Attention Brooklyn Bargain Hunters! **UPDATE**

**UPDATE** I've just been informed by Kitty that we will only be holding the stoop sale tomorrow (Saturday). Looks like I'm free to get loaded tomorrow night then!

This weekend Kitty, myself and our prospective others, are throwing a stoop sale! This is no run of the mill, casserole dish and half-used candle sale either. Between our two households we will be gathering oodles of quality goodies, which we will then offer to you at rock bottom prices.

Our stoop sale will have literally hundreds of DVDs and CDs plus video games, toys, furniture, household items, clothing and much much more. Lots of the toys and discs have never even been open (they fell of a truck).

Weather permitting, you'll find the stoop, us and the goods on 5th street between 7th and 8th avenues (just off 8th) in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. The sale begins tomorrow at 11am and ends when we get bored, tired or run out of booze. We are probably going to make this a two day event with new items introduced on Sunday.*

Limited time offer - mention pop-o-matic and receive a cup of our secret stoop sale liquid concoction. The secret ingredient is whiskey and it's the only way to deal with the wack jobs who ask too many questions at stoop sales.

*I may bail on Sunday if I have too much tot drink Saturday night and can't make it off the couch.

Weekend Recap

I feel like I crammed an entire weekend of activities into last Thursday night, which is why I didn't even post anything on Friday. I started off meeting fellow bloggers for happy hour after work in the village. Although I only stayed an hour and left before a lot of people arrived, I had a great time and actually remember the entire happy hour since I had to leave before getting as trashed as usual.

I left the bloggers and headed up town to my favorite Upper West Side bar, Yogi's, where I met up with Seth, Kelly, Adam, and Daniella. We had tickets for the 8:30 showing of Harry Potter in 3D at the Imax so we didn't have a lot of time at Yogi's. It was still enough to down several pitchers of beer and a few cocktails before heading over to the theater. I'm not going to spend too much time talking about Harry Potter I'll just say I was disappointed and found this to be the dullest in the series yet. There is an incredible fight scene at the end but unfortunately it just wasn't enough and this film seemed to lack the fun and excitement of the ones before.

After Potter, we headed to a bar for a few after movie drinks, which turned into a very late night/after party back at our place in Brooklyn. Kelly decided to chuck a sicky on Friday and crashed at our place Thursday night. On Friday, we all woke late to throbbing hangovers and spent the day convalescing. That night, Kitty came over for beer and Mexican food and we hung out chatting, gossiping, and watching lots of Ninja Warrior.

On Saturday Seth & I headed out to do some errands and were soon chased back indoors by the heat and humidity. Since nothing beats a cold beer on a hot day, we spent the rest of the day drinking, rearranging the apartment and looking at pictures from last week's vacation (yes, we used an old fashioned film camera).

So how was your weekend?

Back To Reality

Its been almost a week since my last post and what a week its been. For starters, last Tuesday was the blogger happy hour. I met up with the authors of some of my favorite blogs for drinks in the East Village and still have the bruises to prove it. Seriously, does anyone who was out that night know why my shin has a giant bruise on it? The following day was July 4th, which we celebrated over at Kelly and Adam's place. Adam managed to grill up some delicious food on the grill before the rain started and we all got sufficiently bombed by the time the fireworks began.

Seth and I took care of a lot of busy work around the apartment for most of the day on Thursday then Friday we rolled out to the theater for the Transformers movie. I have to admit I went into the movie expecting to be disappointed and boy howdy was I proven wrong. Transformers was insane! Sure, it had a fair amount of goofy bs and it seemed like an awful lot of time without anything transforming but all that was nothing compared to the fighting between the Autobots and Decipticons. After seeing the movie, Seth and decided to changes the names of our two cats to Optimus Prime and Megatron.

Later that night, Kitty came over for some Wii action and we played Mario Party then tested our brain size with Big Brain Academy. We left Brooklyn for the first time of our Independence holiday weekend on Saturday when we traveled into Manhattan and up to the Upper West side to hang out with friends Francisco and Jeff. Finally on Sunday we recuperated from our 4-day hangovers rested and relaxed before heading back to work today.

The Countdown Has Begun

I've got so many things to look forward to in the immediate future that I can barely focus on typing this post. Maybe a little Focusyn would help.

For starters, there's the bloggers booze fest gathering this afternoon evening to look forward to. Aside from my own group of friends who I have been getting trashed with I have enjoyed the company of for many many years, my fellow bloggers drink like its their jobs.

Today also marks the opening of the Transformers movie! I have been salivating over this movie for as long as it was rumored to be in the works and my anticipation hit a new level when it was finally announced that production had begun. I have to be honest, I have a feeling that Michael Bay will rely on human characters that are so cliche and stereotypical that I'll route for their horrible deaths. But so what? I'm going to this movie for the Autobots and Decepticons.

Tomorrow is Independence day, which I'm fairly certain has something to do with freeballing it all day. With or without underpants, I'll be joining some friends and loved ones for a good old fashioned BBQ and hopefully illegal fireworks display.

Last but not least, as of 5:00 this afternoon, I've got a 5 day weekend to enjoy! My dreams of the workday/weekend reversal will come true if only for a week.

So I hope everyone else is as excited about the next few days as I am. I'll probably be too drunk busy to blog much over the next few days but you never know so check back.

How Was Everybody's Weekend

After the past three weeks of unusually busy days at work, I decided it was time to let loose and began my weekend Thursday during happy hour with Kelly and her friend, Daniella at Whiskey Ward on the lower East side. I only stayed for a few because I promised Seth that I would prepare dinner back at the apartment that night. I barely know how to to turn the kitchen's cooking things on so that meant stopping off at our favorite Chinese Mexican joint on the way home. Later that night, Kelly, Who stayed out drinking on the LES, stopped by our place on her way home and ended up staying until Friday evening. We had some more drunk than usual Wii-ing and eventually passed out on the floor in the living room.


Friday evening Seth, Kelly and I headed over to Kitty's place to meet up with Kitty, her husband, Cyndi, Monkey Daemon, Kitty's cousin and cousin's boyfriend. We then headed up to Prospect Park with our blankets, booze and a delicious assortment of cheeses and snacks for a Jazz concert. All though it looked like it might rain at any moment and we even felt a few occasional drops, the weather remained dry and turned into a beautiful night. We all headed back to Kitty's once the booze ran out after we had our fill of jazz for more drinks and plenty of Robotron.


Seth and I were up bright and early on Saturday eagerly anticipating what was supposed to be the highlight of our weekend - Morrissey at the Garden. We quickly found out Morrissey cancelled the show claiming that his throat was soar. Seth spent some time commiserating over the internets with other pissed off fans, when he happened upon our favorite quote of the day on some message board. One "fan" when discussing Morrissey's cancellation wrote "that fat old homo pulls this all the time"! We spent the rest of the day cursing that fat old homo and if the new date is scheduled for a night that we can't make it, that fat old homo will find himself on the receiving end of many angry blog posts here on pop-o-matic.

The rest of my weekend was relatively peaceful and relaxing but peppered with more Morrissey damnations. We even managed to rescue Saturday night by discovering a movie on Demand called 'Drive Through' about a killer clown/fast food mascot named Horny, who goes on a killing spree in the OC. I won't give too much away but let me tell you, I'll never look at a deep fry machine the same way again.

So, how was your weekend?

Where The People Are

I've never been a big fan of crowds. I hate crowded bars, never go to see a movie on opening night (not that I go to the theater much at all), shop at odd hours to avoid the consuming masses and frequently walk in the street to get around the slow, sluggish cattle. At the same time, I like feeling as if I'm taking part in whats going on around me. Which is why living on a busy street allows me the best of both worlds - I can avoid crowds but keep an eye on what's happening down on the street.

Yesterday I enjoyed the annual 7th Avenue street fair that takes place every year in Park Slope. There were all sorts of vendors, hawking everything from cell phone accessories to spicy kielbasas. Occasionally a marching band would make its way through the crowd and there was even rock and or roll music coming from somewhere, which I think means there was a band performing. Unfortunately, I couldn't see the direction the music was coming from because the building next to my apartment blocks the view of 7th avenue to the south of my window. Yes that's right, I took in the street fair from the crowdless comfort of my apartment.

I know this makes me sound like a shut-in but the only way I would have ventured out the door and into that street fair was if I spotted a beer vendor from my window. As far as I know, strolling the streets with a beer in the hand is illegal, unless its in a bag, which Seth refers to as a wino's right. As far as I'm concerned, the winos can keep there bags and I'll remain crowdlessly comfortable drinking at home.

Weekend To Do List

On Saturday afternoon, I told Seth I didn't want to get completely trashed that night because I had a long to do list for Sunday and knew I wouldn't do any of it if I was too hungover. Well, apparently Seth didn't get the hidden message in that request, that he was supposed to keep me from getting trashed, and I proceeded to get good and drunk. To be fair, that was really an unavoidable outcome as we were at Jenni B.'s going away party thrown by her sister. The party was held at Jenni B.'s sister's and partner's house in Park Slope just a few blocks down the road from my apartment. That meant, I wouldn't have to deal with a taxi or subway when it was time to stumble home, which only added to the drinking with abandon. Another factor was that the party was catered with multiple bars set up both indoors and out.

Of course, I was too hungover to accomplish anything on my list yesterday but it was worth it considering how much fun we had Saturday night. One thing I did accomplish yesterday was discovering a new favorite TV show called Ninja Warrior on G4. This Japanese game/survival show takes 100 men and 100 women and puts them through a grueling obstacle course with the ultimate goal of being named Ninja Warrior. Its sort if like MXE without the comedy and much more difficult.

Bizarro Weekend

After the previous weekend's Memorial 5 day river-fest drunkorama, which was then punctuated by Thursday's blogger booze-fest, I had a relatively quiet and sober weekend. Of course, I still managed to tie one on Friday night, which was really surprising considering how hungover I was when I woke up that day.

Saturday was a slightly different story though. This was the first weekend that both Seth & I have been in town in a long time. Since many of our friends were out of town, we decided to not make any plans, stick around home and take care of some overdue business such as pay bills, put in the a/c units, a little Spring cleaning, etc, etc ( I know dull). On Saturday night we had a couple (literally) cocktails and rented the film, 'Epic Movie'. If you are anything like us and enjoy mindless entertainment, potty humor, and fart jokes then you might enjoy this flick.

I was up bright and early Sunday and immediately noticed the complete lack of the standard Sunday symptoms i.e. headache, nausea, exhaustion, mysterious bruises, and surprise over night guests on the fold-out. I did something I rarely do on Sunday and took a shower then headed out to run some errands. Later that day I began sorting items for the upcoming stoop sale we are having with Kitty and her husband. I'll keep you posted on that.

All in all, it was a relaxing, enjoying and energizing weekend, which was exactly what I needed because this week is already shaping up to be another booze-tastic endeavor.

I Like A Short Week

I'm finally back after an extra long holiday weekend. As I mentioned last week, Seth & I spent the weekend down south on the Potomac river. Aside from all that clean air reeking havoc with my allergies, we had a blast. Now that we are back, I need to take a vacation from booze for a while, well at least until the weekend.

I hope everyone had as much fun as we did over the weekend. Now that Memorial day has come don't forget the start of white pants season has arrived so wear them if you got them!

I'll fill you in on drunken weekend stories as I remember them. In the meantime, after playing hooky for the past few days, I've got a lot of work waiting for me on my desk, including this giant box from Hasbro's PR firm. The box is filled with the full set of Transformers products for the upcoming movie and I have a lot of transforming to get to work on.

So Just How Crazy Did Things Get on Saturday

In my earlier post, I mention a wild weekend. Well here are some pictures to show you what my idea of a wild night looks like.

Nothing says drunk like late night bodega beer runs in wigs and costumes. Here Kelly and Seth pay for our purchases.


Jen and I on the streets of Park Slope.

Life Lessons

I started this day feeling kind of lousy and in a bit of a funk. As usual, I drank entirely too much on Saturday beginning at brunch and not stopping until some point late that night or early Sunday morning. As a result, I was too hungover yesterday to even make it off the couch and missed out on enjoying a beautiful day. This morning, I woke up still feeling the after results of the weekend binge and turned on NY1 on time to see their coverage of yesterday's Aids Walk. Great! While I was too hungover to even pour myself a soda yesterday, thousands of do-gooders were out volunteering for a worthy cause and doing something healthy at the same time.

By the time I got to work I wasn't even in the mood to blog so I decided to do a little reading instead and happened upon something titled. "10 simple ways to save yourself from messing up your life" posted on lifehack.org.
It was as if this article had been written just for me and after reading the first few simple steps, I was already in better spirits and ready to face the day.

Below are a few of the steps that I especially liked. You can read the entire list at the link above:

Stop taking so much notice of how you feel.
How you feel is how you feel. It’ll pass soon. What you’re thinking is what you’re thinking. It’ll go too. Tell yourself that whatever you feel, you feel; whatever you think, you think. Since you can’t stop yourself thinking, or prevent emotions from arising in your mind, it makes no sense to be proud or ashamed of either. You didn’t cause them. Only your actions are directly under your control. They’re the only proper cause of pleasure or shame.

Ease up on the internal life commentary.
If you want to be happy, stop telling yourself you’re miserable. People are always telling themselves how they feel, what they’re thinking, what others feel about them, what this or that event really means. Most of it’s imagination. The rest is equal parts lies and misunderstandings. You have only the most limited understanding of what others feel about you. Usually they’re no better informed on the subject; and they care about it far less than you do. You have no way of knowing what this or that event really means. Whatever you tell yourself will be make-believe.

Take no notice of your inner critic.
Judging yourself is pointless. Judging others is half-witted. Whatever you achieve, someone else will always do better. However bad you are, others are worse. Since you can tell neither what’s best nor what’s worst, how can you place yourself correctly between them? Judging others is foolish since you cannot know all the facts, cannot create a reliable or objective scale, have no means of knowing whether your criteria match anyone else’s, and cannot have more than a limited and extremely partial view of the other person. Who cares about your opinion anyway?

Give up on feeling guilty.
Guilt changes nothing. It may make you feel you’re accepting responsibility, but it can’t produce anything new in your life. If you feel guilty about something you’ve done, either do something to put it right or accept you screwed up and try not to do so again. Then let it go. If you’re feeling guilty about what someone else did, see a psychiatrist. That’s insane.

Weekend Wedding Recap!

With all the weddings I've been to over the past year (I've lost count at the moment), I feel like attending weddings is my new hobby. Fortunately, this new hobby goes well with my favorite past time - drinking various beers, wine, and cocktails. I've actually gotten spoiled with all the open bar events I've been to over the past few months.

This past weekend was my cousin Barbara's wedding. This was the first wedding to take place in my family's hometown area of Philly. As usual, we had a blast and I always enjoy any chance to party with my family. I'm fortunate to have a fun family who all enjoy drinking as much (some even more) than me. I guess it's proof that the grape doesn't fall far from the vine.

Congratulations Barbara and Jim!

Brooklyn Bound

After yesterday's Verizon snafu, which still hasn't been corrected - I'm working from home this morning then running into Manhattan for a meeting then home again where we have Internet - I can finally tell you about my weekend. Friday is a little hazy but on Saturday, I joined Jen and Kitty for a Brooklyn expedition. Fellow Park Sloper, Kitty, and I met Jen on Smith Street in what I think is Boerum Hill. We then took a leisurely stroll through historic Brooklyn Heights on our way to the waterfront.


We walked along the waterfront and through the streets leading up to the Brooklyn Bridge.


Then explored the streets of DUMBO ...



.. and then made our way to the Manhattan Bridge.


Once we reached the Manhattan we decided it was time for a beverage and headed to Superfine for a quick drink.


We would have stayed a while at Superfine but it was time to head to our ultimate destination of the day - Trout in Boerum Hill (I think that's where the bar is located). Not that my friends and I ever need an excuse to drink but seeing as how it was May 5th or "Cinco de Mayo" as they call it south of the border, we figured it was the perfect excuse to drink. I really got into the spirit of the day by drinking Corona. At some point, Kelly and Seth joined us at Trout and we all proceeded to get pleasantly drunk.


After an undisclosed amount of time, we figured a change of scenery was in order and headed back to Kelly's place where Adam was entertaining people with accents. I never figured out if they were from London or New York. I'm going to assume that by this point in the night, the battery on my camera had died because there are no pictures to document the goings on. Chances are good that we all sat around sipping cordials and brandy and discussing travel, art and world events until Seth, Kitty and I decided it best to politely make our exit and return to Park Slope.

Shall Wii Play A Game

For the first time in over a month, we didn't have any late night Wii parties at our place over the weekend. I'm sure my neighbors appreciated that. Instead, we had a Wii-fest at Kelly and Monkey Deamon's house last Thursday then on Saturday I joined Kitty and her husband for the classic arcade stylings of Robotron. I haven't come across any pictures from Thursday night, although, I could swear I took some. I was also convinced that there was a ghost at Kelly's apartment so who knows what actually happened. In any event, following are some pics of me and Kitty saving the last family from evil robots. Enjoy!

Shall Wii Play A Game

Since Seth's birthday was last Wednesday, he decided to hold the official celebration on Saturday, and celebrate we did. Seth had to work at the Met until around midnight so Jen and I started earlier in the evening with dinner and a mini bar crawl until it was time to meet up with Seth and his Met friends at Stereo sometime after 1am. I'm not sure what time we left (somewhere between 4 and 6am I'm guessing) but we had a blast and even managed to entice Jen, Erik and James back to Brooklyn for a late night/early morning Wii playoff. Either James didn't play any games or I was too drunk to capture it on film.

Round 1, Erik battles someone.


Round 2, Jen and her fists of glory!


Round 3, Admiral Ackbar vs. Jesus.


Tired of all the violence, Mii go bowling.

Shall Wii Play A Game

I didn't think after last week's first "Shall Wii Play A Game" that I would be able to get anyone over to my place for another game night, knowing that pictures would be going up here. Well, I was wrong and on Saturday night and into the wii hours of Sunday morning, Adam, Kelly & Jen joined Seth & I for boxing, bowling, tennis and golf.

I'm no stranger to waking up Sunday morning with mystery bruises and pains but I can honestly say a Saturday night of boxing was never the cause. Even today, I have aches in muscles I didn't know existed. Critics say that video games don't provide real physical activity but as an accomplished non-athlete, I can tell you this past weekend was the most exercise I've had in a long time.

In one corner Jesus, in the other corner Adam as the crowd watches in amazement!

Kelly leads off for lady's league night.

Jen "The Body" and her fists of fury.

Seth and his strike-winning bowling stance.

I have no idea what I'm doing here.

PS. I'm happy to report that despite playing Wii for over six hours and steadily drinking the whole time, not one of us accidentally threw, dropped or impaled anyone on the Wii-remote.

Weekend Plans

Today Seth and I are going to grab our camping gear, roll a couple of marijuana cigarettes and ask our buxom friend with the feathered back hair to pick us, and a few other 30-something-year-olds-playing-the-part-of-teenagers, up in her windowless van. Then we are all going to drive to that wooded spot in Prospect Park, where all the locals have warned us not to go, for a camp-out. We used Google Earth to find the most secluded area so it should be great! We'll roast marshmallows, skinny dip, tell ghost stories, score some tail and be back safe and sound tomorrow.


Our fat, dimwitted friend, Barry, just dropped out of the trip so if anyone wants to join us, just hitch-hike to the greasy spoon near the park. From there you can walk to our camping spot. A little advice if you are going to hitch-hike, wear something revealing and show a lot of leg.

Check back tomorrow for some pictures of our totally cool camping trip.

You Rock!

There are a bunch of expressions that I intensely dislike hearing and go out of my way to avoid saying. A few examples are "I'm loving it", "Now that's what I'm talking about!", and any expression that uses the word "bling". It's pretty hard to watch Reality TV without hearing one or all of these expressions repeatedly.

Another expression that doesn't bother me quite as much but I still choose not to use it is "Party like rockstars!" So it pains me a little to admit, that's the expression that can best sum up our weekend trip to PA.


I don't mean to imply that we lit a whisky soaked hotel room on fire, beat up a shark or snorted someone's dad. But, from the time we arrived at Bessie's house Friday night until leaving yesterday afternoon, somebody was playing the game, Guitar Hero 2.

If you've never played I highly recommend that you start. This game is just as much fun to watch someone else play as it is to play yourself. And while drinking isn't required, the more booze you add to the mix, the better the performances become for the audience. Now that's what I'm talking about!

Here Come The Pictures Part 4

This is the 4th and final column of pictures from my sister and Kevin's wedding weekend. If you are reading this one first, you might want to scroll down and read Part 1 then work your way up so the pictures are in order.

I thought I took a lot of pictures at the day after brunch but I guess I'm wrong. Considering the amount of alchohol in my system by that point, that might have been a grilled cheese sandwich I was holding to my face and telling everyone to smile for it!

Here Come The Pictures Part 3

Ok, here comes the good stuff - the wedding reception. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you have been to a wedding reception before so there should be no explanation required for these pictures.

A little but of background info worth mentioning is that many of the people in these pictures are of Irish American decent, celebrating a wedding on St. Patrick's day. Not that my family ever needs an excuse to drink (it's a past-time we all enjoy) but the only way this party could have gotten any bigger was if it St. Patrick's day fell on New Years eve this year.