Roll Over Beethoven!

Out of a city of 15 million, I should expect to get upstaged in a big way any time I try to do anything. Here it is:

newyorkintern.blogspot.com

Don't let the straightforward web address fool you. This guy is in the jokes telling business, so you don't get the straight scoop. He works for the Daily Show, and in reading his jokes, it makes me think, "ah yes, that's what it's like if you're actually funny."

A little bright spot showed up in my week when a little senorita gave me a call on Monday. Unfortunately, she's leaving in a week, but this could still have some real long-term benefits. It all revolves around her mattress, something I'd like to buy from her. It's more expensive than my first car and looks like it took only a bit of wear in its year of usage. I think my back would thank me for years if I bought it.

We met in German class (oh, before I let you assume it too long, she has a boyfriend and we've been platonic) and it turns out that her boyfriend is a German from some town, one of the hundreds that I've never been to. They'll both be at her little going away party tonight, to which I'll be going. Who knows, maybe I'll regain my ability to speak a little German? I've found that it goes well, or decently, as long as people don't give me a strained look that says, "give us a phrase, anything that we can use to understand you."

Manhattan life is progressing faster than I'd thought. Before I even have a real job, I've got real stress, which focused itself on the left side of my back. Yesterday I could take no more of this and I called my sports club for a massage. The expensive massage left me weary and today it still hurts, something that the masseuse assured me would happen. This is really standing in the way of my rigorous exercise program, which goes 6 days a week unless I'm a little sick or tired. Then I cut it down to no days a week.

My creativity and attraction to a certain class of intellectual led me to think that the banking industry was the only place for me. Well, I've heard nothing but warning or astonishment from those who know me, so today I thought about the job, as I understand it, of coffee importer. It's a beverage I like, one that I can discriminate between the awful and the tolerable. I've spent a little time in Central America and in Africa. I can sleep at night while people toil away for poor wages. I can speak Spanish and French, and in instances where my language abilities falter, I can pretend to speak them instead. I can even go to a port and watch containers lifted onto trucks, thereby confirming the actual importation of the coffee.

I must say, for those of you like me, with some French ability (or even Italian might work), the job of wine merchant is a booming trade in New York. I can't do it because I don't drink, but there are those of you stuck in boring jobs who could really do a number here and in France. According to the wife of someone in my French Class (a country girl from Lainguedoc), the first year was hell, but now her wines are at Tavern on the Green, the overpriced Central Park eatery, among other places. Life probably doesn't get better than describing beverages to people.

Sorry my German or Spanish friends. I don't think that peddling dry sherry or Riesling will buy your daily bread.

posted by Wellsmus @ 7:49 PM