misAdventures of Workmonkey 3.0

I attempted a novel approach to this past weekend, by staying in on Friday night, sans alcohol (meaning I limited myself to one beer, a Negra Modelo at our local Mexican restaurant, Mezcal, which had great carnitas, the best i've had in NYC to date. Of course, like most great restaurants i've been to lately in Brooklyn, not a soul was in there, even on a Friday night). On Saturday morning, I awoke in a state unknown for the past ten Saturdays - I was clear-headed. Also, note my choice of words here. It was the morning when I woke up, not the afternoon (with an assist to Jill, who makes more noise getting up in the morning than an Alaskan grizzly bear emerging from hibernation in a den filled with kid toys). By noon, I had worked out, sweated out imperfections in the steam room (I can only handle about 3 minutes in there before my lungs start to get pissed off the oxygen they are taking in is 250 degrees), and showered. Last time I made that sort of time, I was in 5th grade and hadn't even started masturbating yet.

To celebrate this thing called "an afternoon", Jill and I grabbed some towels and sunscreen and met Charlie and Kim at the Brooklyn Bridge Park Beach. You have to love New York. Only here will people from a 20-mile radius flock to a parking lot filled with sand, and beach chairs rentable for 10 dollars. Off of the pier, bobbing in the East River, was a huge barge with a built-in pool. It was so popular, you had to get a time assignment in order to enter the pool. Of course, pools filled with a three-year-old puerto rican kid's piss, eczema flakes, and fecal chips isn't my bag, so I skipped that part. But, with the iPal speaker bumping, a full view of downtown NYC, and sunscreen giving me about 7-minutes of free time with my shirt off before catching aflame, it was a highly enjoyable experience. Legitimately felt like I was at the beach for awhile. Who needs the ocean when you have the East river? Plenty of eye candy too. The guys asses, er, I mean, girls boobs, were plentiful and beautiful.

After showering off in the freezing East river-supplied showers, we headed up an outdoor wine bar off of Atlantic for a bottle of Pinot Grigio (I pretty much despise white wine, but Jill loves it, so, being the accommodating boyfriend I am, I shared the drink with her). As we sat in the shade of an Oak tree, we watched as Charlie engaged in his new project: seeing exactly what the people of New York will pick up from a street corner, and how long it takes to be picked up. The initial test, a box of cupcakes from Crumbs, was unsuccessful. Nobody took it, either at the corner of Canal and Broadway, or the corner of 7th and Leroy in West Village. There were plenty of looks, even one poke, but no takers. That is too much to ask, even of New Yorkers. Even after the addition of the "Free Cupcakes" note, nobody took them. So Saturday, at the wine bar, we tried something more tame: a self-pissing doll, in a box, with a bow on it. Placed on the corner of Atlantic and Henry in Brooklyn, we had a taker within five minutes. I'd describe it, but we have video of the pick-up and walk-away. We'll continue the experiment, sort of an amateur sociology project, so we can graph the places, things, and people involved with the pick-up of this sort. What won't people pick up, if it has a bow on it and is free? Anything?

When discussing this with a co-worker, he told of a prank his frat buddies played in college called "poo dollar". Essentially, they'd take a dollar bill, wipe their ass with it on one side, then take that dollar bill, and put it on the street, poo side down. Then, they'd hide and wait until someone picked it up. Upon seeing the poo, he said, most people would put it back down, tho some people would just throw it in their pocket and keep walking. This is the reason people are afraid to take free stuff on the street. It might be free, but then, it might be smeared with poo. And it is this line we want to discover: exactly what products overcome a person's fear of poo?

The bottle of wine finished, we returned home and spent the remainder of the day watching television. And I went to bed having learned an important lesson: Days are longer when you don't wake up at 3 PM. I'll see what I can do with that data in the weeks ahead.