song can do.
This is all that’s left of Halloween, but it sure was good while it lasted. Kamran and I spent Friday night watching horror movies instead of, you know, piecing together a simple costume so as to not disrespect our friend Anthony’s party the next night.
To make us feel extra bad, Anthony seriously went all-out for this thing. As if we weren’t impressed enough to actually know someone who owns a house and can therefore have a legitimate house party (even if it was out on Long Island), he had the place covered in cobwebs and bathed in creepy lighting with awesome additions like strings of razorblades hanging in the doorway to the dining room. His friends all had elaborate costumes, and he went around the party in an H1N1 emergency response team uniform, drinking what he said was germ-ridden waste.
I ended up wearing a pink tank top with a black shirt covered in stars over it and said I was aurora borealis, while Kamran wore a striped sweater and said he was Freddie Kreuger had he gone straight, stopped murdering kids, and gotten his PhD. No one was impressed, but we brought a box of thirty assorted candy bars with us, so we didn’t get egged.
Of course, we ended up eating at least half of those thirty candy bars ourselves and stuffing more in our pockets for the long ride home on the Long Island Railroad, but no one was sober enough to notice.
My office had a going-away party recently for one of our co-workers who moved to one of our locations in Singapore mostly to have better access to prostitutes. Here are my favourite photos from the night, most of which involve us inexplicably sticking out our tongues:
The next day, people kept congratulating me on being a happy drunk, which I suppose is something worth congratulating someone on. My boyfriend was not one of these people, as he was the one receiving texts from me hours after I told him I’d be home that said things like, “i don kno if i can maeuke it!”
When he texted me back, worried and ready to come pick me up wherever I was, he found out that I was thirty feet from his apartment building. Hilarious to me. Not so much to him.
I'm Katie, a farmgirl originally from Ohio who moved to NYC in 2005 for no apparent reason. I like vintage-looking things that are actually new, filagree everything, people who don't make me feel awkward, meaning it when I say "no sleep till Brooklyn", and not trying too hard.
