Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Cash Cab On My Block

I've been watching Cash Cab for a couple of years now, and since moving to New York, I pay very close attention to the whereabouts of this money-dispensing game show in a van. Even though it seems like the cash cab keeps to the east side of town, and I rarely take cabs anyway, I still look out for it everytime I'm out. And I know it's been in my neighborhood before, because I've seen episodes where it's cruising down 9th Avenue, going under the Port Authority bus ramps, even picking up contestants right in front of Chickpea's vet! But today's episode hit a little too close to home. The cash cab was on my block. Not just my street. My block, people. It picked up 4 tourists from the bed and breakfast across the street and a few doors down from my building. If I only used my time wisely last week, I would've taken my camping chair out front and sat and waited all day until the famous cab pulled off of 10th Ave. onto my street. Then I would've hailed it down and taken it to Coney Island, racking up the most money ever awarded on the show. But instead, these 4 tourists who didn't even know about the show get the cab ride of a lifetime. I can only hope that this pick-up was one of those set-up pick-ups. Maybe the show's producers know one of the B&B employees, who tipped them off that this would be a rowdy bunch, worthy of camera time and the $850 they eventually won. Or maybe not.
I'll get you next time, Cash Cab.
Here are those lucky sons of guns getting picked up in front of the B&B across from my apt.
That church behind Ben Bailey is just a few doors down from my building!!!
That's my street corner!!!!!!!

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Mets Take Over ESB

As an avid watcher of the Empire State Building and it's always-changing light schedule, I was really excited to see the building this weekend with a split-color lighting design. In celebration of the Subway Series, the north and south sides sported Yankees colors (blue-white-blue) and the east and west sides repped Mets colors (blue-orange-blue), allowing Yankees fans in the Bronx and Mets fans in Queens to see their team colors from their respective stadiums. Monday night the building wore the colors of the series winner, the Mets.

After trying 50 times to take the perfect picture of the weekend light spectacular, I settled with this one from the internet (left).
(Below) Monday's lights, as seen from my roof. Try to ignore the massive new NY Times Building in the foreground.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Bloggers Take Over Human Giant

This weekend the Human Giant guys took over MTV for a live, 24-hour marathon featuring musical performances, a few music videos, and sketches with some of the UCBT's most popular performers. Highlights included Zach Galifianakis yelling for the Gilmore Girls ("Kill More Girls!"), John Krasinski in a stand-off situation with Michael Cera and Rob Riggle, rap sensation Cracked Out rapping about what it is to be "Bennigan'z", a hilarious performance by Zouks as "Bryce" the obsessive fan, and two appearances that brought out my possessive side when I realized all of America could see them: Nick Kroll as Fabrice Fabrice, craft services coordinator for "That's So Raven", and John Mulaney and Nick Kroll as the Oh, Hello guys. The marathon also featured this season's Human Giant episodes, culminating in a sneak preview of this week's season finale. If you look closely (I mean really closely), you can catch an appearance by yours truly and friends in the latest Illusionators sketch. We took part in the filming a few months ago on a freezing cold Monday night before a Crash Test. My co-star Katy blogged about the experience. Now you can finally see the fruits of our labor.

Here I am with my Melinda Doolittle impersonation (they say the camera adds 10 pounds and removes your neck).
Aziz catches the missle with his body. Paul mourns, Katie scowls.


Catch the season finale of Human Giant this Thursday at 10:30 on MTV.