Today I taught the students what I could, and then took a few of them on a field trip to play mini-golf. I haven't played mini-golf in years, but they were going to pay me to take them there, so I signed up for it. Then it started raining as soon as we left the office, so the activities coordinator suggested we go to another place named "Fat Cat." Since I'm currently reading a biography of Andrew Carnegie, I thought that was a good sign.
This place is in the village. You walk down these stairs and enter a room full of ping pong, billiards, and foosball tables. There is also a stage where performers play late at night. I realized immediately upon entering that I had been here before, once, six years ago. I was on a third date with a girl I had met the year before at a friend's party. She'd lived in Paris since, but remembered me and called me when she got back.
We had started the evening at a nearby restaurant that featured performers from Woodstock, NY. When we were there we ran into one of her co-workers who had just returned from teaching English in Japan. I'd told him that sounded amazing, and he told me to do it. So I did. But that's another story. Afterwards we moved to this place "Fat Cat" to see live jazz music. I was only 24 then, so the young crowd didn't bother me. It was an open free-for-all on that particular night, so anyone could play as long as they could keep up with everyone else. I recall that one of the performers was a guitarist who meandered on his own and played absurdly long uninteresting solos, much to the visible chagrin of everyone else on stage. There were no other guitarists though, so the leader couldn't boot him. My date was incredibly angered by this, and even said she wanted to "murder" the guitarist, which obviously put me off a little. She couldn't enjoy any of the other musicians because of him. Maybe if you're playing jazz with them you could understandably be upset, but we were just hanging out at a place for young people. I was already unsure about this girl after the last time I'd seen her (she'd been rude to the cab driver two weeks before). Like everyone she had her good side and her other side, but the other side involved being truly unkind to strangers, and that's not a turn on for me. I never saw the girl again, but I did make my way back to Fat Cat this evening, unintentionally, and they were playing some excellent John Coltrane, Billie Holiday and strange Cambodian music.
After a few games with strangers and students from Ecuador, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Brazil, I said good bye to the students and went to midtown east to meet some friends for happy hour, and had a great time.
On the way home I went through Times Square, carrying a copy of the Andrew Carnegie bio: The Richest Man in the World. There was a band playing music, as there often is. They were singing, honest to God, "Can't Buy Me Love."
I love the world.
This place is in the village. You walk down these stairs and enter a room full of ping pong, billiards, and foosball tables. There is also a stage where performers play late at night. I realized immediately upon entering that I had been here before, once, six years ago. I was on a third date with a girl I had met the year before at a friend's party. She'd lived in Paris since, but remembered me and called me when she got back.
We had started the evening at a nearby restaurant that featured performers from Woodstock, NY. When we were there we ran into one of her co-workers who had just returned from teaching English in Japan. I'd told him that sounded amazing, and he told me to do it. So I did. But that's another story. Afterwards we moved to this place "Fat Cat" to see live jazz music. I was only 24 then, so the young crowd didn't bother me. It was an open free-for-all on that particular night, so anyone could play as long as they could keep up with everyone else. I recall that one of the performers was a guitarist who meandered on his own and played absurdly long uninteresting solos, much to the visible chagrin of everyone else on stage. There were no other guitarists though, so the leader couldn't boot him. My date was incredibly angered by this, and even said she wanted to "murder" the guitarist, which obviously put me off a little. She couldn't enjoy any of the other musicians because of him. Maybe if you're playing jazz with them you could understandably be upset, but we were just hanging out at a place for young people. I was already unsure about this girl after the last time I'd seen her (she'd been rude to the cab driver two weeks before). Like everyone she had her good side and her other side, but the other side involved being truly unkind to strangers, and that's not a turn on for me. I never saw the girl again, but I did make my way back to Fat Cat this evening, unintentionally, and they were playing some excellent John Coltrane, Billie Holiday and strange Cambodian music.
After a few games with strangers and students from Ecuador, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Brazil, I said good bye to the students and went to midtown east to meet some friends for happy hour, and had a great time.
On the way home I went through Times Square, carrying a copy of the Andrew Carnegie bio: The Richest Man in the World. There was a band playing music, as there often is. They were singing, honest to God, "Can't Buy Me Love."
I love the world.
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