Livin’ in New York City Post 15: Back Home for the Holidays and a New Year in the City
After I came back to Illinois, it was like I never left.
Since my last entry, something pretty exciting happened to me: I got to go back home to Illinois for Christmas. I don’t think there’s any way to prepare a New Yorker, who originally came from a small town, for the first time that they go back to a rural environment. Sometimes the culture clash is too much and can result in temporary hospitalization. What are we to do without a bodega on every corner?
For me, I was really excited to go back to Farmer City. Not that I don’t love New York because, as many of you can clearly tell, I love it. I just really missed being with my extended family during Thanksgiving and was looking forward to seeing everyone five months after I left the Midwest. The trip home was quite the experience because it involved flying out of LaGuardia to O’Hare in Chicago and, keep in mind, the last time I flew on a plane was to spend Spring Break with my nana back in 2018.
To my surprise, it was incredibly smooth getting from my job to my apartment to the airport to the other airport to my childhood home. I just took the G train from Long Island City to Bed-Stuy, got my bags, called a cab, took to cab to the terminal, quickly checked my bags, waited by the gate, had a Coke and some Sour Patch Kids, got on the plane, made it to O’Hare, got picked up by my Aunt Krisha in her car and we drove all the way back to Farmer City. The beauty of the trip was its simplicity.
Not that the trip home was uneventful. First of all, it’s important to know one thing that happened after I spent my 2018 Spring Break in Florida: I discovered George Carlin. As many fans of his work are well aware, he did a hilarious bit for his 1992 “Jammin’ in New York” HBO Special where he mocked the language associated with air travel. For instance, what exactly does it mean to pre-board? “To get on before you get on?” Also, I want to see my pilot’s military record before I call him captain. I was also fully prepared to say, if someone told me to get on the plane, “fuck you I’m getting in the plane. Let Tom Cruise get on the plane!” Thankfully that didn’t happen.
As for the flights themselves, I found myself on a Delta flight. Now I’m not an expert on American-based airlines but I know that Delta is one of the better ones. If I found out that I was going home on a Spirit or a Southwest flight, I would have called my mom and said “you know what? I’m good. I’m just going to stay here. I’m going to celebrate Christmas on the train tracks with the rats. You know, where it’s safe.” I also found out on Delta flights that you can watch an in-flight movie. So, imagine my bliss cruising the skies watching Steven Spielberg’s “The Terminal” which is somewhat fitting given that it was about a man (Tom Hanks) who is stuck in the terminal of JFK International Airport for months.
When I made it to O’Hare, I was quickly picked up by my Aunt Krisha, who lives in the suburbs of Chicago, and we were off. As we put my luggage in the car, the first words she said to her nephew, who she hadn’t seen in a few months, were “holy shit it’s fucking crazy out here!” God how I missed Illinois.
When we finally made it to Farmer City, I was amazed at how fresh the air smelled. How I could see for miles everywhere I looked. How there wasn’t a single person dressed up as Elmo. I was back home again. I was expecting my parents’ house to feel different but, to be honest, as soon as I made it home, I just sat in my usual spot on the couch like the last five months hadn’t even happened.
As for the holidays, my family usually does the same thing every year. On Christmas Eve, we go spend the day with my Dad’s side of the family and on Christmas Day we do the same thing with my Mom’s side. On Christmas Eve, it was certainly great to see my family and, given our natural goofiness, there were some memorable moments. It was great to see the look on my Papa’s face when my parents got him a metal sign for his golf cart garage. But nothing can compare to when, in 2016, my dad got Papa The Judge, a five shot revolver capable of firing 45 Colt and 410 shotshells. Not because of the look of joy on Papa’s face, although that was pretty great, but for the look of horror my Grandma had. Thank God we have that moment photographed.
Due to the winter storm, our church’s Christmas Eve communion service was canceled. Fortunately, my Grandma, who gets the supplies for communion, had the bread so we had our own small communion just like we did in 2020. Unfortunately, we didn’t have grape juice but we did have some red wine for an old school communion. We’re doing it the way it was meant to be done. I mean, it’s not like on the night he was to be betrayed Jesus said “Take this Welch’s grape juice. For it is my blood.” To this the disciples said “Hey Jesus, you know that turning water into wine thing? Does that work on grape juice?” Jesus then replied “Nope. Only water. For grape juice you’re going to need some yeast and a few weeks to spare. It’s not like I’m a miracle worker.” He then proceeded to heal another crippled man before completely killing the party by saying “By the way, one of you is going to completely betray me and all of you are going to deny me to my face.” I really should catch up on the gospels soon.
The point is, we had a nice, small, old fashioned communion using a very nice, dry red wine. My brother, Dad and Papa all hated it while my Mom, Aunt Krisha, Grandma and I loved it. I guess we’re just more in tune with Jesus. Not that it’s a contest.
On Christmas Day, when we spent our day with my Mom’s side of the family, we had our usual gathering where we had two sessions of unwrapping presents: one for kids and one for adults. Which is weird because my brother and I, my cousin Lauren and her husband Sam and my cousin Lizzy were all in the kids section. Since two of us are in college, I pay rent for a Brooklyn apartment and Lauren and Sam are having a kid, should we still be counted in the kids section? But I digress.
While Christmas Day was the family gathering I was patiently awaiting, that night we saw the true miracle of Christmas. The introduction of a karaoke machine and the return of “Fun Flynn.” You see, my Uncle Flynn is normally a stand up guy and a business owner. However, back in the day, he had a reputation as the life of any party. I’ve seen glimpses of and heard stories about Fun Flynn, like how my dad puked into some bushes during Flynn’s bachelor party, but very few of us born after Y2K had seen him. Well, on Christmas Day 2022, Fun Flynn came out to play.
We all started singing classic party songs from the 1990s and some of them had lyrics that were starting to make my Nana blush. I won’t include any details because, quite frankly, the imagination is a lot more fun. But really think about it. Every generation has music that is initially seen as vulgar and looked down upon by older generations. Sure, some of it is pretty bad but some of it has been reevaluated and now is recognized as some of the greatest music of all time. What I’m trying to say is this. There is no difference between “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix-a-Lot and “WAP” by Cardi B featuring Megan Thee Stallion. They’re both equally dirty and, quite frankly, have an awesome beat. Deal with it. Do I think either song is particularly great? No. Will I dance to it at a club? Absolutely and so will you.
And then the grandkids got involved with song selection which was even more funny. Imagine raising your kids with good values just to see them sing some pretty filthy lyrics on Christmas Day. My family rules. Plus, I totally killed Weird Al Yankovic’s “Amish Paradise.” The best part was that I didn’t tell anyone what song I was going to sing so my mom and aunts thought I was doing “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio which Weird Al, of course, parodied for his song. So imagine their comedic shock when I started off the song by singing “As I walk through the valley where I harvest my grain, I take a look at my wife and realize she’s very plain.”
But I didn’t stop there, I also did “Suspicious Minds” and brought out the Elvis dance moves. And I don’t just mean your basic leg shaking, I’m talking about replicating his stage moves from his 1970s Vegas shows. Karate kicks, sudden spasms that look cool, squats that bring new meaning to the word flexibility, the whole thing. Come to think of it, I need to do that at a karaoke bar some time.
But don’t worry. There wasn’t just lewd tunes, a complete disregard for age appropriate music and perfectly replicated Elvis hip gyrations. There were some wholesome songs like when we all sang “Good Hearted Woman” by outlaw country legend Waylon Jennings and walking case for pot legalization Willie Nelson and, of course, “Islands in the Stream” by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton. It’s the Midwest and there’s quite a few blondes in my family, did you honestly think that we wouldn’t sing that? Anyway, that’s how Christmas of 2022 became known as “The Christmas of Karaoke.”
Learning how to make Noodles with my Nana. The recipe is top secret and we’re sworn to protect it like the Secret Service is sworn to protect the President.
While I was home, I also learned something pretty important. Something I’ve been wanting to know for years. My great-grandma Carolyn’s secret chicken and noodle recipe. Passed down through the generations, this is a delicious family staple that you can only learn if you have a place of your own and have Garrett blood in you. Even my dad doesn’t know the recipe because my mom keeps him out of the kitchen while she makes them. But my Nana is the best one to get the recipe from since she’s been making noodles the longest. Learning this was incredible and I could write the recipe down here. But then I would have to kill all of you. When I heard this is a secret recipe, I took that to mean “kill anyone who’s not in the family that gets ahold of it.” So if anyone tries to take the recipe from anyone in my family, I will become John Wick.
But I had to go back to New York which meant another Delta flight. On the way home, I watched another Steven Spielberg film “Catch Me If You Can” which is, once again, very fitting since Leonardo DiCaprio’s character impersonates a Pan Am airline pilot. To all of those who flew on Pan Am from its inception in 1927 to the company’s dissolution in 1991, I give you the biggest middle finger. You all never fully appreciated how awesome it was. You used to be able to eat steak or lobster on a Pan Am flight. In coach. The planes were luxurious and everyone on the flight felt like they were living the life of ease. How did we let that go? If you were an avid customer of Pan Am, I have to ask you this? Are you happy with Southwest? Or with Spirit? Of course not! Don’t get me wrong, I loved my experience on Delta but where’s the damn lobster? I’m willing to bring back smoking on the plane as long as we get some lobster out of it.
When I made it to La Guardia, I’m pretty sure that the time from when I got out of the plane to when I got into a cab was less than 20 minutes. I took a cab to Bed Stuy with a really friendly cab driver named Ratiff and we had a really good conversation about the city and how we spent the holidays. I might be in the minority but I like it when cab drivers actually engage in conversation. It’s a nice change of pace. Granted this can sometimes backfire, like when the driver of a cab I recently took wouldn’t shut up about cryptocurrency, but the cab I took from the airport was nice. The trip even had a happy accident when Rartiff took a wrong turn and ended up taking the Williamsburg Bridge into Manhattan. Sure it added 10 minutes to my trip but I didn’t mind because I got a beautiful view of the city at night from across the East River. After nearly a week, I was back home in Brooklyn with just a few days left in 2022.
While many New Yorkers love to party hard on New Year's Eve, my friends and I enjoyed a nice quiet night in. Don’t get me wrong, we did drink and have a good time, just without the rest of New York to deal with. By the way, my friend Micheal makes a hell of a margarita with some mezcal that results in a satisfyingly smoky aftertaste. We flipped back and forth between Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen’s New Year’s celebration in Times Square and Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton’s spectacular in Miami and, looking back on 2022, I’ll be damned if it wasn’t the best year of my life.
New Year’s Day, on the other hand, was the day we decided to party. Due to the holidays, my friends and I hadn’t been to our usual stomping grounds, The Cellar Dog, in a couple of months. That dry spell was broken when we came back on the first night of the year to do two things: drink and play pool. And also eat pizza we ordered from Bleecker Street Pizza. Okay, the three things we came to do were to drink, play pool and eat pizza. And also dance to good music. Okay, the four things we came to do were to drink, play pool, eat pizza and dance to good music. And enjoy each other’s friendship. You know what? Let’s just say I had a good time and leave it at that.
It was so good to be playing pool again after weeks away and I learned a few things. One, I need to practice more. Two, I found out you can get Coca-Cola at the Cellar Dog’s bar. I had no idea. I guess I was too busy drinking White Claws and Austin Ciders to notice all the other times. I think my favorite part of the evening was when, as I was taking a shot at the 3 ball with a belly full of pizza and booze, a song that only I knew came on at the Cellar Dog. It was “Such a Night” by Dr. John. As some of you may know, I love The Band and their concert film “The Last Waltz” which not only introduced me to Dr. John and his New Orleans sound but also had him and The Band play “Such a Night.” So, just imagine my friends' delight as I sang every word to a song they didn’t know while strutting around the pool table like Tom Cruise in “The Color of Money” after making the shot.
Later that week, I had another delightful experience as I saw my fourth Broadway show and my second Stephen Sondheim production: “Into The Woods.” I have wanted to see this musical live ever since one of my teachers, Meghan James, showed my class the PBS recording of the original Broadway production back in eighth grade. I love the idea of interconnecting the classic fairy tales and then breaking down the happy endings they all worked for with the brilliant music of Sondheim and James Lapine’s excellent book.
As I watched the show, with a combination of Sauvignon Blanc and Sour Patch Kids (because life is good), I never wanted it to end. I loved the music, the cast, the energy and how Jack’s cow Milky White is not a lifeless prop but instead was given such a lively personality as a puppet. Since this was the penultimate performance before the show closed, most of the legends that signed onto the show, like Brian d’Arcy James and Phillipa Soo, had left. However, I did get to see some really talented, lesser known actors give great performances as these iconic characters.
Diane Phelan and Katy Geraghty in particular were excellent as Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood. Geraghty was so comically threatening as Little Red and gave me so many laughs, especially when she was interacting with Sebastian Arcelus and Stephanie J. Block as The Baker and his wife.
Two of the remaining cast members from the beginning of the Broadway revival, Gavin Creel and Joshua Henry, performed that night as the princes of Cinderella and Rapunzel and gave a comically over-the-top performance of “Agony” that had me laughing and cheering at the same time. It was especially good to see Joshua Henry because I loved his performances as Roger, a friend of Jonathan Larson, in the film adaptation of “Tick, Tick…Boom!”
Seeing “Into the Woods” was a delightful experience that reminded me just how great the work of Stephen Sondheim is and how it still lives on.
As for what to do for 2023, there are just too many possibilities. Like most of you, I do make New Year’s Resolutions but I don’t like to post them. I just want to keep my options open and see what comes.
However, one thing I want to do is to limit my personal time on social media. I think that it can be a great tool for promoting yourself, getting people together for activist causes, staying in touch with people you don’t see often and just getting a general idea of what’s currently trending. But the problem is that we all like to spend way too much time on it and, quite frankly, the fact that there’s little face-to-face interaction has driven us all crazy. From the insane comments to extended cousins wanting to tell you about how the government is trying to make you part of The Matrix or whatever is currently popular in the conspiracy theory community, here are some tips to make us all better users of social media.
Put down the phone and just do literally anything else: Spend some time outdoors. Read a book. Watch a film. Get out of the house. Do something productive. Go ax throwing. Invite friends over for dinner. Go to a museum. See a sports game. There’s a million things that you can do that in no way involve social media.
Stop copying these long inspiring messages from other people and then wait until the end of the post to let us know that you copied it: While it’s not technically plagiarism, it’s kind of unoriginal. To quote Matt Damon from “Good Will Hunting,” “do you have any thoughts of your own on the subject?” See what I did there? I made sure to immediately source myself so you don’t think that I wrote that meaningful line. If you’re going to write on FaceBook, I would like some originality and proper grammar and spelling. If it’s important enough to post, you can proofread it.
Please stop picking fights in comments sections: It’s petty. It’s pathetic. It’s just lazy to fight online with people you don’t even know.
Stop posting life lessons or memes with John Wayne or Clint Eastwood: I love both of these actors but they don’t immediately give credibility to what you’re posting. Especially since, and I can’t emphasize this enough, memes aren’t fact. For example, there’s a famous quote that is often attributed to John Wayne and that I see all the time on FaceBook, “Life’s hard but it’s even harder if you’re stupid.” He never said this. Not in any of his films, interviews or in private. There’s just no evidence that the quote is attributed to him. In fact, the earliest known use of this quote came from a book called “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” by George V. Higgins which was published in 1971, eight years before Wayne died. However, it does sound like something he would say. So really think about this, if you were wrong about that, what else have you posted on social media that is false?
Stop pretending to be a journalist, a doctor, a politician, a scientist, a historian or, really, something you’re not: However, if you’re going to pretend, make sure you have good sources from reputable sources because that’s how professionals do it. In the meantime, just get off social media and actually talk to people. Please, get out of the house.
Looking back on 2022, I’m pretty proud of what I’ve accomplished. I moved to a city where I knew very few people and have somehow managed to survive. I met one of my heroes, Werner Herzog. I’ve seen so many incredible sights and performances. I’ve written more screenplays. I made some great documentaries and short commercials. I’m finishing up a short film I directed and planning more for the future. I graduated from college. I learned how to make a latte, the best brisket and my family’s noodle recipe. I even checked my AMC Stubs A List account and discovered that I went to see a film at AMC Theaters 71 times in the past year. That’s not even including the other theaters I’ve gone to like The Alamo Drafthouse, The Egyptian Theatre, Harvest Moon Drive-In, etc. So, it’s more than likely that I’ve been to a movie theater over 100 times in the year 2022.
As for 2023, I feel like something is coming soon. Something that could change things for me. I just have no idea what. I feel like I’m in the middle part between destinations which is incredibly terrifying. There’s so much unexplained anticipation that keeps building. It’s like being on a roller coaster going uphill while blindfolded. You know the drop is coming but it’s hard to say when that is. I just can’t wait to feel that drop when it does arrive.
