More short notes

First, an explanation: Every time I write some short notes, like I'm doing at this very moment, it's not that I have nothing to write about -- it's that I have too many things to write about. I wrote on Monday that I occasionally have about fifteen things in my head at the same time, waiting to be typed out in little digital letters on a too-small monitor, all vying for the spotlight. I used the number fifteen then because I needed a random number, but tonight, I really do have fifteen things to write about. Is that just an incredible coincidence, you might ask, or is Darren lying through his teeth? We shall see.
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The last thing I wrote was number one. This is number two: I've been given the day off tomorrow (Friday), a fact I should be celebrating but strangely am not. Days off from work are few and far between, even in a creative industry like mine, so I end up using them for things I have to do rather than things I want to do.
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Which means, in all likelihood, I'm going to get a haircut tomorrow. In a previous post, I told you how much my laundry bill is. There's no way I'm going to admit how much I have to pay to get my hair cut. That's the problem with hair -- it grows back! And when my hair is long, I look like the kid Bruce Lee beat up in high school.
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The good news is that after I get my haircut, I'll still have time to visit the Museum of Modern Art, my single favorite art venue in the world.
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Also, I'll be attending the Seaport Music Festival in the evening.
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So it looks as if I'll be having a well mapped-out, eventful day tomorrow. But to paraphrase Robert Burns, the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. And let me tell you something: there's no better place than New York to make a man feel like a mouse.
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At the very least, I'll have an extended weekend. Monday is the federal holiday known as Labor Day (not to be confused with May Day, which is celebrated on May 1st outside the United States).
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This is item number eight of fifteen: I found out Cameron Diaz is in New York shooting a movie. An acquaintance of mine sat next to her at a Korean restaurant, and that very same day, I was walking home from work and saw that the street was going to be closed off to accommodate a film crew. There were signs posted up on buildings informing the public that parking on the street was disallowed because Twentieth Century Fox was shooting something called What Happens in Vegas... So I went home and looked it up on IMDb, and guess who's starring in it.
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Here's my connection to Cameron Diaz. Remember Prince Street Cleaners, the laundromat I go to around the corner? [Read this post to refresh your memory.] Well, a few months ago, I stopped by to pick up my laundry, and John, the guy who runs the place, told me that if I'd dropped them off later in the day, I would've bumped into Cameron Diaz. She'd ducked into the laundromat to get a button re-sewn, and had waited inside as patiently as the paparazzi had waited outside, cameras in hand. Now, I don't particularly care for Cameron Diaz, but she obviously has superb taste in picking laundromats.
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Actors are in the city all the time, because at any given time, there are countless movies and tv shows being filmed in New York. But no matter how common this is, people will still stop and gawk. When they were shooting You Don't Mess with the Zohan a few weeks ago, I met a woman who told me she was waiting by the side of the street for Adam Sandler's limo to drive by. Never mind that there was no guarantee of even catching a glimpse of the actor behind those tinted windows. Ridiculous, I thought, as I took out my camera and waited with her.
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Number eleven: Speaking of ridiculous, there were two topless sunbathers on the roof of the building next to my office this past Tuesday. Tuesday was cloudy.
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Twelve: Oh, who am I kidding? I don't really have
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fifteen things
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to write
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about.

Dirty laundry

For years, I did my own laundry. In college, I'd spend $10 on a bottle of liquid detergent and a box of dryer sheets, which would last me an entire semester. Every two weeks or so, I'd carry my laundry basket to the basement of whatever residential hall I was living in, remembering to separate lights from darks, and read a book while the aging washing machines first hummed gently, then threatened to explode. During my last two years in art school, I drove from my apartment in New Brunswick, NJ, to a laundromat in nearby Highland Park staffed entirely by 4-foot-11 Hispanic women.

Our apartment in NYC does not have a washer or dryer, so "doing laundry" means stuffing my clothes in a bag and dropping it off one block down the street, at Prince Street Cleaners. In other words, I don't spend any money on detergent or dryer sheets, but I do pay someone else to do my laundry for me. That someone is John, the amiable Indonesian immigrant who runs Prince Street Cleaners. Like many recent immigrants, he's an enterprising guy -- when the Sony PlayStation 3 was released last year, he waited in line for a week to purchase one of the first units, and then sold it on eBay for a 500% profit.

Perhaps to some of you reading this, paying for someone else to do your laundry is unconscionable, even ridiculous. After all, there are self-serve laundromats all over the city. Sometimes, even I question the economics of it all. I certainly don't pretend that I wouldn't rather have my own washer and dryer. But really, I'm paying for the convenience. I drop off the laundry in the morning on the way to work, and I pick it up on the way home, every pair of boxers neatly folded, every t-shirt turned right-side-out. In college, I had the time to sit and wait for towels to dry in the spin-dryer. Now, I barely have the time to pick the towels off the bathroom floor.

So how much do I actually pay? Today, I dropped off 15 t-shirts, eight pairs of boxers, five pairs of socks, and two pairs of shorts, for which I paid $11.30 (the cleaners charge by weight). If that sounds like a lot, well, I did say that John was an enterprising guy.