"We can whack each other's balls all we want"

My med school orientation was Monday and Tuesday, and today was the first day of classes. Everything seems to be going OK so far.

Sunday night there was a small MS1 (MS1 = first year medical student) gathering. By the time Dr. Shock (which is what I'm calling cool roommate now) and I got there, the party was winding down. There was a fiece game of beer pong going and Dr. Shock and I were invited to play. Dr. Shock had never played beer pong before and I only played it once, apparently by a completely archaic set of rules. The game is pretty simple, on each side of a kitchen table (or I guess you could use a ping pong table) 10 cups with a small amount of beer are placed in a pyramid, much like a set of bowling pins. One team of 2 people throws 2 ping-pong balls towards the cups on the opposite side of the table. If they land a ping-pong ball in one of the cups, the opposing team has to drink the beer in the cup. If the throwing team makes both of their balls into the cup, they continue to throw. If they miss one or both shots, the opposing team then gets a chance to throw. Cups that have been emptied of beer are removed from the playing surface. The winning team is the one who makes ping-pong balls into all 10 cups first. The losing team must then drink the beer from all unemptied cups at the end of the game. Personally, I enjoy drinking beer so I feel, as I do for all other drinking games, that the logic of the game is backwards. The winners of drinking games should be the ones who get the majority of the drinks. To the winner go the spoils, no? One more rule of the game is that once the ping-pong ball hits anything other than beer on the toss, like the table or a cup rim, it can be deflected by a player away from the target. So on a bounce off the table, I can bat away the ball before it gets near any of my cups.

After the rules were explained, Dr. Shock needed a clarification of when it was OK to block shots.

George, his partner, said "We can whack each other's balls all we want."

Yeah, I know. That was a lot of reading for a pretty piss-poor payoff.

The med school chartered the class a boat tour around Manhattan. The event quickly got the moniker of "Booze Cruise". Though I thought it would be more stuffy than that given that upperclassmen and some faculty were going along, it fully lived up to its nickname.

Dr. Shock and I smuggled vodka on board disguised as little bottles of spring water. I was convinced that we were the smartest, most conniving people in the world to have dreamed up such a fiendish and underhanded plan. About 20 minutes into the cruise, I realized that everyone (and I mean everyone) had little soda or water bottles with them that they only occasionally drank from.

After the cruise we went to a bar called 420 Bar. Being from CA I assumed this meant that the bar would be Ganja friendly, but it turns out that the street number of the bar is 420. The best part was that the bar is at 420 Amsterdam. When I pointed out the irony that the bar is located at 420 Amsterdam and that Amsterdam Holland is notorious for drug use and we all know what 420 means, most people looked at me like I was just some drunk guy rambling on about nonsense. Well, in all fairness to them...

But the bar being at 420 Amsterdam is kind of funny.

We have a wine and cheese tasting tonight. I'm thinking that the wine is the reason most people are going. I'm not sure you can get a group of 20-somethings to a cheese and cheese tasting. Dr. Shock wants to pre-party before the event so I better sign off and get some alcohol cushioning in my stomach.

"So porn is pretty much the same today as it was 70 years ago. Well, except for the haircuts."

My first day in NYC was pretty fun. I took a trip into Manhattan with my roommate who I will call "cool roommate" for now until he does something noteworthy enough to generate a more apropos nickname. I have another roommate who I will call "other roommate". Cool roommate had 2 friends in town, Depeche Mode and Hypersex.

We started out by going to Carnegie Deli, an apparently famous restaurant here in NYC. After waiting in line for about 30 min, we got seated and looked at the menu. Everything was crazy expensive. Sandwiches were anywhere from $15 - $22. Eventually we found a few things on the menu that were reasonably priced. After we placed our order our waitress said that we hadn't ordered enough. Apparently the place has a $12.50 minimum order per person policy. We decided that we would take our business elsewhere and got up and left. On the way out Hypersex decided she would order something to go. When she came out empty handed, she explained that the $12.50 minimum order applies to take out orders as well. What the fuck?

We ended up eating across the street at Ben Ash deli. Less famous and much cheaper. It's funny, at Carnegie Deli, there are hundreds of autographed celebrity photos on the walls. At Ben Ash Deli, there were also hundreds of celebrity photos on the walls, but sans autographs. I guess the $12.50 minimum is so you can look at signatures of TV and Movie actors.

After lunch we headed to the sex museum. The exhibits this month are "Men in suits" and "cigar smokers, stags and pornos". Men in suits is an exhibit depicting the rich history of nude male photography. More is the pity that the subjects, rather than the photographers, were the nude ones. Utterly gripping subject material. Cigar smokers, stags and pornos is about pornographic films from long ago. Basically from the 1920's through the 1950's. It was interesting that the porn films of yesteryear look almost exactly the same as the porn movies of today. Of course, there is more silicon today and the hair grooming habits of the actors have changed, but pretty much your basic porn flick content has been relatively static throughout history.

After the sex museum we went down to see ground zero. I had never been to the WTC when it was still standing so the scope of the event is kind of lost on me. However, on a lot of the surrounding buildings, you can still see the scars from where debris hit during the collapse.

We then headed over to Greenwich village for dinner. We ate at a little hole in the wall bar that had Newcastle Brown on tap. Mmmmm-mmmmmmm. I made an ale-pig of myself. Fortunately I didn’t have to pee once on the subway and then bus rides home. However, once we hit the apartment I made a bee line for the john. I’m pretty sure if the bathroom door had been closed, we would have ended up with a perfect Quagmire-shaped hole in it

Then it was homeward bound.

I must still be on W Coast time b/c I slept until almost 1 PM today. Then I proceeded to lay on my little inflatable bed all day and played computer games. I'm pretty bored right now and I want classes to start so I am something to do. I also want my stuff to get here. It's only been 1 night w/o my furniture and already I'm sick of it. I really had to stay inside today though, there was the most amazing thunderstorm all day today. It’s nice to live in an area again that gets big T-storms. I do enjoy them so.

Our class of 2009 profile came out today. I found out that we have a 47-year-old in my class. Hooray, I'm not the oldest student! There's also a 19-year-old student in this class. Uber-genius anyone?

We have a little 1st year get together tonight that I am about to head to.

Oh, I called cool roommate's friend Depeche Mode b/c in the city, he bought this straw cowboy had and wore it all day long. He looked like that guy from Depeche Mode. And Hypersex got her name b/c that is all she talks about. Her sex life in graphic, at times gory, detail. Good times.

Well, off I go.