I Spy With My Little Eye Bill Clinton’s White Puff of Hair

In my last post, I mentioned how common it was to see people you knew. Well, celebrity sightings are just as random and common. Yesterday, at an RIT Alumni/Intern bar meet up at Papillon on E. 54th, someone shouts, “Bill Clinton’s here!” Me being my skeptical self thought it was just a joke, but sure enough, the crowd exposed the owner of this white puff of hair and there he was waving, taking pictures, and struggling to walk past the bar. I got a chance to shake his hand, while another fellow RIT’er and I mentioned how great his speech was at this year’s Commencement. He actually responds, “RIT? Oh you guys were great!” You hurrrd…we are great. It made me feel so warm and fuzzy for all of two seconds, but the paparazzi quickly dispersed and it was back to the bar.

As I snapped this shot of Bill, I couldn’t help but feel rude sticking a flashing camera in his face. Imagine being so famous that you wouldn’t even be able to walk in NYC without being mobbed by fans or curious stand-byers. Seeing Bill Clinton was nothing new to me since he’s been at RIT a couple times, but I’m not sure why I felt so compelled to go and meet him. Why do we as Americans make such an effort to get a fraction of a celebrity’s time or get so excited from being around a celebrity? (I guess so I can blog about it, right? =P) Sure they’ve led the nation out of economic hardship or have been on the silver screens countless times, but they’re just people as are you and me. Yet, many Americans consume a large portion of their time to following the lives of these famous faces, when we would never mean a thing to them. Ok, maybe Bill Clinton is an exception because he probably was one of our nation’s best presidents, but you catch my drift.

On my way to the bar, Rachel and I also stumbled into a potential celebrity spotting. On the corner of Park and 52nd, a stunt scene from Adam Sandler’s next movie, “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan” was being filmed. A ginormous crowd formed along the sidewalks and steps in front of the skyscrapers of Park Ave. Yes, I am guilty of celebrity gawking as proven below:

Sandler never showed, but Rachel did spot him having lunch at Oxford Cafe on Lexington. Ok, enough of this crazy celebrity stalkerish behavior. I are not stalker! I repeat, I ARE NOT STALKER! I’ll just go back to hiding behind my screen and reading Facebook walls now.

In A New York State of Mind

The long awaited final days of my JP Morgan Chase internship are officially here. End-of-summer presentation is over and performance reviews are due. My next three calendar days in Lotus Notes are completely blank and that’s a first! Three more days and I’ll be packed up and ready to hit the road (well, sky)!

So many things have come into mind lately. Have I made the most of my time here? What will I take with me? What will I miss most? I can surely say that New York has been an unforgettable experience, both positive and negative. I can’t say that I’m leaving here the way I thought I would, and that was gripping the last of every slice of New York I could have. It’s true: New York is exhausting and works only for some people. Sometimes, doing nothing in my apartment and letting the tourists on those famous double-decker buses seep in all the fun can still give me satisfaction here in the Big Apple. Oh, tourists. I’m proud to say that yesterday, I could actually give subway directions to someone who probably assumed I was a native!

Sure, I can give you a never-ending list of all the fun things I’ve done here. Though I’ll spare you (until I get back to Rochester and reminisce) and share my top 5 surprising things I’ve found about New York:

5.) In such an expensive city to live and go out in, there are surprisingly LOADS worth of free things to do from seeing concerts/plays in the park to getting into top clubs.

4.) The odds of running into someone in New York that you know are really high! I’ve run into 5 people: an RIT friend in the subway station, a middle/high school classmate who now works at SoHo H&M, a childhood friend that I’ve lost touch with at a John Mayer concert line, a JP Morgan Chase co-worker on the subway on a Saturday night, and the most random reunion — getting on the same subway train in Chelsea that our friends from Long Island were on, who were on their way to meet us in Brooklyn!

3.) Thinking out loud can come in handy with directions. People are almost more than willing to point you quickly in the right direction. (TIP: Apparently, the acronym OWEE for Odd = West, Even = East helps when navigating between streets. ) But you ask a financial district cop for directions and they probably won’t know.

2.) You can buy the new Harry Potter book at a Duane Reade (the Starbucks of drug stores here). Yeah, “WTF?!” is what I said too!

1.) New Yorkers really aren’t fazed by anything. Even a half naked bum jerking off on Park Ave won’t stop people in their tracks!

What the heck are Windorphins????

Unless you live in a hole in New York, you probably have once questioned what the heck Windorphins are. Well today, may it be known, that I have finally remembered to check out the website. I suppose you could call it advertising at its best (or perhaps, worst since it took me a month nearly to remember) because it’s got the whole city wondering WTF these annoyingly colorful blobs are that are plastered on subway train walls and outdoor ads as seen below:

As if these perky icons weren’t creepy enough in static mode on a billboard, some weebwab on their website decided to make them float and blink their eyes — or in some cases, eye — around a doctor who is recommending the so-called product that “deliver[s] a general sensation of unabashed joy in the brain, leading to a heightened energy, exuberance and outright slam dunk high-five behavior.” I believe a term has already been coined for this: ORGASM. HIGH-FIVE!!

You supposedly can experience windorphins after winning a spelling bee or yoga tournament, but this still isn’t very telling of what windorphins really are. Does it have to do with wind energy? Is it the latest anti-depressant? Come to find, it’s an eBay marketing campaign that is supposed to be the buzz word of the summer. So let’s iterate: perky colorful blobs == eBay?? Yep, I’m just about as lost as the items I ditched in my last abandoned shopping cart. Basically, eBay was trying to inject this fun factor into their ads to imply that winning an auction gives you this outrageous high and is just uber loads of fun! Weee!

You gotta wonder where these marketers get these ideas. Yes, I do have to give them credit for getting people stirred up about a new word that suddenly started to appear everywhere. Once you’ve annoyed the masses with this mystery though, you’re only going to piss them off further when they find out how stupid the website is that redirects you to eBay by searching for an item you love. Ok, so here goes it: I type “Sex and the City” <no surprise there>. GO! What do I get? 4 recommendations for SATC DVD’s that I didn’t want to purchase in the first place….aaaand now navigating off the page. Great success there!

At least I can have more fun making my own windorph because that’s the real reason why people come back. Why it’s called a “windorph” and not a “windorphin” is beyond me. Once again….leaving that one to the marketers. Here’s mine making an O-face. OH! OH! OHMYGAWD IT’S SO FUNZ!

Make your own Windorph