I know everybody has probably already done their lame review of their year already and it is kinda odd to do it now that the year has only 51 weeks left in it, but I’ve been busy and wanted to post about other things. So without further adieu, here is a recap of 2011:

I started the year in New York City. Oh, what a great motherfucking time that was, I can’t believe a full week has already passed by. Honestly, where does the time go, I mean it seems like just yesterday we were fighting through the harshness of early January weather as opposed to now, the harshness of early, late January weather.

Today I burned the painful living fuck out of my hand by touching the handle of a pan while I was cooking breakfast. See, every now and then I am prone to bouts of extreme stupidity and this was one of……………..wait. Wait just one fucking minute. I just realized that it is probably pointless for me to do a recap of 2011, shit, it is not even 10 days old. I guess I should recap last fucking year, 2010.

By the way, my new year’s resolution was to use the f word and is many variations, like motherfucking, fucker, fucko and fucking more often.

So about 20motherfucking10? I know for a lot of people, especially Congressional Democrats, it was a really bad fucking year. Not for me though. Overall, it was one of my best years, at least in the top 50 of all of my years, which is really saying something, especially since I’m only 35.

I rang in 20fucko10 with a small gathering of people at a friend’s house. Honestly, it was kind of lame, especially since one of my friends made it a point to explain how my life was not as great as his because I did not have kids to sit there and complain about for 3 fucking hours. The next day I decided that I would make my next New Year’s Eve way better. I would throw a huge New Year’s Eve bash. Or do the unrealistic and unthinkable; be in Times Square. Yeah, fucking right, Times Square, like that is actually going to happen.

One of my goals of the year was to do the impossible: plan a family reunion on my mom’s side of the family. This was impossible for many reasons, the least of which being that most of my mom’s family hates me. But, somehow, I forged on with planning. Long story short, it culminated with the highlight of my year: not getting murdered at the family reunion I actually planned in August. Everything could not go any smoother, which is damn rare in my mother’s family. Of course, it was certainly helpful that the biggest troublemaker of it all could not attend on the account of him being dead. Maybe next year.

My sister and her two daughter’s came out from Colorado to stay with me for a week. Not only was I able to plan a successful vacation for me and my siblings, I also finally was able to have us sit for a family portrait. Maybe next time I can get everybody to smile.

Well shit, I haven’t used the f word in two paragraphs. Fuck me.

Throughout most of the year, I never thought about refinancing my house, yet when the motherfucking opportunity presented itself in October like a waiting hooker with her ass cheeks spread open, I took it and ran with it. Two months later I successfully refinanced my house at an interest rate that was 38 points higher than I was paying before. Way to go me, and a big fuck you to logic!

Speaking of October, I had what some would deem a relatively successful Halloween party, however I don’t recall me having much if any sex at that party, so honestly, how successful could it actually have been?

Shit, no f word again.

And fina-fucking-ly, it turns out I did make it to Times Square this year, who would have thought it? The year ended with me doing something 100% totally different than it had become with a whole bunch of fucking shit in between. Yay for 2010! Bring on 2011!! Fuck yeah!

Most of this post is going to come off as me being self centered, arrogant and even a bit narcissistic, but I’m going to write it anyway.

It’s only been three days, but I already miss New York. A lot. And because work has been beyond horrible, I feel in dire need of another vacation. While I was out of the office last week and the first day of this week, my work pretty much didn’t get touched and instead just piled up. It is not the fault of my co-workers; we are just that busy. And over the course of the rest of the month, I will be working mass amounts of overtime. It makes me want out. Very bad.

A friend of mine at work saw me today (she was off yesterday) and was very happy to see me and hear about my trip. I told her how much I loved NYC and how I want to go back again and again and she told me how I can be doing so much more and that I’m way better than my job. She is frequently telling me how funny I am and how she wants me to be on a small web show she has that pokes fun at every day situations. She said I should totally try to do something with my talent. A few minutes later she put a post it note on my cubicle wall that read “too fly for a cubicle.” I was touched. It also got me thinking. Serious thinking.

Why can’t I do more with my life? Why haven’t I done more with my life? I know I’m funny. Not just funny, but damn funny. People have been telling me this my entire life. About five years ago I had a co-worker who was leaving write in a card to me to get out and share my gift with the world. I had another co-worker who kept pushing me to try out for Chicago’s famed Second City. She even went as far as to print me out an application. I had another co-worker tell me I missed my calling and I was wasting my talent here at work. Another friend of mine told me she was the funniest person she ever knew. Honestly, I can go on and on, but let’s face it you probably don’t want to hear all of that jazz.

When it comes to comedy, I’ve always been afraid of failure. I know it requires not just a lot of work and talent, but even more than work it requires a lot of luck. I’ve always assumed that even if magically, I was some how funny enough, I would not be lucky enough. Let’s face it, there are plenty of people who are funnier than me who have failed. I’ve got a comfortable life; it’s not like I’m dirt poor or that I hate my job. But, I can also be doing better.

I’ve always been the level headed thinker who makes smart decisions. I don’t go with the fads and in things. I’m never the type to hear about a certain place and than uproot my entire life and move there. But, New York…………..there was something about New York. After seeing the American Idiot musical and being in Times Square and everything else, I want to be a part of all of that. I’m not saying I want to live there. But, I want to spend a lot of time in New York. I want to be more than what I just am right now. I know I’m good enough. I know I’m smart enough and funny enough and good looking enough. Fuck, that all sounds so shallow. I just don’t want to look back on my life 20 years from now and say “fuck, I’ve wasted my life; look what I could have been?”

Yet, a part of me knows that whole scene and dream is ridiculous, especially for somebody my age. Shit, I wouldn’t even know what I would do. It’s not like I’ve got experience doing anything in the way of comedy, acting, writing, or performing of any kind. I’ve got a comfortable, safe, stable, and for the most part, happy life right now, why would I want to disrupt that life? And what’s worse, I wouldn’t even know what exactly I want to do or how I would even achieve it. I guess in a word, I’m lost.

But, I’ve got to try. I’ve got to do something so that I don’t have the dark cloud of regret hanging over me when I’m 50 years old. The question is, so now what?

Continuing on about my trip to New York City. Saturday morning I got up about 9 and showered and the girls got up at 9:30 to get ready for our day. After stopping for breakfast at a small place, we went to the NBC studios at noon for our tour. Truth be told, I was not too excited about the tour. Even after it was over, I thought to myself that I could have done without it. The tour consisted of a tour of the sets for the Dz. Oz Show, the Jimmy Fallon Show and Saturday Night Live. SNL was really the only one that I was interested, the others I could do without, however one of our tour guides (NBC calls them refers to them as a page) was really cute.

All three of us really wanted to see the Statue of Liberty, especially Kristine, it was a must do for her. I had already seen it and gone up into it including the crown when I went to NYC in 1998. So we hopped in a cab to Battery Park………..or maybe it was Liberty Island? Or was it Ellis Island? I’m not sure, but it was the place that you go to catch the fairy. The line for tickets was very long and pretty much as soon as we got there they made the announcement that tickets were all sold out. We also found out that to get tickets to actually go up into the Statue were only available online and had a wait of several months. Instead, we got tickets to a boat ride that went around the Statue and actually stopped directly in front of the Statue for about 5 minutes.

While on the boat ride, I talked them into seeing the Broadway musical of Green Day’s American Idiot; now we just had to try to get tickets. Christie called and gave them all of her info but lost the call before getting a confirmation. So she called back and did give them all of her info including credit card number only to have them tell her that they needed to try to get tickets for her and they would be calling back or emailing her within 20-30 minutes to let her know if they got the tickets. Well an hour went by and we had not heard anything. We were back at the hotel shortly before 5 and the show started at 8 and Christie had already called to try to confirm the tickets but nobody answered. Finally we called again right about 5 and confirmed that we had the tickets. I could not be anymore excited; I love Green Day and American Idiot is probably  my all time favorite album. To make matters even better, Green Day’s lead singer, Billie Joe Armstrong, would be playing one of the characters in the musical that night.

After dinner at a nearby diner, Christie did some shopping down 5th avenue while Kristine and I walked around Times Square and Broadway. On the way, we picked up the tickets at the will call window. We wound up sitting in the last row of the St. James theater, which might sound bad, but it was a very small theater so we were still pretty close. Of course, I have never been to a Broadway show, but I always imagined there being an older, upper class crowd. This was not the case at all as there were a lot of younger, punk type people there; people with hair colored different colors and people wearing Green Day shirts, probably not your typical Broadway show at all.

The show was fantastic; it was everything I thought it would be and then some. When Billie Joe came out on the stage, the crowd went nuts. When he left the stage, the crowd went nuts. I think he might have been a bit of a distraction, but he was still pretty good. The cast pretty much did every song from American Idiot along with a few songs from 21st Century Breakdown and 2 new songs. When it was all over, they were given a huge cheer and standing ovation. The curtain went down and came back up and they took a bow and it went down again. Then it came back up and the entire cast, including Billie Joe was on stage holding acoustic guitars. I knew instantly what they were going to do: play “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)”, which has always been one of my favorite Green Day songs.

We got out of there at about 9:50ish. We did not have much time because we were planning on going to Madame Tussauds which is a wax museum just a couple of blocks away. So we rushed over there just in time before they closed at 10. For those of you not familiar with Madame Tussauds, don’t feel bad, I had never heard of it either. But, here is a link to their website:

http://www.madametussauds.com/NewYork/

The figures were amazing as was the shortened 20 minute version of Polar Express in 4D. I would give more details about Madame Tussauds, but honestly you can just check their website and I will save you the boring details of my writing about it.

After stopping off for a beer at an Irish pub, we went back to the hotel. The next morning we were planning to leave about 9:30. I got up and went for breakfast at Grand Central Station. The weather was nice; 55 degrees out. Before leaving town though, we stopped off at ground zero. While it was chilling to be there, I couldn’t’t help but be a little put off by the people on the street selling things about September 11th, such as a book and dvd.

On the way home we stopped off in New Jersey and I went into a Shell station to get some scratch offs. I won $3 on one of the two scratch offs I bought. The guy then refused to pay out saying that his machine was broken and that I would have to come back after 6, which of course, didn’t work for me because we would be 2 states away by then. I was fucking pissed though, I asked him why the hell he would sell me a fucking ticket if he knew his machine was broke and couldn’t’t pay out. He just kept on saying the machine didn’t work. I yelled at him and swore at him before walking out. Normally I would have really made a bigger stink over this just based on principal alone, but it was only $3 and we still had a 12 hour drive ahead of us.

The rest of the drive was uneventful. Remember that 55 degrees in NYC? Well by the time we had gotten to the Ohio-Indiana boarder it was 15 degrees! The funny part was that Kristine’s car shows the outside temperature so we got to watch as it gradually went down the further west we went.

So that was my trip. Overall a great time, I really love New York, so much that not only do I want to go back a lot, but I also think that I could see myself living there someday. Oh sure, I’m never actually going to live there, but I love it enough to want to live there.

Okay so now I’m back home on my normal computer so I can update better. Also, in the interest of not boring you do death, I will have to spread it out details of my trip over 2-3 posts.  I should clarify that I went to New York with two friends; Christie and Kristine. After dinner Thursday night, Kristine had some work to do back at the hotel, so Christie and I walked around Manhattan for a couple of hours. Our hotel, The Roosevelt, was located at 45th and Madison, just a few short blocks from Times Square. It was also right across the street from Grand Central Terminal (a.k.a. Grand Central Station). I had always heard about Grand Central but never actually seen it. Turns out that in addition to being huge, it was also beautiful.

We started to walk towards Times Square. Along the way, we went through Bryant Park which had an ice skating rink that was filled with people. Mind you, this was at 11:15 at night. You know what they say though; New York is the city that never sleeps. As we moved onto Times Square, we started to see more and more neon lights. And street vendors selling all sorts of crap. And the people, holy shit the people. After walking around for an hour and a half, we went back to the hotel.

We got up fairly early on Friday morning, New Year’s Eve. Although we got up at 7 in the am, we didn’t actually make it out the door until 8:30ish. Kristine unfortunately still had work to do so she was going to have to meet up with us. I wanted to eat very badly at the Carnegie Deli. We started to walk in that direction which involved going down 5th avenue. The thing about New York is that pretty much on every street it seems to be one iconic thing after another; things you have heard about your entire life or only seen on t.v. or in magazines or online. Look, there’s the Empire State building. Holy shit, it’s Radio City fucking Music Hall. Look, there is Rockefeller plaza. This was how it was for us. Hell, even I was impressed by St. Patrick’s cathedral.

Much of the morning I had the line “guess who eats together at the Carnegie Deli? Bowzer from Sha-Na-Na and Arthur Fonzerelli” from Adam Sandler’s “The Hanukkah Song” stuck in my head. In fact, it was the prime reason why I wanted to go to Carnegie Deli. As soon as we walked in, the first picture on the wall I saw was Henry Winker who played Arthur Fonzerelli (The Fonz) on Happy Days. As for the food, it was simply amazing, holy shit. Huge portions that were so good you just about could cream your pants, even if you are a girl!

After that, we finally met up with Kristine at Rockefeller/NBC studios. We went up inside to the top of the rock, which I’m told has the best view of the city. It was pretty amazing, but I’m not convinced it was better than the view I had from the Empire State Building the only other time I was there in 1998.

I know I’m skipping some things or leaving some things out, but I don’t want to make this post a mile long. After stopping off for a glass of champagne in a bar nearby, Christie wanted to check out one of the world’s nicest hotels, the famed Waldorf Astoria. The lobby was very nice; they even had a piano that Cole Porter used to play. While there, Kristine stole an over sized fake pine cone from their Christmas tree. She gave it to Christie as a memento of the trip.

We really wanted to at least make it over to the Empire State building even if we weren’t going to go to the top. So we walked over there, took some pictures and walked around in the lobby. Sounds boring, but there was some cool shit in the lobby. We also check out Macy’s legendary Christmas window display which was every bit as cool as I had heard. We were getting pressed for time though as we needed to be in Times Square by 4.

We stopped off at the hotel to drop some things off and do a few things about 3pm. We needed to make sure we were dressed warm enough to stand outside all night long. And because Times Square on New Year’s Eve is a pickpocketer’s wet dream, we wanted to be sure to leave our wallets and valuables back at the hotel. All I had on me was my cell phone, my hotel key card, about $30, and my driver’s license so that my corpse could be identified. We were on our way to Times Square about 3:40. The plan was to grab a slice of pizza along the way. Or so I thought. Christie on the other hand, thought it would cost us too much time to get pizza, especially since could get pizza in Times Square after entering.

At first we tried going in at 44th street, but The Man told us that was not the place to enter and that we had to go down to 49th street. We got in a non moving endless line to get into Times Square about 4:10. We stood and waited to be let in, but the line was not moving, literally, they were letting nobody in. Finally at about 5 they started searching everybody and letting them in. After about 5-10 minutes, they told us that entrance was full and they could not let anybody else and we should go to the 52nd street entrance. I was pissed. So, the whole sea of people, probably a couple of thousand started racing to 52nd street. We get there and they said it was full too and we had to go to the next entrance. By this time, I was hungry and very pissed. The whole point of this trip was to be in Times Square at midnight as the ball dropped and now the whole thing was in jeopardy. People were anxiously racing, running and some pushing to get over there. I was thinking that we weren’t even going to get in so why even bother putting our safety at risk for a fruitless endeavor. Shit, I’m a tiny guy and could very easily get knocked down and trampled.

We get to the next entrance over and waited for about 10 minutes or so. Finally, we were let in! We were there! My dream of being in Times Square as the year ended would come true. I was also starving so we stopped off at the supposed famous Ray’s Pizza. Being that I was starving and this would be my last chance to eat or drink anything for over 8 hours, I got two slices, one was with macaroni as a topping and the other with pepperoni and sausage. While it was good, it certainly was not the best pizza I ever had and a pale comparison to Chicago pizza. In the great New York-Chicago pizza debate, the verdict was in: Chicago!

If there were a lot of people in Times Square on Thursday night, Friday night there had to be 10 times more. Unfortunately, we were so far back we could barely see the giant jumbo trons and couldn’t even see or hear the music and entertainment coming from the stage. We did have a good view of the ball which was on top of the jumbo trons. Did you know the ball continually changes colors throughout the night? It would be red, which made it look inflamed. Soon it would be yellow, which made it look like it was sick. It would be an off white, which made it look like an STD. And it would be blue, which looked painful as all guys know, a blue fucking ball really hurts.

We wound up being in a large group of people literally in the middle of the street at 51st and 7th. I have it memorized because we literally spent like over 7 hours there. There is no food or drinks (not even water) of any kind allowed in Times Square on New Years Eve. And once you get into your spot, you are pretty much stuck there for the whole night. Still, it was exciting to be there. We met lots of interesting people. We did think it was crazy that some people brought there kids. The people behind us for most of the night had brought there kid who was probably about 10-12 years old. I did not find that all that bad, but the people who brought there kids who were about 5 years old were nuts if you ask me.

Much of the night, I was texting people back home. We had a ton of friends and family who were excited and worried for us. It was kinda cool to be have them live vicariously through us. As the night went on, the electricity in the air started to grow. Even though we were far away from the action, it was still exciting to be there once it got to be about 11:30. The crowd was giddy with excitement. For the last half hour, people were occasionally hooting and hollering and dancing and singing. Finally at 11:59 the countdown started. People were cheering so loud and the noise was echoing off the buildings. It was about the most electric place I had ever been. Then the clock struck midnight, the ball completed it’s 70 foot drop and Times Square went nuts. In the distance we could see the confetti drop. Fireworks were going off. That last half hour from 11:30 to midnight made the whole trip worth it.

By 12:15, people were emptying out of Times Square. Everybody was happy though. People were high fiving strangers and wishing them a happy new year. In a country heavily divided and a society that seems to be angry and constantly on the edge, New Year’s Eve brought people together and kept them in a good mood, it was amazing.

By this time, we were starving and thirsty as hell. So, where else to go but Carnegie Deli again for some kick ass cheese cake!

Tomorrow, a recap of Saturday.

Thanks to a friend of mine who brought her laptop with her, I don’t have to wait until I get home o remember everything on my trip so that I can post. Our goal was to get on the road by 8 in the PM on Wednesday night. We actually got on the road early at 7:45. The drive there went well, except for when it was time to stop to get a room. Because we were going to the eastern time zone, we lost an hour. We drove for about 4 hours before deciding to get a room for the night. Where to find a hotel? We were about a half hour west of Cleveland. In this day and age of technology, we were able to find a room on our phones. The plan was to drive to a La Quinta because my friend had a free room. As it turns out, sometimes the GPS is full of ahit. It got us lost. Also, we each had a GPS (2 of us had it on our phones) and each of the GPS’s had their own directions. It was like they were arguing with each other! Eventually we had to settle on paying for a room at a Super 8, getting a room by about 3am.

After grabbing breakfast at a local diner right next to the hotel, we were back on the road about 9:30 with about 8-9 hours left of driving. Everything was going great until we hit the Seacacus toll just before the Lincoln Tunnel. We had just over 6 miles to go to get to the Roosevelt Hotel in midtown Manhattan. All of a sudden, there was a traffic jam. Not just a traffic jam, but the worst traffic jam of our lives. We had .02 miles to go for our next turn. And we sat and waited for what seemed to be forever. And I had to pee which made things worse. Shit, we should have stopped an hour earlier to get gas, but we figured we were so close to getting there. We sat in traffic waiting to pay this damn toll for over two fucking hours! We got to that toll at 5:15 but didn’t get to our hotel until 9! Yeah, it took us about four hours to go 6 fucking miles. By the time we had gotten out of the car, we had been sitting for damn near eight hours!

Our plan was to get some New York style pizza that night, but by the time we got there, we were so hungry that we just went up to a great Italian place right down the street.

Okay, writing with a lap top is totally different and this is taking me forever. I will post more when I get back.