burgers & cupcakes

I'm going to veer from my usual hilarious blog posts to write one that is a little more serious. This one is about something very near and dear to me. Burgers. And cupcakes.


Kevin and I are on the search for the "perfect burger" in NYC. We have eaten burgers at numerous places around the city. Last Saturday, on our way to K-Mart to buy an air conditioner, we were looking for a place to stop and get lunch. We happened upon a little joint called burgers & cupcakes. Another thing that you should know about me is that I LOVE cupcakes. So much, in fact, that I'm going to post a picture of some beautiful cupcakes.


So I lied, and it's a bunch of cupcakes. Sue me! It still looks delicious.

Anyway, just thinking about cupcakes reminds me of burgers & cupcakes. Kevin and I check out the menu on the door and decide the price is okay. We go in and take a seat. A waiter comes over to greet us. He takes our order. I get a burger with bacon and cheddar cheese. Kevin gets a chicken sandwich.

When the order comes out, Kevin comments, "This looks more like a slider."


Notice that in the first picture of Kevin's sandwich, my hand is significantly larger than the "slider." Keep in mind that I have dainty hands.



In the second picture, we see just how small the chicken is that was on that sandwich. Perhaps they should market it as a chicklette sandwich. Or a baby hatchling sandwich. For those of you who don't already know, a baby chicken is called a chick. And a chicklette is an even smaller version of a baby chicken. Usually they're about the size of a peep. Maybe they should call it a peep sandwich.

Need I say more? We were thoroughly disappointed. My burger wasn't much better. We just don't have photographic evidence.

So, our starving tummies wanted more after we finished our sandwiches. We decided to try the cupcakes. After all, burgers & cupcakes must surely have good cupcakes if their burgers are sub-par, right?

Right?

Hmm... I think you see where I'm going with this.

So back to the menu we looked at. I noticed right away that they sell their cupcakes for $2.50. They also sell a baker's dozen of mini cupcakes for $30.00. Now, a baker's dozen for those who are unaware, means 13. A quick math lesson tells us that...

12 x $2.50 = $30.00
13 x $2.50 = $32.50

So, clearly, you're getting a deal. An extra cupcake for free, right?

But... the menu says, a bakers dozen MINI cupcakes. Who cares about an extra cupcake if they're all small.

We decide to go with two cupcakes anyway. In the time that we've been thinking about this, we notice that our server has walked out the door to the restaurant. The other server has left as well. There is one person left working in the place, and she's behind the register, her two-inch long, acrylic nails frighten us a little, and we'd rather she stayed there. We wait a few minutes. Our server does not return. We decide to ask the woman with the long nails for them.


We order two cupcakes anyway. Red velvet. It's one of my favorites.

The cupcakes come. We discover why the cupcakes are priced the way they are. ALL of the cupcakes are miniature. Kind of disappointing for a restaurant called burgers & CUPCAKES.

Anyway, they taste good, as the sandwiches did. But the service and the portion sizes left much to be desired. Our server never returns, so we ask the woman with the nails to give us our check. She hands it to me from behind without leaving the register. Kevin's comment, "Probably not the best way to deliver that."

We leave with a bad taste in our mouths, and not from the food.

BTW... our favorite burger so far is still the Corner Cafe on Broadway in the East Village. If anyone has any suggestions for us, let us know.

Washington, THE District of Columbia

WARNING: There may be a lot of unnecessary backstory with this post to get to anything even remotely funny. I'm not proud of it. Just thought I'd put that out there.

Picture it. New York City. April 15th. Tax Day. Kevin and I decide we want to spend the weekend in Washington, DC. (That's my tribute to the Golden Girls. RIP Bea!) We decide to use a little website called couchsurfing.com to find a place to stay. Kevin and I had done this once before when I was visiting NYU last June for orientation. We had a great experience with it. I had couchsurfed numerous times with Sandy when we were on the cross-country roadtrip the previous winter. But back to Kevin and me... it is our second time couchsurfing.

We write to several people who seem like they might be fun to stay with. We only get one positive response. From an older, gay gentleman. We'll call him Mij. Obviously, this isn't his real name. Mij tells us that there will be another couchsurfer staying there the first night we are going to be there, but that we can work out sleeping arrangements in the living room and that it shouldn't be a problem.

We make the necessary arrangements for the trip. We are to arrive on Friday around 2 or so. Mij says that his downstairs tenant will let us in, and that we can meet him back at the house later that evening. He has plans for dinner and should be home "before 9."

Fast forward to Friday. We take a bus into DC from NYC. Not just any bus... A DOUBLE DECKER! We get the very first seat on the top of the bus. We have great views for the ride into DC. We both take naps on the way in. We tool around Dupont Circle, the "gay" part of DC. Then we head back to Mij's pad. It's around 9:30. We figure this is a good time. He should be home and have had enough time to relax before having to meet and entertain new people. We let ourselves in and proceed upstairs to the living room.

We are greeted by two lovely gentlemen, one an older man of about, oh, 53 years, and the other slightly younger, about 19 years old. We learn that the older is our host, Mij, and the younger is the other couchsurfer. His name is Ogirdor. Ogirdor is young. Slender. Innocent. And Brazilian. And you know what they say about Brazilians.

So Mij greets us and asks us about our day. The conversation goes something like this:

MIJ: Welcome, guys. How was your day?

ME: It was nice. We got in around 2, had lunch, made our way up here, and then spent the day in Dupont Circle.

MIJ: Nice. Ogirdor has been out all day today. Why don't you tell us a little bit about it.

OGIRDOR: I just went to the Smithsonian.... Panda.... Castle....

(yawn)

White house.... Washington Monument....

MIJ: Oh, did you go to the top of the monument?

OGIRDOR: No.... Jefferson Memorial....

MIJ: You have an early day tomorrow for the bus, right?

OGIRDOR: Yeah.

MIJ: What are your plans for tomorrow, boys?

ME: I'm not sure exactly. We were thinking about going to the Smithsonian and checking out some of the monuments.

MIJ: Oh, Ogirdor can probably tell you all about where to go. Right?

OGIRDOR: You're the expert. I've only been here two days.

MIJ: Tell us about Brazil.

Ten more minutes of the two of them talking about Brazil. A few blahs, a few yawns.

MIJ: You should be getting to bed soon. You have an early day tomorrow.

OGIRDOR: You're right.

MIJ: Don't forget to look that stuff up about the bus, and you should get that picture with Obama.

They head upstairs. Kevin and I are planning on going out to meet my friend Lori for a drink. So we wait a few minutes for Ogirdor to come back downstairs so we can figure out sleeping arrangements. He doesn't come down. They stay up there for a good fifteen minutes, just talking away. Laughing. We decide to go up.

Ogirdor is sitting at Mij's desk. Mij is standing behind him. In his boxers. With a button up shirt on, with only a few buttons buttoned. This may not be an actual picture of what it looked like, but it's close enough...


The two of them don't seem to care that Kevin and I are standing at the top of the stairs in the same room as them. Ogirdor keeps playing with his Brazilian facebook, showing Jim pictures of him and his family. Jim, rubbing his belly and his crotch, says things like...

"Ogirdor, where are the pictures of your brother? Is he gay too?"

"Where's your boyfriend? What do you mean, a cute boy like you doesn't have a boyfriend. I don't believe that for a second."

"Ogirdor, wanna play with my cock?"

Okay, so maybe that last one doesn't come out of his mouth. At least not while we were still there...

Eventually, Mij realizes that we're waiting to figure out sleeping arrangements before we head out. Maybe he thinks that Ogirdor will stay with him in his room and it won't matter. He goes into his room and lets us figure it out. Ogirdor suggests that we share the big couch and he takes the small one. That works fine for us. We leave as quickly as we can, thoroughly disgusted by what we've just seen.

We go out to meet Lori, go to a gay bar and have some drinks. Stay out as late as possible, placing bets with our new friends on whether or not Ogirdor will be on the couch when we get back. We finally head back around 3am. And... Ogirdor IS on the couch. We still have not confirmed whether or not there was any play while we were out.

And... the rest of the weekend goes fine. We are a little weirded out by our host, but he makes no passes at us. In fact, he is so "hands off" that he doesn't really seem to want us there. This works out fine for us though. We are here to see the city and not Mij.

Ogirdor, if you're reading this, WE WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED WHILE WE WERE GONE!

Professors, at it again...

Yesterday, I had an assignment due for my difficult class, Complex Variables. The professor for this class, let's call him Salami, has a tendency to be kind of a d-bag. During class, he likes to tell us how stupid we are and that we should have learned a lot more in the first semester. That sort of stuff. Back to the story though.

The assignment was due at 6, and he had office hours from 3 to 5. Because the class is particularly difficult, many people tend to show up for his office hours. Yesterday, there were about eight of us. He is also teaching an undergraduate class this semester, and he uses his office hours for both classes. There was one guy there to see him from that class.

He opened his door at about 3:15, and another student from the undergrad class emerged. He looked at the group in the hallway and asked, "Is anyone here to pick anything up for [insert undergrad class name]?"

This is how the conversation between him and the boy from the undergrad class went:

BOY: I wanted to talk to you.

SALAMI: Are you here to pick up a test or contest your grade?

BOY: No. I just have a question about the final.

SALAMI: Well, I'm not going to tell you anything about the exam, and I have a good reason. I haven't made it yet.

BOY: I wanted to ask if it would be possible to take it early or late.

SALAMI: Why? There is an exam schedule and you're expected to adhere to it. What reason could you have to not take it on time? Tell me here. It can't be anything personal. So you should be able to say it right now.

(All of the grad students in the hall were visibly fighting back laughing out loud at this exchange.)

BOY: Well, it's going to sound a little silly. I'm going to be out of the country the weekend before, competing in a paper airplane contest.

(A few hushed chuckles erupt.)


BOY: Seriously. I'm not making this up.

SALAMI: Well, we can talk about it later.

BOY: Should I come back to your office hours on Monday?

SALAMI: No, we can talk about it on Wednesday, when you finish with the exam.

I don't feel that this story needs any commentary. It works well enough on its own. However, donations will be accepted to help cover his international flight. E-mail me for information.