Amy called Jen up to stand next to the beautiful cake she made. I love Amy's expression and how she's pointing at the cake and at Jen like "She made this! I know!"
The next sequence of photos does a fairly awesome job of summarizing what happens pretty much every time I attend a wedding. Oh yes, there will be dancing.
And with my good friend Amy Albano. Right when we walked in the door, we started running into high school chums! Here's Amy posing with Jen Eva (who I had the biggest crush on back in high school when she sat in front of me in geometry sophomore year...yeah, can you blame me?) and her little brother Ricky Eva (who has since got all growed up and actually works with my mom as an occupational therapist in a nearby public school!)
Amy gave a call and it turned out she was nearby! So she stopped by for some late afternoon lounging. And what's that up there in the corner? Is that Leigh working on her "Get a load of this fugging guy!" face? Let's take a closer look shall we?
And this time we were joined by karaoke first-timer Amy Albano! (Amy have known each other since 6th grade. We were roommates in college and in two different apartments in NYC! She was also one of the four people responsible for building the Indoorvillage!)
Tuesday night Amy Albano (who had just gotten back from six weeks of backpacking in South America, hence her browness) and I went over to the LES to meet up for Meg Wicker's bday party. Happy Birthday, Wick!
As soon as we walked in the door we spotted Hope. Despite the fact that I hadn't seen her since '93 (what's up, ten years?!?) she looked almost exactly the same (minus the totally hot B.U.M. Equipment stirrup pants and Candies™ she used to wear. (Aw yeah, Jersey lemme hear ya!).
Amy and I met up in Manhattan and took the NR out to Park Slope. Turns out that Southpaw, the venue PJ's gig was at, was right around the corner from the apartment Amy and I were roomies at when I first moved to NYC in January of 2000. Here's us posing with the freaky Zulu Lady statue right outside of our former subway sto
Aha! I know all three names here! Kara, the bride to be, Little Brother Billy (who to this day insists it wasn't him that I saw on the MTV special I saw about "Real World Appliacant Rejects") and Amy Albano.
Same thing here, that's Amy Albano on the left, but the other two? Doh! (Actually the dude in the photo's our waiter, so I guess it's no big deal that I don't remember him...but the girl in the red dress? Ann-something? Crap, I'm a bad person).
Eating. I should've taken more pictures of all the crazy food that Jess made but I think I was pretty much too busy eating. Besides the melon, there was hot butter squash soup, a giant salad (mozzarella and tomatoes in balsamic vineagar), eggplant parmesan, pasta in spicy pepper sauce, four huge garlic-marinated steaks...and, um, other stuff...I forget.
This photo is the one we went with for the Photo Greeting Card. The rule was that when you smiled, both your top and bottom rows of teeth had to be visible. Otherwise it wasn't a true "Holiday Cheer" smile.
The Construction-Themed Holiday Shot. (At this point, we'd been renovating our loft space for the last 6 months and one of these seemed appropos.) Dzija with googles and expanding foam insullation, Amy with extension cord, Barlow with dry-wall gun and helmet, me with cordless impact nail gun.
The denizens of the future indoor tiki village in Greenpoint.
photo: Michael Sofronski
Raw Loft in Factory Building
Toni Schlesinger
Tuesday, September 5th 2000
Location Greenpoint Rent $1800 (commercial) Square feet 1400 Occupants Amy (freelance producer, artist's assistant); Andy (musician); Andrew (Web designer); Brian (record company employee)
We can't say what your last names are, because you are living in a commercial space that is not for residential use and you are not supposed to sleep here, though you can be here 24 hours a day working on your Web sites and such and "taking naps," like hundreds are doing all over Greenpoint and Williamsburg these days. [Brian] That's correct. [Amy] If you drive around the neighborhood, every other building is full of artists living in commercial spaces, factory buildings. When Brian's mother came to visit from New Jersey, she said the hall to the loft looks like a prison.
It's long and skinny, five feet wide with a metal floor, and there are all the doors to the other cells - I mean lofts. Cell Block D.
But the most important thing going on here is the indoor Polynesian village that you are building. When it's completed, each one of you will be living in your own Polynesian-inspired, bamboo-covered hut that will have two windows and its own door. Two of you will be living in second-story huts. [Brian] And we're going to have 10-foot palm trees, a bamboo-bridge walkway, and a Hawaiian wet bar below.
For the luaus. Then, as you come in, there's going to be a common living room, a workshop-garage area for our bikes and tools, a linen closet . . .
Are you re-creating the suburbs?
Actually, I framed houses for two summers in New Jersey.
What is your budget? All said and done, $5500. It's divided between three of us. The fourth person, Andy, is just renting from us for $800. That means three of us are only paying only $333 each.
How did you arrive at the indoor-village concept? Most loft livers just make rooms. You're not architects from Rotterdam or something? [Andrew] No, we were trying to find an easy way to divide the space. We were going by Home Depot and we saw these sheds. They're only 500 bucks. Brian and I got to talking and the idea evolved into more than just sheds. It should be a structured village where everyone's home would look like a house, the computer area could look like a school, a library building—Main Street, USA! But then we ended up deciding on a Polynesian tiki theme. I guess Brian and I watched the Hawaiian episodes of The Brady Bunch too many times. They go to Hawaii. Mr. Hanelei traps them in a cave. The whole thing starts because Jan finds the Taboo, this eight-inch-tall wooden tiki man, that brings bad luck. When Peter Brady hears this, he says, "Bad luck, come and get me." Then this heavy wall decoration almost falls on Peter. Jan finds a spider in her beach bag. Every time they have these accidents, Hawaiian music in the background goes toodle loodle loo. You never saw that episode? It's a three-parter.
There's a lot of construction going on here. One of us lives on an air mattress. I live on a bed that was donated by one of the Polish construction workers who was here before us. It's a Battlestar Galactica mattress with little spaceships.
How fun. Not if you had to sleep on it. We're living in filth and we wake up with paint chips on our faces. I don't know how many mosquito bites I have. We leave the windows open and there're no screens. We've got factory windows.
When's the bamboo coming?The bamboo is coming much later. You can get it if you go to bamboopoles.com or something. I ordered a Hawaiian-lady lamp on eBay. But the dude never sent it.
Jess (my girlfriend at the time) was still living up in Syracuse and a bunch of us went up there to visit, celebrate Halloween and pretend we were still in college.
At this point, we've gone back to the apt, eaten our food and told everybody else about "the game." On the way out to the bar, we managed to snag this group shot of us with more unsuspecting bench occupants.
Left to right: Doug, Amy, Jess, Mandy (as Janice from the Muppets), Kate, Dan (as ghost), Monica (as stupid mask girl?), and Kristen in the corner as a Piece of Candy Corn.
These first few pictures are from the Fourth of July barbeque we had up at my house in Syracuse. A bunch of us all just hung out, ate good food and relaxed. From left to right: Amy looking like she has to poop, Evelyn, my girlfriend Jess, Mandy, and my Tom-Cruise-look-alikeroomate from last year, Chris.
Taken at Jess' old house during a dinner party. (we ate so much that we all needed a nap.) Left to right: Caesar, Rob, Kate, Me, Jess, Jen, Amy and Chris Handjobigan.
Amy, Jen and Mandy. Also taken at the Janus. Amy and Jen used to live here in 111 Redfield with me last year. (and Mandy was and still is my nextdoor neighbor.)
From left to right: John Polhamus as psycho-flannel-guy?, Me as "a guy with a big nose who was shot in the throat", Amy Albano who claimed to be a Secret-Agent but looked more like a Hooker, and last but not least, Mandy Malarczack (sp?) as a very scary Ghost.
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