Mexanese Mumbo Jumbo

Ah the fall. It's my second favourite season. I love the crisp wind on a sunny day, the trees look amazing with their multi-coloured leaves lining the streets of my neighbourhood, the cozy fall fashion. While the excitement of the return of my favourite TV shows has created a euphoric effect in the Fukuyama abode, I have been struggling with how to continue my Vampire obsession that has become stronger thanks to Streefy. True Blood's season came to an end the other week and the thought of going for the next 9 months sans a weekly fix of Vampires evokes feelings I usually reserve for the mid-Vancouver-winter blues.

Thankfully the Vampire craze has also taken a hold of Hollywood and a new series has popped up to sustain the addiction through yet another tv season - Vampire Diaries. I've only seen 2 episodes and while it's not an HBO TV series, it will keep the sad, depressing feelings at bay, at least until the true Vancouver winter blues set in.

With the Vampire obsession taken care of, I have been free to explore what new series I will be following this fall and which ones I'm over. I have started to watch Glee, which is a TV version of a musical. While I'm not 100% sold on it yet, Jane Lynch, who plays the cheerleading coach out to disband the Glee club, is currently enough to keep me interested, as is the curiosity to find out if all these people actually do their own singing.

I have also started watching Mad Men, yes I'm aware - a couple of years late to the party, especially considering they just recently won the Best Drama Series at the Emmys. Just need to catch up on the first two seasons and I'm sure it'll be making regular appearances on my PVR.

While sadly Pushing Daisies and Eli Stone are cancelled, I'm very excited about the return of Dexter, House, Dollhouse, The Unusuals and Southland to name a few.

I have a feeling I will not be having much of a life this fall, unless I find myself a cute boy who loves TV as much as I do.

In a very quick and spontaneous moment at brunch the other day, I decided to go to New York for the September long weekend. Since I already had the friday off, it was an easy decision.

I headed out friday morning at an ungodly hour. Really - no one should be up at 5 am - ever! After making a pit stop in Phoenix, we finally arrived in NYC. We were so amped about being in New York to start with, but take into consideration the time change and, as Justin put it so eloquently - "there's still some party left in Justin!"

We quickly dropped off our luggage at our hotel which was smack dab in the middle of Times Square, and headed out for a night on the town. We ended up at one of the many irish bars between 7th and Avenue of Americas and found a lovely irish bartender to entertain. After many beers, and many drawings of Melbourne and Acapulco, we were ready to call it a night, except that our new Irish friend decided he wasn't ready for the laughter to end and bought us a round of beer. This may have been my demise.

We were supposed to meet up with Caroline at 11 am the next day, and of course 10:40 am came around way too early - surprise surprise. We made our way, albeit slowly, to Rockefeller Centre for their art tour which was by far the longest 1 1/2 hrs of my life. Being hung over and listening to a lovely gentleman from Texas talk about Rockefeller Jr.'s eccentricities and vision, really, not good for the nausea...especially when there aren't any easily available bathrooms should one feel the need to hurl. Thankfully I managed to keep it together until the greasy burger and fries that basically brought me back from the dead.

We then proceeded to the Top of the Rock where the "Relentless" chaos not only began, but may have frightened the other tourists with the sudden bursts of laughter, snorting by Justin and sober debauchery in general.
The next day was an epic walk through the various neighbourhoods of New York. We headed west through Hell's Kitchen, slowly made our way through Chelsea and the Village, finally stopping in Soho for a bevvie and a visit to Evolution to check out the skelingtons. Although they had some cool stuff - the number of spiders began to give me the creeps, as did the fetus skeleton. After surviving the crowds in Chinatown and Little Italy we managed to find our way over the Brooklyn bridge.

That night we headed down to the Lower Eastside to meet up with Caro and Hinh for some sushi and sake on our last night in the Big Apple. Afterwards, we decided that bar hopping was the best way to get to know the neighbourhood so off we went. We eventually stopped at a lovely Cuban bar with tasty margaritas & mojitos, not to mention Van Gohg vodka, a most dangerous beverage due to its ease of drinkability. We ended the night at a bar where we, yet again made friends with the bartender (I see a trend) and to top it all of, they served tator tots as an appy!!

Although it never ceases to amaze me, our time in the city that never sleeps came to an end and we headed back to reality, still in awe of how incredible New York really is. So kiddies, if you know of any Manhattan ad agencies looking to hire an interactive pm (and pay to move me), hook me up! I would move to NYC in a heartbeat!

A few months ago I was invited to a Brewmaster's dinner. As a beer lover, how could one turn this dinner down? Having been asked by a lad whom, at the time, I had a crush on, it only seemed appropriate I bring a girl as my date.

So I began my search for my pseudo dinner date by asking all the girls I know that drink beer. Any dinner called "Brewmaster's", it's only natural to assume there will be beer present...4 pints to be specific, per person. I had to be fairly selective with who I invited. My criteria was as follows:

- drink beer
- be a good wingman
- be able to handle 4 beers and not be smashed
- be willing to have 4 beers on a school night

Not outrageous criteria, or so I thought. Slowly all the girls I asked replied with various forms of declination. I got everything from sorry I have plans already to absolutely no response (I secretly think it's payback for using an unwanted nickname on twitter). I decided to reduce my criteria to any girl I know being available on thursday night knowing that should they not like beer, I could easily drink an additional 2 pints and still be semi functional the next day (and being 5ft nothing 6 pints of beer is quite the feat). Still no one was available.

I then decided to give up on my gender criteria and asked all my guy friends that are in serious relationships or married. Still no one was available. So I finally gave up all criteria in general and asked the rest of my guys friends, which considering I have quite a few, I thought would have been a shoe-in. Turns out that I don't know as many people as I think I do, because not one of them was available to go. Course the fact that I gave them less than a day's notice probably didn't help. Oops.