The Good Stuff About Jersey

Most of my New Jersey time massively sucked, but there were some fun moments. My co-worker John (the Tasteless T-Shirt Party guy) and I escaped our last two nights there and went into New York City.

Scientologists, Rock Stars and Teen Prom Dates, Oh My!

On Friday, we took the train into Times Square. I've never ridden the subway before. There was an overpowering scent of urine, but it was otherwise OK. I don't understand who pees on the subway. Surely there are better places than inside a moving vehicle.

Times Square was cheesy, dreadful and hilarious - all at the same time. We stopped to gawk at a red carpet event at the Hard Rock Cafe. When we were standing there staring, this stretch SUV limo pulled up and all these beautiful twenty-somethings poured out. No clue who they were. With my luck, it was probably a gang of teenagers headed to prom or something.

Sadly, Motley Crue and Aerosmith were playing there that night and I completely missed them. I would've flung myself at Steven Tyler and Vince Neil. (OK - I wouldn't have, but it's fun to imagine).

We were also stopped by 12 Scientologists (seriously, 12!) but John gave them the "We're anti-Suri" brush-off. They didn't seem too interested in us after that. By the way, on the huge Virgin Records store, there was a poster of former New Kid on the Block Jordan Knight. He actually has a new CD out - it's covers of 80's love songs. He sings a few George Michael songs and duets with Debbie - er Deborah - Gibson.

Our final stop was the NYU campus for a light dinner of onion rings, mozzarella and beer. I've never seen so many men dressed like women in my life. And some of them looked damn good. I was jealous.

Fake Purses: Not Sold By Men in Trench-Coats

We went to Chinatown, got sidetracked by the San Gennaro Festival in Little Italy and went back to Chinatown.

I bought a fake purse! (Will I be arrested for writing that?) I'm not really sure what real designer handbags look like, so it's probably a horrible knockoff, but it was cute and that's all that matters to me.

I thought it would be a bunch of men in trenchcoats and they'd flash open their trenchcoats to show me their wares. Nope - you go into the grungy basement of these little shops and they have all sorts of fake purses and sunglasses sitting around. It was gross and cool at the same time.

Dead Ducks in Noodletown

We ate dinner at Noodletown - a bit of a dive, but very good food - except they had a lot of items on the menu like cow's tongue and tripe. Plus they had skinned, whole dead ducks hanging in their window. The waiter kept trying to teach me how to use chopsticks, but I wasn't very good at it so he gave up and handed me a fork.

On our way back, we took the wrong train - TWICE. It was crazy. It was 1 a.m. when we got back to our hotels and John and I had a cab coming at 5:20 a.m. Needless to say, I wasn't a hot mama on the plane ride.