Two years and one month ago I slipped on some ice while walking home, I may or may not of been drunk, and I slipped on some ice and hit my head. Unbeknownst to me, I suffered from major head trauma, and amnesia, thus forgetting about this blog, so very ridiculous no?
So here is a picture of a pizza I made from scratch. 
Since the beginning of September my time has been completely eaten up and left me with little time for sleep, and even less time for laundry. Good thing I own about 30 pairs of underwear. Aside from working 30 hours at BN cafe, I am now the producer’s assistant for a documentary dubbed, From Ghost Town to Havana. You will probably hear me talk about this doc for the next 6 – 12 months.
From Ghost Town to Havana examines the role of coaches and mentors in the lives of young boys, 9-13, living in poor neighborhoods in Havana, Cuba and West Oakland, California. It explores the contrast between growing up in the two different environments. The boys in Ghost Town of West Oakland live in what some consider the toughest and most violent US neighborhood. Some of these boys family members or friends have been murdered in front of their eyes, while others have drug dealing parents. Most of the boys have no father figure, but are lucky enough to have loving, supporting, and hard nosed mothers to push them. The Ghost Town boys are tempted with the glitz and glam of making fast money as a drug dealer or gang life. In their situation its impossible to resist.
In Havana, Cuba, boys of the same age receive free health care, free eduation, and a huge amount of love and support from families and the community. Cuba invests a lot towards their youth. Cuba has excellent educational programs, which are producing excellent minds in engineering and medical minds. However, the harsh reality is that with the free education in Cuba also comes the lack of opportunity as an adult with a career. They boys in Ghost Town have a multitude of opportunities available to them, but are not receiving assistance to attain the education or means necessary to escape from Ghost Town.
This documentary follows a set of boys who are attempting to reach goals greater than their environments may allow. It is a powerful, controversial, and inspiring film. There is a demo at www.playtwopictures.com, which can give you a greater sense of the goal of the film. Eugene Corr, the filmmaker, hopes to take the Ghost Town boys to Cuba to play against the boys there in a friendly exhibition match.
In my absence from New York City, I have spent many moments over a cold glass of beer reminiscing of the good ol’ days in the big apple. One of my favorites and one that I like share with friends and my mom likes to share with everyone is the most jaw-opening and speechless moment of my life, as of now. As my loyal readers, you must all be aware that the majority of my celebrity sightings occurred during my working hours at Barnes & Noble in the Lincoln Triangle, and this one is no different. However, this is a person I would never expect to encounter in my life nor had the memory to instantly recall her face.
It was a typical Saturday when I was put on a register at BN Music department and on this extremely busy day I was paying little attention to who my customers were. During one moment when the line grew particularly long an average looking Asian women in her 30s came up to my register and unloaded a bunch on items on my counter. I noticed an elderly Asian women with sunglasses behind her acting very aimlessly. The younger Asian women also had unloaded a bunch of merchandise on my co-worker’s counter as he was rigging her up. So this pile of junk in front of me was obviously for the older Asian women not paying attention at all. As I finished ringing the products and was ready to ask for a form of payment, the younger Asian women yelled at the older Asian women and said, “I need your card to pay.” I didn’t care who paid me, and grabbed the card as it was put down on my counter by the younger Asian women. Here was the first shock when I picked up a Black American Express Card, which if you don’t know is called the Centurion card, has a $2,500 annual member fee, and in the U.S. a minimum charge limit of $250,000 per year. Every time I got one of these cards, which was quite often, I internally said, “Holy fucking shit!” And I also made sure to check the name, but most times it was someone I’d never heard of and just a person who had a lot of money. But this time was different, and as I read the name I can only describe my feelings as a weird cocktail of confusion, disbelieve, and surprise. I glanced over at my co-worker, Jarvis, and he mouthed to me what was embedded on the card, YOKO ONO. I looked at my customer, my eyes flashed wide open, I said nothing, and swiped the card.
John and Yoko Ono.
Then, Mrs. Lennon had a slight problem. The magnetic strip on her Black AMEX card was faulty and not working on my register. I swiped multiple times, but had to tell her that her card was not working. I was forced to speak with Yoko Ono, and it felt like I was touching a small part of the world’s history. I don’t even know if my speech was recognizable as English, but Yoko spoke back to me and handed me another card. The women charged with the act of breaking up The Beatles stood right in front of me and smiled. I was embarrassingly star struck. Nobody will ever have a celebrity sighting to top that.
For two years I have been calling New York City home, but after today it will be another place on a list of locations I have called home. It’s in good company too: Lima, Peru; rural Arizona; rural Tennessee; rural Wisconsin; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Rome, Italy; and London England. Ok so maybe four of those aren’t way exciting, but nonetheless, it’s a good list. However, New York has definitely been the most rewarding places I’ve called home. That may or may not be a fair assessment since in all the other locations I’ve lived I have been a student, but I can’t imagine having a more challenging experience anywhere else in the United States. New York City is a hard place to live, if not one of the hardest places to make it in the developed world. It’s expensive, crowded, competitive, unforgiving, rude, dirty, and is home to the smartest people in this country. If you live in this city and are surviving, you should be extremely proud of that accomplishment, and for two years I could say that and take pride in it. The challenges I’ve dealt with living here have allegedly made me more mature, according to a person who met me when I first moved here and we recently worked together again this month. And hopefully I can be a testament to the platitude; “If you can make it in NYC you can make it anywhere.”
Its always sad to say goodbye to a city you love and friends, but I won’t be able to forget my time in NYC, with all the different (sometimes crazy and neurotic) people I’ve met here and everything I’ve experienced. I will miss my corner bodega, my subway station, seeing the Empire State building every morning then turning my head to check for traffic and seeing Yankee Stadium, going to Little Italy and pretending to be part of the Corleone family, being trendy in Soho, bashing New Jersey, Kennedy Fried Chicken, celebrity sightings, riding the elevator to my office with Marc Jacobs employees and feeling like I bought my clothes at the toilet store, the mariachi band on the 4/5/6 train, last call at 4 a.m., staying out all night until the trains are running on a regular schedule the following morning, avoiding Times Square, cursing when forced to go to Times Square, and hearing everyone complain about the city despite it being one of the most loved and admired cities in the world.
Finally, two years ago in London I saw an exhibit at the Tate Modern about the rapid increase in urban populations around the globe, and it pointed out that 14 people move to New York City a day. 14 new people competing for jobs, apartments, and queuing up for a slice of pizza at Grimaldi’s in DUMBO, every day, not to mention all the tourists and commuters. I was excited to be one of many fresh faces in the city, and now excited, but a bit disappointed, to be one of the many that leave the city every day.
- MRP
If I have any skills what so ever I would say that I could recognize any celebrity no matter how minor they are. I’ve even been recognizing reality show celebrities lately, isn’t that ludicrous? However, one hung-over Sunday morning at B&N music department, one celebrity was browsing and it did not dawn to me who he was until he was right in front of my register. Viggo Mortenson came in casually wearing a Mets T-Shirt and jeans. He bought some crap and I was mentally screaming “Holy shit! Its Aragorn II, son of Aragorn I.” Yes. Nerd Alerts should be going off right now.
Viggo as Aragorn
I happened to be wearing my Italia zip-up. And as Viggo was surely disgusted by my star shock, he asked me in Italian, “Do you speak Italian?” And I said in Italian, “Yeah a bit.” Viggo then asked, again in Italian, “Are you Italian?” And replied, “No, I was born in Peru, but my heritage is Italian.” I guess Viggo was feeling chatty this morning, because he then switched boats and asked me “Hablas español?” And I for some dumb reason replied, “Si, y tu?” I quickly realized that I am an idiot and immediately asked, in Spanish, “Where did you learn to speak Spanish?” And I think at this moment, Viggo realized that I was challenged either mentally or maybe he figured that it was Sunday morning and perhaps I was still recuperating from previous evenings engagements; either way, he quickly grabbed his stuff and started running away, but did kindly reply, “I lived in Argentina until I was 11.” I was left confused and star shocked for the rest of the day, and impressed by Viggo Mortenson. Not only does he speak English, Italian, and Spanish, but he is also a poet, painter, musician, and photographer. All around amazing and interesting person, but I’m most impressed by his brief stint as a truck driver in Denmark.
- MRP
For the first time ever since I’ve lived in NYC, minus vacations, I have a two-day weekend. That might sound crazy to you all, but that’s the way things are for lots of people in the city. As I have stated before, NYC is amazing and I do love it, in fact I wear an I heart NY t-shirt everyday because you can buy 8 for $5 on the corner of 33rd and 5th, but it is expensive to live here. In order to pay bills, I have worked 6 or 7 day weeks for almost two years, and I almost don’t know what to do with myself with a two day weekend. I may have to consult some sort of book for ideas, but until then and during my lunch I was able to catch my favorite teen high school movie…Can’t Hardly Wait.
If you haven’t seen it…then we can’t be friends anymore, because I would say it’s one of the great ones. Sure Entertainment Weekly says The Breakfast Club is the best high school movie of all time, but were they a teenage boy circa 1998 with a huge crush on Jennifer Love-Hewitt? I don’t think so, plus Molly Ringwald isn’t even attractive. To me Ethan Embry as Preston Meyers is quality, and the rest of the cast is awesome: Seth Green, Lauren Ambrose and Freddy Rodriguez from Six Feet Under, Jason Segal, Selma Blair, Jerry O’Connell, Breckin Meyer, Donald Faison AKA Turk on Scrubs, and Peter Facinelli who was in Twilight. Can’t Hardly Wait is fun to watch and laugh at its ridiculousness. It also has some top-notch dialogue to quote. I get happy just thinking about it…that’s how much I like it. It also makes me think how teen high school movies are lacking lately. I mean seriously, Twilight? What’s up with that? The last good teen high school movie was Superbad, and that was two years ago. I miss the teen high school movies of the late 90s/early 2000s. But I guess it is extremely difficult to top Can’t Hardly Wait, She’s All That, Dancer Texas Pop. 81, Varsity Blues, 10 things I hate about you, Whatever It Takes, Cruel Intentions, and The Faculty. I guess I’ll just have to grow up and start watching serious movies, maybe even something with subtitles.
MRP
New York City is amazing. It is one of the most desirable places to live in the world, and with good reason. The city has almost everything you could ask for and in multiple ways to get them. I love this city, and living here gives me a sense of pride for being a New Yorker. New York is known for a lot of things one in particular is New York Style pizza, and with it comes the idea of the NYC pizza joint.
Ziti and Bacon&Tomato
I’ve experienced a lot of what this city has to offer so it’s hard to pick a favorite of anything, but my favorite pizza joint is a little hole in the wall called La Traviata. Even though the name is Italian and pizza was created in Naples, Italy…these Latin Americans (I think they are Mexican) at this restaurant make my favorite and best pizza in the city. They sell New York Style pizza, which means huge ass slices, in their tiny, outdated, rundown restaurant. They have a huge variety, but the best way to judge a pizza place is how good they’re plain cheese pizza goes down. La Traviata’s plain pizza has the right amount of grease and a delicious seasoned crust. I like to add a little extra garlic, but straight out of the oven is just as good. The price for a single slice is good at $2.50 for plain. Price varies for each type of pizza, but the Ziti Pizza or the Bacon and Tomatoes Pizza are extremely worth the extra $.50. If you’re ever around the Upper West Side and craving a slice, hop over to 68th between B’way and Columbus for a true New York Pizza Joint experience.
- MRP
George Costanza
The Brazilians are known for many things: excellent soccer players, beautiful beaches, gorgeous citizens, the largest party in the world, and now for promoting urination during showers. That’s right. Someone is finally promoting an act that most deem disgusting and vile, but many have done in shame. Urinating in the shower has always been looked down upon and considered a no-no by everyone I know, but now a group in Brazil is urging everyone to pee in the shower. Why? According to the website, http://www.xixinobanho.org.br/, you can save large amounts of water. After doing a little research I found out that if you live in the U.S. with a family of five and have a toilet made after 1994, your family could save 2920 gallons of water per year if everyone peed in the shower once per day. Obviously, the amount of water saved depends on how many people use the toilets and how much water the toilets uses, but no matter where you this is the newest proposed method to save water. Sounds kind of gross, and goes against what we’ve been taught as a society, but apparently a survey conducted by the fundação SOS Mata Atlântica, 75% of the visitors to the website, http://www.xixinobanho.org.br/, do pee in the shower and are doing their part to save water. Maybe, we are wrong then. Maybe the few people I know that have unashamedly declared that they have peed in the shower once or twice, aren’t horrible people. Perhaps, I shouldn’t be judging them, but joining them in their bold movements to save water. We should cheer those few on in their valiant efforts. Alas, I feel this campaign will have little effect in this country, and maybe one day peeing in the shower will be considered a cultural difference, similar to not tipping waiters/waitresses in Europe.
Even though the website states that peeing in the shower is fine – from a plumbing standpoint and probably more important as a health issue – it seems to me that George Costanza was wrong when he saw a drain and felt it was more convenient to pee in the shower then run to the toilet.
“It’s all pipes!!”
- MRP
Last weekend on May 9th I had the pleasure of attending my sister Andrea’s wedding. Now, I had no beef with anything about the wedding. Including the fact that it occurred the day before my birthday, but lets be real I only turned 24 – not exactly a milestone in anyone’s life. I did enjoy myself and was happy to see Andrea and Scott get married.
Andrea’s wedding was held at Cancer Survivors’ Garden in Millennium Park of Chicago, IL. Then, the dinner and reception was at Gibson’s Steakhouse in downtown Chicago. Some of you may or may have not heard of Gibson’s Steakhouse, but to give you an idea of this place I will mention this – Billy Joel chose to have his birthday party there the same night of Andrea’s wedding and his party was next door to us. Obviously, Gibson’s is a classy and semi high scale locale. There was a lot of time spent in coordinating this wedding and reception and it was a lovely ceremony and wonderful reception, but I don’t think I would have the patience or desire to put so much effort into it. Maybe I’m just not as classy as I should be. I mean I probably would have been just as content with a reception at chuck ‘e cheese, they do serve alcohol there as well. It’s just not for children.
However, the great part of the wedding was seeing the two families come together in happiness. The Matuchas (Scott’s family) and the Parodis were all smiles and the parents of the bride and groom were just as happy, as Andrea and Scott were to get married. Clearly, the best part of any wedding reception is the dance party. Now I can recall when my cousin Joe married Nicole, about ten years ago, when I did not dare put a foot on the dance floor, but I was also in my extremely awkward teen years. But last year at Marcela and Fred’s wedding and this year I made sure to show off my moves. My dad, on the other hand, out did himself this year and started the dancing all by himself. First, he started by dancing with the violinists, who were playing rock songs, performing during the dinner. Then, after the ceremonial first dance and parents/newlywed dance, he invited everyone else to join the fun. Numerous dance circles occurred, and we all got to show off our dance moves. Even I was bold enough to hop in the middle and utilize my dancing shoes. Watching my dad I can see where I got my limited dancing skills and the confidence to just go for it no matter how ridiculous I may look.
Papa Parodi warming up
Papa Parodi bustin a move.
Me doing the white man's overbite and Jessica laughing at me.
- MRP
Ciao I miei amiche. For the past couple of days its been raining here in NYC, which is awful. Don’t get me wrong, I like rainy days and the calming nature of its pitter-patter on the window, but walking around the most populous city of the US in the rain is a bitch – huge puddles, but most annoyingly…people with umbrellas. Now there are some pros to the umbrella, i.e. keeping you mostly dry and occasionally giving you an opportunity to get to rub up to someone you may have a crush on (provided that one of you has an umbrella and the other doesn’t). However, most people have no umbrella etiquette what so ever. And it has to stop. People who use umbrellas are the most selfish sons of bitches and bastards on the sidewalk, similar to Patrick Bateman; however, without the whole murdering part. The use of umbrellas needs to be regulated and a proper etiquette needs to be formed. I want to set some guidelines so that I no longer have to guard my face as I walk down a NYC street on a rainy day or nervously turn a corner with my head down while walking against the rain.
1. If you are using a huge umbrella, and my definition of a huge umbrella is anything you paid more than $5 bucks from a guy on the street, then you need to be at least 5’5” or tall enough to extend your arm up in the air so that it won’t hit me in the face as you walk by or when walking in an area filled with pedestrians.
If you are shorter than 5’5” or have short arms I suggest you get a hat that has one of those small umbrellas on it.
2. If you are using an umbrella don’t stand next to someone that isn’t covered by it, cause you are dripping water on him or her. Duh!
3. If you are using an umbrella and come across someone on the sidewalk that doesn’t have one you should give them the right of way because your getting in the way.
4. If your cheap umbrella blows over and is ruined by the wind, then everyone should be allowed to point and laugh at you until you throw it away, because a faulty umbrella isn’t helping anybody.
5. If you are using the table umbrella from your local country club to protect you from the rain, then you need to seek psychiatric help for your pathetic fear of getting the slightest bit of water on you. Pansy.
Those are some guidelines to keep in mind before you head out of the house with your umbrella on the next rainy day, and accidentally poke someone’s eye out with an umbrella. Thank goodness for my glasses.
- MRP
