Sign Language St. Pattie's with a Side of Beef

There are certain things that you think are completely normal while growing up, until you try to explain it to a friend from another country. St. Patrick's Day is one of those things.

When you're a kid you wear some green clothing and maybe eat a green-frosted cupcake. The holiday only takes on a bit more significance once you hit that tender age of 21 (or maybe 18, or maybe 15 depending on your hard coreness) and realize, "Wow, there's an entire holiday surrounding drinking". Suddenly, you might still wear a green sweater, but the focus becomes taking down Irish Car Bombs, pints of Guinness, and graduating from cupcakes to corned beef and cabbage.

It's 2011, I'm back in the US, and back in NYC, a land where St. Pattie's Day is serious business. Often called "amateur hour" by self-proclaimed serious drinkers due to the hordes of ill-trained drunks roaming the streets, from as early as 10am in Midtown you can see people stumbling around.

Wandering through the mess and looking for a place to eat with a friend, I remembered a new concept that can only exist in my fair city: the nearby Bowery Poetry Club recently began serving much buzzed about Roast Beef sandwiches....and trust me, they are just plain amazing.

There are two things I have to bring up about this. First, why? How? What the fuck? How does a place where I'd previously seen the most intense spoken word...where the hip and intellectual emoted on rape and racism...how does a poetry club decide it would get in the beef business?

Secondly, and I guess less of a wtf moment, when did "Boston style roast beef" become a concept? I do remember Kelly's Roast Beef in Boston, and thought they did make a great sandwich, but was this enough to coin an entire genre of food? I'm proud of my hometown for many things, but is this for real or is this some cynical marketing ploy (yes, the MBA in me has become somewhat suspect of all things business)?

We sat down and ordered. As we waited for the piles of thinly sliced beef, melted che

ese, horseradish, mustard, bbq sauce, and an awesomely branded bun, we decided to check out what was going on in the stage area of the venue. I walked up to a curtained area, where a man who probably says he is not a hipster, thus cementing his credentials as a hipster, told me "Sign language poetry slam, $4 cover".

He said this without a hint of irony or absurdity. Yes, there was a sign language poetry slam. I peeked in and was just too overwhelmed by the combination of things going on at this given moment and didn't have the wherewithal to take any footage for you so all I can give you is a generic Youtube clip.

I acknowledge this story is a bit rambling. It's a bit, to use my favorite word in the English, random. However, coming across a sign language poetry slam + while seeking out a Boston style roast beef sandwich + on St. Patrick's day = my kind of bliss.

Glassesblogging - Countdown to Lasik

"It's like suddenly seeing the world in HD" - my roommate.

Is the term "four eyes" still an insult? Has anyone avoided a punch in the face with the ol' "you wouldn't hit a guy with glasses" line recently? Is the librarian look still sexy or has it not been since the world realized Lisa Loeb was over 40?

Back at work only six weeks and as my vision became more and more blurred, the realization became clearer and clearer: I needed glasses. I went to the optometrist and this was instantly confirmed. Farsighted with astigmatism and a +1 power (I'm not even sure if that's the correct way to say it as I'm new to being a 'glasses guy').

My whole family has glasses, with my dad and sister both having had them since a very young age. I had always kind of enjoyed the fact that even though I was no Goose or Maverick, I could technically be a fighter pilot at least in terms of vision. The sight of people who wore contacts actually touching their eyeballs completely freaked me out.

Well, they arrived this afternoon and I'm wearing them as we speak. I'm still not terribly excited about this development as coupled with back problems of the past, it's yet another symptom of eight years of sitting at a desk.

The bright side however is, I can now sit in a Think Coffee shop and ponder really, really deep things. I can talk about how I'm not hipster but make people secretly think "that guy must be hipster" all the while actually convincing myself I'm hipster. Finally, I can already picture at work now someone coming up to me and yelling "what do you know about the the Consultative Assembly and legislative process in the House of Saud?" and when I respond "um, I work on the business side of the news" their natural response will be "But...but, you have glasses! You must know."

These are the only logical things that can happen in this brave new world I have entered.