http://www.nypress.com/articles.sec-15-1-columns-ny-life.html THE HALOGEN-BRIGHT morning sun beat down on my crusted eyelids. Opening them felt like I was prying the top of an ancient jar of mustard. To my right, my girlfriend’s carcass was comatose, immune to meddlesome light. I stood and stretched. My back snapped and crackled like bubble wrap, my muscles sore and flu-achy. Perhaps it was the tub of Buffalo Trace bourbon I consumed the previous eve, but it took several beats to make an important realization: Well, I thought, it looks like I’ve lost my pants and underwear.]]> GROCERY SHOPPING IS not for the faint of heart. Every second Saturday, I woke with tremors knowing that I would have to lace up, ship out and somehow make it back alive with dinner. The East Village crowds I had learned to fend off, swimming through strangers to grab frozen pizzas and fajita mixes. But the sheer physical pain of carrying plastic sacks home a half-mile, two or three committed to each forearm, had me worried I would lose a limb before the ice cream melted.]]> THIS MAY SOUND as sacrilegious as an Exxon exec owning an electric car, but I often despise patronizing bars. I have a love-hate explanation: I love craft brews. I hate paying $6 or $7 a pint.]]> YOU CAN CHUCK them in your mouth or put them in water, but if anyone vomits,” the cute Chinese event coordinator chirped, pointing to trashcans lined with I HEART NEW YORK bags, “they’re disqualified. Anyone have any questions?” Just one: Why did I enter Chef One’s sixth annual dumpling-eating contest? Answer: A little bit of hubris, a lot of jet lag and, naturally, no common sense.]]> MY GREATEST ASSET is my gullet. Despite my horse-jockey height, my gullet is long and elastic, permitting me to swallow ponds and streams in one breathless gulp. It’s like discovering a Wizard of Oz munchkin is hung like Dirk Diggler.]]> LET ME BE blunt: I loathe interviewing celebrities as much as I detest raw tomatoes, a vegetable barely fit for chucking at American Idol rejects.]]> GROWING UP, I daydreamed I was Princess Leia, in freakishly braided buns, traveling at light speed in the Millennium Falcon and hanging out with Ewoks.]]> When I was young, with a liver that performed like a Lamborghini and employment as the world’s surliest receptionist, I adored open bars. I’d spend workdays alternating between misdirecting phone calls and scouring Craigslist for freebie offerings—say, unlimited Bud at Lit Lounge or vodka tonics at Blue Owl, a Wednesday standby that endures today.]]> I’d pee in a dumbwaiter if it had the proper plumbing. I have my reasons. Most importantly, a dumbwaiter would only “seat” one, and I’d never have to worry about being ambushed when all I wanted was to be alone in a room with my pants around my ankles for five minutes before heading back to my cubicle. But considering I work in New York, The City That Never Even Winces, it’s not hard to fathom that people in the office bathroom culture would exist the same way they’d exist anywhere else—unaffected and in numbers.]]> After countless forays to strip clubs, strip-club steakhouses and biker clubs, my girlfriend finally voiced an objection to my adventures in New York’s inebriated underbelly. “You’re not going out with Glenfiddich’s female whisky ambassador,” she commanded. I swear steam issued from her ears, like a real-life cartoon. “I don’t want you hanging out with women wearing bikinis, dumping whisky down your throat.”]]> It’s time to make you a football widow,” tell my girlfriend on a recent Sunday, as the clock ticks close to 1 p.m.—kickoff time for the first slate of NFL games. She sighs.“Off to the lesbian bar?” The last couple years, I’ve caught my bumbling Cincinnati Bengals inside the cave-like confines of Park Slope’s unlikely NFL hangout, girly club Cattyshack.]]> IT WAS A dark and drunken night, long past the hour of common sense, so naturally I was swerving my bike home from Williamsburg. My then-roommate Andrew and I had drunk two too many Styrofoam tankards of beer from Turkey’s Nest, where the faded décor and prices are time-warped in 1982: $4 buys 32 ounces of foamy fun, tip included. ]]> BALTIMORE HAS THE Poe Toaster. Punxsutawney, a groundhog that predicts the weather. In Brooklyn, the piece of modern folklore that peaks local interest isn’t animal but electronic—specifically, an outmoded telephone that occasionally pops up across the street from Pinchik Hardware on Bergen Street in Park Slope.This ancient and partially wooden crank phone is humanity’s only link to an otherworldly entity known as “The Pinchik Oracle,” an all-knowing being that has decided to periodically field our questions and answer them on an electronic sign above the hardware store in question. ]]> I awoke from the nightmare, my heart somersaulting, my bladder threatening to spill like an oil tanker: Damn, I thought, why did I agree to be a tour guide? I blame the good, fine folks behind New York Craft Beer Week—Josh Schaffner and Mark Foggin—who contacted me with an offer I should’ve refused: “Want to lead a tour?” Foggin asked. “You’re a beer and bar expert.”]]> TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, Kim Zimmer made television history on Guiding Light as Reva Shayne Lewis by stripping down to a slip in the town fountain and baptizing herself the slut of Springfield.That scene (just five minutes long) has since been acclaimed as one of the best in soap history, and watching it today on YouTube, you can understand why.]]> Luckily, our tent is waterproof! I told my girlfriend, as enthusiastic as a car salesman angling to unload a clunker. Wed planned to camp in seafaring Greenport, located at the dead end of Long Islands North Fork. She trained a sleep-crusted eye on the wall of wet gray.]]> WITH THE RECESSION in full swing, urban families are catching on to the latest craze: backyard farming. As a Manhattan resident living in an overpriced, uptown studio, I can understand the appeal of making fewer trips to the Food Emporium. Ive even fantasized about growing tomatoes on my patio, though the area seems averse to attracting any sunlight.]]>