I'll Call Him Le Roi
So a couple months after I turned 21 I took a week off of work and went to visit a friend in New York. If all that was really all there was to it this would be a pretty short story.
The thing was I was "working" for a internet game at the time. They gave me a free AOL account and I stayed logged into the text based game for certain number of hours while perusing the message board and purging unproved posts. It was like geek heaven. I suppose we thought it was the first step too virtual reality games. It was definitely one of the many things that drove the development of the modern Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. (MMORPG for the geek in the know).
My boss in the game, the person I chatted with the most gave me an open ended invite to come out to new York and crash at her place. What an odd concept people who had no real idea of each other except through instant messaging and a sort of geek gaming chat room deciding they had some sort of connection.
Right around the evil that is known as St. Valentines Day I was at my highest level of frustration with my work, with my lack of a love life, with my social life. So I decided to take my boss up on her offer and put a ticket to New York on my credit card.
I didn't actually do much in the way of socializing with my friend that week as she had to work (her position in the company actually paid cash money and therefore required an inordinate amount of time spent plopped in front of a computer. Her 25 year old daughter was between jobs and living with her so she offered to show me around town and I was glad for her company. I don't think I could have made my way around by myself.
New York is huge, but not in the way that Chicago is huge. In the area I was in (Manhattan) every bit of space has a building that is at least 20 stories tall. That apartment my friend lived in was three bedrooms a kitchen and a bath. You looked out the window in the kitchen and all you had a view off was a bunch of other windows. Instead of elevated trains that spoke off in the major directions of the city like in Chicago, Manhattan has subterranean trains that seem to cross every few blocks. My friends daughter took me all over the area. I was in Soho. I took in a performance of Les Miserables (on the credit card) and caught the Toasters playing at a bar, the name of which, escapees me. I ate at a restaurant called Asti's where the wait staff sang opera tunes and the food was incredible. I saw a portion of the first floor of the Met and spent half a day at The Cloisters.
My tour guide pointed out the twin towers to me. She said, "You know the ones from King Kong." I thought they looked a lot like the standard oil building here in Chicago so didn't spend much more than a second looking at em.
I came home with an alligator head. Sure there may have been a few other souvenirs but I've either lost them or given em away over the years. What I have left from my trip to new York is a real live dead alligator head that cost me some where around 60 dollars. My sense of the absurd wouldn't let me pass it up. It was part the alligator in the sewer urban legend mystique and just the idea that I went to New York and found alligator heads.
I named em Le Roi (kind of a New York Leroy but a little more French). I usually keep a stuffed animal jammed in it's mouth.
Years later my brothers went to New Orleans and brought me back a smaller version. I'm afraid that by the time I'm fifty I'll be that guy with real live dead alligator heads from all fifty states and half the world over. Then there will be nothing to do but wait for PETA to come knocking on my door an string my up by my testicles.
In Summary: I don't actually condone the killing of alligator just to sell their heads to morons like me, I just can't help making off the wall purchases.
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The thing was I was "working" for a internet game at the time. They gave me a free AOL account and I stayed logged into the text based game for certain number of hours while perusing the message board and purging unproved posts. It was like geek heaven. I suppose we thought it was the first step too virtual reality games. It was definitely one of the many things that drove the development of the modern Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. (MMORPG for the geek in the know).
My boss in the game, the person I chatted with the most gave me an open ended invite to come out to new York and crash at her place. What an odd concept people who had no real idea of each other except through instant messaging and a sort of geek gaming chat room deciding they had some sort of connection.
Right around the evil that is known as St. Valentines Day I was at my highest level of frustration with my work, with my lack of a love life, with my social life. So I decided to take my boss up on her offer and put a ticket to New York on my credit card.
I didn't actually do much in the way of socializing with my friend that week as she had to work (her position in the company actually paid cash money and therefore required an inordinate amount of time spent plopped in front of a computer. Her 25 year old daughter was between jobs and living with her so she offered to show me around town and I was glad for her company. I don't think I could have made my way around by myself.
New York is huge, but not in the way that Chicago is huge. In the area I was in (Manhattan) every bit of space has a building that is at least 20 stories tall. That apartment my friend lived in was three bedrooms a kitchen and a bath. You looked out the window in the kitchen and all you had a view off was a bunch of other windows. Instead of elevated trains that spoke off in the major directions of the city like in Chicago, Manhattan has subterranean trains that seem to cross every few blocks. My friends daughter took me all over the area. I was in Soho. I took in a performance of Les Miserables (on the credit card) and caught the Toasters playing at a bar, the name of which, escapees me. I ate at a restaurant called Asti's where the wait staff sang opera tunes and the food was incredible. I saw a portion of the first floor of the Met and spent half a day at The Cloisters.
My tour guide pointed out the twin towers to me. She said, "You know the ones from King Kong." I thought they looked a lot like the standard oil building here in Chicago so didn't spend much more than a second looking at em.
I came home with an alligator head. Sure there may have been a few other souvenirs but I've either lost them or given em away over the years. What I have left from my trip to new York is a real live dead alligator head that cost me some where around 60 dollars. My sense of the absurd wouldn't let me pass it up. It was part the alligator in the sewer urban legend mystique and just the idea that I went to New York and found alligator heads.
I named em Le Roi (kind of a New York Leroy but a little more French). I usually keep a stuffed animal jammed in it's mouth.
Years later my brothers went to New Orleans and brought me back a smaller version. I'm afraid that by the time I'm fifty I'll be that guy with real live dead alligator heads from all fifty states and half the world over. Then there will be nothing to do but wait for PETA to come knocking on my door an string my up by my testicles.
In Summary: I don't actually condone the killing of alligator just to sell their heads to morons like me, I just can't help making off the wall purchases.
More Laters
posted by Rich Rosenthal II at 1:22 AM
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