Spilling Culture

Lately I’ve been spilling coffee on myself more often than not. Every morning I walk over to Starbucks to get my ‘bold’ Columbian cup of caffeine that will jolt me out of my sleepy existence. Unfortunately it also ends up leaving stains on my shirt. Sometimes the lid isn’t shut tight. Sometimes I’m not paying attention and the entire slit on the lid doesn’t make it into my mouth (of course it doesn’t help that I have a small sized big mouth). And then sometimes I just bump into someone and the spill happens. Of course, like clockwork every Friday when I go to the cleaners, Mr. Chung (which by the way isn’t his real name) will look at my shirts and go “more coffee stains!!” and I’ll laugh out loud in an attempt to look less foolish and even lesser of a slob. I’m sure he thinks I’m an idiot.

I’ve been considering giving up my morning cuppa and sleeping through the day. I wonder if my client will notice. It'll shrink my dry cleaning bill for sure.

Speaking of liquids that are consumed, I’ve cut down on my alcohol intake. Not that I need to worry about being in AA or anything but my Friday and Saturday nights were becoming wilder than my weekends in college. Sometimes I would have no recollection of what time and how I made it home from the last bar that my friends and I were at. No idea if I took the subway or a cab. No clue if I paid the cab driver an obscene amount of money. How I got into my apartment building, changed into my pajamas etc. etc. The only thing I remembered was everything spinning around me.

So two weekends ago I decided to not hit the bars and enhance my cultural side instead. It began with a trip to the Museum of Modern Art on Friday evening with my cousin and a buddy of his. I put on my cool glasses and walked around feeling like an intellectual. The exhibits did not appeal to me in the slightest but I didn't display how I really felt. After a while I couldn’t keep up the pretext - I took my glasses off and began passing inane comments. The three of us would try to make sense out of nonsense, giggling like schoolgirls. It isn’t easy going through five floors of bad art and pretending that it’s working for you. On the other hand making fun of bad art can be quite entertaining. The best part of the entire experience was the café where I had a cup of really rich hot chocolate and didn’t spill any.

Chocolate schmocolate … we were exhausted and decided that we needed a drink. So we walked into the closest Irish bar and loaded up on Guinness. Now THAT felt really good!

That same weekend I went to the Opera. The production that we had tickets for was called Falstaff by Giuseppe Verdi, a comedy no less! I was told by some of my more frequent Opera going friends that this was a good one to break into.

The dress code was a big topic of conversation. Some people said that a “suit was the bare minimum but a tux would be the most appropriate” (while I rolled my eyes). “Jeans and blazer”, “Definitely wear a tie”, “Things are very different now – people dress very casual”. Anyway, I went with a button down shirt, dress pants and a blazer. And fit right in thank you very much.

I was always skeptical about the Opera. I’m not a big fan of Broadway musicals and I somehow never thought that I would get a kick out of fat people singing falsetto in a language that I didn’t understand. But was I in for a surprise! It’s hard to explain what I specifically enjoyed but I had a blast. I realize that people don’t have a ‘blast’ at the Opera but I did. I loved the grandeur theatre, the dramatic acting and singing, the subtitles (!) and the sets were amazing! The fat people were really fat and very entertaining. I felt completely enriched with the entire experience. The only thing I missed was seeing people watch it through those little binoculars. Do they not do that anymore?

We wanted to follow up the Opera performance with high tea at the Four Seasons or the Astoria Waldorf (did I neglect to mention that we went to a matinee performance?). Unfortunately we couldn’t get into either place as they were packed with people who wanted the same thing – tea in silver pots, little scones and crumpets, finger sandwiches and British accents. I was all set with mine but didn’t have anyplace to use it at.

All in all it was an entertaining weekend and I only consumed alcohol once. I’m going to ignore the part about watching a Bollywood film ‘Race’ in the theatre the same weekend. Just pretend that it never happened. It would completely be against my whole two days of being a culture vulture and we can’t have that, can we?