I got in touch with my masculine side today, via film and food.  Evidently if you see a movie before noon it is only six dollars, so today a troop of us, Brad, Santosh, and some of their friends, saw The Hangover around 11:00.  Some of said troop might actually have been hungover for The Hangover, but I was not among them.  Zach Galifiniakis was one of the best things about that movie, he is kind of awesome, a large overgrown baby with a beard and no shame.  I was also fond of the tiger, the song about the tiger, the song in the car about three best friends, a bit about card counting, and sofa pizza.  Oh, and the camera montage that plays alongside the closing credits.  That was awesome.  A fairly funny film, with a few hilarious moments, though I still laughed harder during last year’s Pineapple Express and Forgetting Sarah Marshall (now I have the freshest cereal), but not too shabby for six bucks.  Oh, also, anything with Vegas is still fairly awesome, for I love Las Vegas.

So after the movie we left the theater and walked down 2nd avenue where they were having a street fair (because there are always street fairs in New York, everywhere, every weekend) on our way to Madison Square Park for Big Apple BBQ.  Santosh got something to eat at the street fair because he doesn’t eat meat, just fish, and the BBQ only had pig and cow.  I respect his decision but still, meat is delicious.  As we approached Madison Square Park the streets grew thick with people and the air even thicker with the haze and wonderful aroma of barbecue.

Unfortunately it was all downhill from there.  The park was a mad house, it was raining, and there were lines of about an hour and a half for each of the stalls (about fifteen total, scattered from all over the nation).  After about fifteen minutes of wandering we decided that we were civilized human beings and that we would go to a barbecue restaurant and sit and eat like sane people.

We ended up at Brother Jimmy’s BBQ on Lexington.  I actually walked past a location on 2nd in the 80s later this evening, so evidently there is a location up by me.  The restaurant was covered with ACC stuff: posters with mileage distances to all the ACC cities, including Chapel Hill, a Carolina blue Franklin Street sign, and old Southern kitsch.  The website actually states that the restaurant was opened by UNC and Duke alumni, so this makes sense.  It also makes sense of the fact that the BBQ was North Carolina style: the vinegary rub characteristic of the Triangle area.  This, of course, only applied to the pulled pork.  I myself went straight for the beef brisket sandwich, which did not disappoint: very tender, with a smokey, slightly sweet flavor.  The sweet potato fries I got on the side were a little soggy, but the slaw was tasty, if a little too covered in slaw sauce for my liking.  Also, the wings we ordered as an appetizer were awesome, but I really never can complain about buffalo wings.  They’re fantastic.

We hung around the restaurant for a bit because Brad and co. ordered too much beer (there was a special) and they were determined to conquer the pitcher.  They had no help from me because, despite the best efforts of my friend Nora who obsesses over beer the way some people obsess over wine, I don’t like the taste of beer.  I left before the pitcher was conquered, so I can only hope that the boys were successful in their quest.  I then headed back to my apartment where I attempted to do nothing by taking a nap, then going to get a much-needed pedicure, then getting some Pinkberry and fruit for dinner to account for my large and meat-filled lunch.  BTW, I still prefer Red Mango, but until they open a location on the UES, Pinkberry will have to suffice.

I then walked up about twenty blocks to meet Phil at a party for the BMI Lehman folk hosted by one of the women who had sung on Tuesday.  The party was extremely chill, with lots of food and musical theatre talk and some networking with a woman who is working on an organization called Young Women on the Rize, a Bronx-based organization that gives entrepreneurial and life skills training to women between the ages of 16 and 25.

The party’s hostess, Gaby, is quite good fun and very much into the musical theatre and music scene–she was fantastic at the singing, as I noted in an earlier post, and sang a really hilarious song about men and death.  I also talked some nerd talk with Eric, who wrote the Battlestar Galactica musical, talked about Next to Normal with Phil and a few of his other classmates.  All good people–many of whom I will see tomorrow at Phil’s reading for The Wasp Woman.

Tomorrow: more musical theatre BMI stuff via Phil’s reading, and a trip into Brooklyn to see some Sarasota folk.