The Moment of Truth

Last year I posted a little recap and some predictions about the next season of Lost. Finally, in 20 minutes, we'll see how accurate I was. Tomorrow I'll post a recap of the first episode of the fourth season and some adjusted predictions and we'll agree that yes, I am the coolest person you know.

Morales Takes Manhattan

I haven't posted about our New York City trip yet! Crap! This post was half done in my drafts box until I noticed it today. Finally, you get the stunning epic that you deserve.

Jamie and I went to NYC in December, right before Christmas and right after I took over at Harvey's. We stayed in the Flatotel, mostly because it was an awesome deal on Orbitz, it was in Midtown, which I liked, and Jamie saw it on America's Next Top Model. It was nice.

We did a lot of walking around, looking like tourists, gawking at all of the buildings and all of the famous crap we saw. The first day we hit Midtown and Times Square, only a couple of blocks from the hotel. It was, of course, crazy busy. The highlight was seeing Flavor Flav running around in the street like an idiot after his limo. I could have seriously mistook him for a crack head except for his giant clock swinging around his little neck. So that was awesome. The first day we took it easy, went to the Museum of Natural History and just kicked around Central Park a Little. The first night Maria and her boyfriend Joel took the train out from Philly and took us to dinner. I seriously have already forgotten what the place was called but it was really nice of them to pay for it. Sarafina. That's what it was. Moving on...

On the second day we decided to explore a little bit and swung over to Park Ave, stopped at Rockefeller Center and checked out the huge tree. At Park Avenue we saw a movie being filmed, hung out for a while, and ended up seeing Joaquin Phoenix. We stopped to window shop like a block away from the set and he must have followed us or something because he was right next to Jamie when we stopped. He's really really short. Then we swung down to Chelsea, the Village and SoHo and did some serious hardcore shopping. The coolest store ever is Brooklyn Industries. We spent a ton of money on ourselves and then took a hardcore nap. Friday night we met up with Mike Sacks, a fellow former living Field Secretary and he showed us a few bars and his tiny-ass apartment. We also saw these dudes who were McLovin clones at the last bar we were at. It was sad.

Saturday we hit Central Park and checked out their little-ass zoo. We also checked out the Apple store that's underground - the storefront was a big clear cube with the Apple logo on it. Like the future! We took it easy because the night would be a long one. Saturday was our big date night. For cocktails we hit One If By Land in the Village - a restaurant in Aaron Burr's old carriage house. The place was decked out like it was Fezziwig's or something, lots of garlands and lights everywhere. For dinner we hit Gotham, which was as good as expected. After dinner cocktails brought us to The KGB Bar, a super cool little place covered in old propaganda and portraits of the great minds of communism. This also happened to be where the Santa bar crawl was for the moment, which was great because I was wearing my red suede jacket. Afterwards we went to a comedy show at the Comic Strip, where Seinfeld is always performing in the intro to the show. Super funny, but the highlight was Rich Voss just destroying this drunk bitch in the front row who wouldn't shut up. It was classic. By 3:00 we were back at The Perfect Pint, our favorite Times Square Bar, singing Mariah Carey Christmas carols and pounding more beer. Ill-advised indeed. By 4:30 we were passed out with our street vendor gyros still in hand.

Sunday before flying back we hit downtown, saw Ground Zero, struggled to not punch the people who were selling pictures of the site to tourists and headed to Wall Street. We checked out Trinity Church and found the lost treasure of the Templars in the basement and then jumped on a plane and headed home. The End.

Not quite...

I was recently cool enough to be in two fantasy football final games at the same time. Confidently, I predicted a victory in my free league and a loss in my money league, mostly due to my wicked awesome lineup vs. my crappy waiver wire lineup.

Since I was already guaranteed $300 I figured what the hell, I'll play my gut and start Maroney and Barber for some U of M fantasy action. If I was gonna go down in flames against Romo and Westbrook I'd at least represent MPLS while I did it. Well, Barber ran for 110 and a touch, Maroney decided to show up for the last game of the season and ran for 156 and a touch, and Silky Garrard, who I really think I might be keeping, threw for two scores and ran one in. Braylon caught two and suddenly my mediocre team is looking pretty powerful. I won, 127 to 112. $600 bucks is a great Christmas present! How much did you make, chump?

Unfortunately, my outside shot at winning the right to come to your house and kick you in the nuts and take your dog because I'm so awesome didn't pan out. I lost in the finals of my ESPN league and took second. So I'm cool, but not 100% wicked bad ass. I'll take it.