Last week, someone wished me a “Happy New Year!”.

That’s right. On June 19, I was happy-new-yeared by a man in the Metro who apparently was unaware that we’re merely weeks away from being closer to 2009 than 2007.

In his defense, the man was a bum. Literally. He was homeless. Standing near the Ballston Metro escalator, he awkwardly held out a paper cup and asked commuters for 40 cents, a pretty specific amount considering it might be tough to find someone with exactly a quarter, a dime, and a nickel. I dug into my pockets, fished out four bits, and handed them to him.

He didn’t say “God bless” (the most common grateful bum’s mantra) or “Thank you”. He said, “Happy New Year” and went back to begging.

It could have been worse. It has been worse.

While standing outside Cue Bar once at a blogger happy hour with some friends, a homeless man approached our group and asked for cigarettes and money. I had seen him the week before at Cue Bar (I love that place) and jokingly said, “Remember me?”

He took this affectionate phrase as a sign of amity I wasn’t aware existed between us. He looked at me, said, “Oh yeah! How you doing?”, and proceeded to lean into my neck and kiss it.

That’s right. He kissed…my neck.

Some advice, people. Recoiling in disgust at a strange man trying to kiss your neck does not, apparently, prevent said man from kissing your neck. I have blocked out most of what happened that moment save for remembering this girl doing her best not to crack up at my predicament.

In his defense, he was a good kisser and if I had been into men with mailing addresses, things might have turned out differently for Neck Kisser and I.

I just wish he could have wished me a “Happy New Year” instead.

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“The gym” is a place that used to silently mock me whenever I walked by:

“Hey fatty, you enjoying that fifth slice of pizza?” it would say.

“Right, the dry cleaner shrunk your pants. I don’t think so.”

“No, Arjewtino, that scale is not off.”

Well judge no longer, “gym”, because I am once again a member of your exclusive little club. And I have a sweet access card on my keychain to prove it.

Two years since I last belonged to a gym, I have signed up to take part in the masturbatory ritual that is known as “working out”. After stepping on a friend’s scale a few weeks ago that revealed a number I never imagined I’d see and was not, as I futilely purported, “wrong”, I realized the Dodgers wouldn’t sign me to a long-term contract anytime soon if I didn’t do something about it.

But man, a lot has changed since I last went to a gym. And I’m not just talking about seeing more men blow drying their hair. These are the top five things that have changed since I last stepped foot inside a gym.

1. iPods.

The last time I worked out in a gym, I carried my now-retro CD player with me, listening to entire albums I hoped wouldn’t skip tracks from the jolt of my running. These CD players were cumbersome and inconvenient.

Now, everyone has an iPod strapped to their bicep. So do I, because I’ll be damned if anyone catches me stuffing the equivalent of a boom box down my pants.

2. Workout fashion.

No place outside of a discothèque (do people still call it that?) demands as important a need to dress well than a gym. Between something called Under Armour and the lack of sweats and spandex, a gym these days is a veritable style house where you can spot the latest trends.

My workout clothes are from Target.

3. New treadmill technology.

Stepping on a computerized treadmill is like traveling to the future. These machines with the pretty graphics and complicated running schemes are so advanced now they do everything but file your taxes for you. They even plug into overhead TVs. This led to the following discussion with The Princess:

Arjewtino: “How do I start this thing?”

The Princess: “You enter your information and select the kind of running program you want, set your levels and time minimums.”

AJT: “…”

TP: “Just press ‘Start’.”

4. Lack of shame.

The gym used to practically be a library run by an old maid, a place where you quietly tune out the world around you and take on the need to conquer your weight shame. Now, people are talking and screaming at each other, at the weights themselves, or in the case of a man my friend Kathryn dubbed the Grunting Man, at oneself.

Everytime the Grunting Man lifts a barbell above his shoulders or crunches a sit-up, he lets out the loudest groan I have ever heard outside of a porno. He is fully aware he’s doing it because, if you’re new at the gym, the sound will cause such a panic in you that you will stare at the Grunting Man in disbelief.

5. Trainers are nice now.

Back in my day, trainers were intimidating bodybuilder types whose dreams of winning American Gladiator were dashed by the show’s cancellation. Now, they look more like you or me. Mostly me.

On Saturday, I asked a dude who even I could have bench pressed to show me how to use the squats machine without getting squished. He was affable, helpful, and pleasant.

I even offered to help him with his American Gladiator application.

I’m already enjoying going to the gym, remembering again how much energy working out gives me and liking the results when I look into the mirror. I’ve started reading workout magazines again and care more about what I eat (General Tso’s chicken is now just a once-a-month “cheat” meal).

Now if I could just figure out this treadmill business…

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IPOD PHOTO CREDIT

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TRAINER PHOTO CREDIT

I am not from the Midwest. I don’t call soda “pop”, I have never gone cow tipping, and I have never seen people wearing overalls at a funeral.

So I certainly had never heard of “A Prairie Home Companion” until The Princess (from Missouri) and Shiftless Badger (from Kansas) told me about it last year. One year later, after many hours listening to the radio broadcast and on Saturday even attending a live show at Wolf Trap, I’m still not sure exactly what PHC is.

But I do know one thing. White people love it.

Along with The Princess, Foxymoron, and Chinese Buffet Pussy, I attended the Saturday evening show, arriving quasi-early to stake out a decent spot on the lawn. Shiftless Badger couldn’t attend because of work demands (stupid sexy responsibilities), which led me to ask him, “A midwesterner missing Prairie Home Companion? It’s like me missing the World Cup!”.

He responded with: “It is unnatural and wrong.”

It was unnatural and wrong, SB, but for different reasons. You missed what turned out to be a veritable smörgåsbord and/or orgy of white people congregating in the outdoors, drinking wine and eating cheese, laughing their asses off to jokes no normal person would understand, and paying gobs of money to “watch” a radio show they could have heard for free on NPR.

And, yes, I enjoyed every second of it.

Here are my top 5 favorite moments from PHC:

1. Spotting what kind of food other people brought.

I saw more Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods bags at PHC than at a Montgomery County recycling center. Along with the hundreds of picnic baskets, these bags carried a variety of white wines, cheeses, fruits, sushi, gazpacho, salmon steaks, guacamole dip, and other NPR-nerd-loving foods.

Our group might have been the only people there who brought pupusas and domestic beer.

2. Garrison Keillor opening the show by walking on the lawn and singing.

Seriously, white people just about lost their shit when GK walked by them, snapping photos, screaming like teenage girls at a New Kids on the Block concert, and clapping loudly for a man whose attorneys once sent a cease-and-desist letter to a company producing “A Prairie Ho Companion” T-Shirts. Even this dude wrote a comment on another blog in which he said:

Wow, he actually walked by the lawn folks. He is such a great person. Did you get a chance to meet up with him. I did the time I was lucky to get seats. I was at third row, middle. I was in heaven.”

In heaven? Sorry, buddy, playing catch with your dead dad in a cornfield in Iowa is heaven. Seeing GK up close is not.

3. Watching this dude use his binoculars to stare at his wife.

There’s nothing wrong with looking at your wife. There’s nothing wrong with looking at your wife’s cleavage. But using binoculars to do both? She’s three inches from your face, do you really feel like you need side-by-side mirror-symmetrical telescopes to get a better look? He was one white lab coat shy of looking like a creepy high school Chemistry teacher.

4. Getting a great view of this man’s ass crack.

I know you can’t tell from this photo, but despite this man showing us his ass crack for half the show, he actually had a real woman lying on his lap in front of him. Which was probably a good thing because if she saw what we saw (I softened this photo to spare you what we really saw), I suspect he’d be girlfriend-less.

5. Watching kids bored out of their skulls.

Just because you might enjoy a radio variety show full of archaic references, inside jokes, and “comedic” skits, it doesn’t mean your teenage daughter, young child, or newborn baby will. The kid in this photo was so bored it’s pretty clear he got drunk and then threw up on his dad’s shoulder.

…I saved a very special and very ungrateful baby bird from certain death.

I wonder how Special Ed is doing now as a 1-year-old. The little moron probably doesn’t even remember me.

Fucking ingrate.

I am a fucking magician.

Among other things, I can make water appear out of a faucet in the restroom in my office simply by placing may hands directly under the spout. Also, I can accurately predict a coin toss at a rate of 50%.

But I can’t do everything. For instance, I cannot make little girls happy simply by giving them a Happy Meal toy.

During lunch recently in the Ballston Mall, a father and his young daughter and son sat at the table next to me. Though I was engrossed in my book, I could not help but overhear the little girl whine and complain about how her McDonald’s Happy Meal did not come with a toy.

As my homosexual friend Foxymoron would say, “So traj.”

I finished my meal and decided to do what Haley Joel Osment died trying to pound into our skulls and pay it forward. I went to the McDonald’s counter and asked to speak to the manager. I explained that “my friend’s” daughter didn’t get a toy with her Happy Meal and that I was there to restore her faith in the human condition.

He grabbed a plastic-wrapped toy fire truck and handed it to me suspiciously.

I briefly considered taking it out and rolling it along the counter yelling “Vroom, vroom!”, just to see how he would react, but decided against it. There are enough comparisons to me acting like a child as it is.

I went back to the table and patted the dad on the shoulder.

“Excuse me, I couldn’t help overhear your daughter say she didn’t get a toy in her Happy Meal so I got her one,” I said.

You would have thought I had offered the dad a kidney. I swear I saw tears well up in his eyes. He grabbed my arm and shook my hand, effusively praising my kindness.

But his apple, unfortunately, did fall far from the tree.

He handed the toy to his daughter and said, “Thank the nice man, Tabitha.”

Tabitha grabbed the toy fire truck and looked at it. Then she threw it back at her dad.

“NO!”

Fucking Tabitha.

“Now, honey…” the dad started. But I didn’t stick around to hear him act like his 6-year-old daughter’s bitch. I walked away happy in the knowledge that Tabitha wasn’t my daughter.

And that I wouldn’t be buying Happy Meals anytime soon.

I am an incredible blackjack player. I’m not nearly as good as the card-counting protagonist of Bringing Down the House, but then again I’m not Asian.

More often than not, though, I win at blackjack. They key is to not play desperate, never bet more than you’re willing to lose, and know when to take a chance. Oh, and don’t sit at a table with retarded people.

Once in Vegas, I was at a blackjack table with my friends Blue, Big I, and Scotty. Also joining us was a guy who was a couple of bulbs short of a full deck.

This idiot savant could win. And he won big. Every other hand it seemed like he would draw 21. And every time he did, he would shout “Blackjack!” like he had won the fucking lottery. Oh, and he would start barking and meowing like a house pet.

Yes, the man barked and meowed. Out loud. He even once asked the dealer to hit him on 15 with the dealer showing a 5. He drew a 6. This ridiculous style of play royally fucked us up and we lost more than we won.

The one gambling game I suck at, though, is poker. Maybe it’s because I couldn’t bluff my way out of a paper bag or because I can’t tell when other people are full of shit, but I have always lost at this game.

Still, when my work friend Phillip the Frenchman invited me over to his apartment recently for a poker tournament, I thought I could reverse years of bad luck. The only problem was getting there.

This was the e-mail he sent to me and some other co-workers:

Pretty clear directions, right? You’d think. I walked over to the building and was buzzed in. I took the elevator to the 17th floor and found apartment 1703. I knocked on the door.

Nothing.

Thinking they were outside on the balcony smoking and drinking and couldn’t hear me, I tried the door knob and found it was unlocked.

I walked in to find an empty apartment.

“Phillip?” I shouted. “Phillip?”

Nothing.

I walked in to the living room and took a look around. They were not on the balcony. They were not in the kitchen. There was no one there. As I weighed my options, a girl came out of the bedroom.

I didn’t know Phillip had a female roommate, I thought.

“Can I help you,” she asked.

“Hi, yeah, is Phillip here?”

“Uh, no…you have the wrong apartment.”

Oh. Fuck.

“Is this 1703?” I asked while planning my escape route and hoping she didn’t have a gun. It was Virginia, after all.

“Yeah, but there’s no Philip here.”

Considering she was talking to a man who had just illegally entered her apartment, this chick was remarkably composed. She didn’t scream or feel threatened. In fact, she acted like this sort of thing happens all the time.

“Oh my god, I am so sorry,” I said as I left, trying my best not to seem menacing.

“That’s ok!” she replied.

I called Phillip from the hallway and asked him to verify his apartment number.

“1903,” he said.

Motherfucker.

I got to his place and told everyone what had happened. The first question out of their mouths: “Was she hot?

I lost $50 that night, though I felt like I played ok and even won a hand or two. We got drunk off our asses on scotch whiskey and had a good time.

Next time, though, I’ll be barking like a dog.

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Observing Passover is like having a systematic spring cleaning. Only with more persecution.

Part of this “cleaning” involves a major overhaul of dietary rules. Now four days (out of eight) into my ban on eating anything leavened or, you know, tasty, I’m starting to wonder if any of those fleeing Jews in Exodus couldn’t have waited just a few more minutes for the bread to rise.

I spent Passover weekend entertaining my 12-year-old cousin (again) and decided to make it the Jewiest weekend ever. So I did what any cool, older cousin would do in this situation. I got him drunk.

Actually, my friend Foxymoron got him drunk. Off kosher wine. At seder on Saturday night, Foxymoron pulled off an amazing meal, cooking the traditional foods, reciting the Passover prayers from the Haggadah, and blessing the candles and wine. And, of course, getting us all drunk.

To be fair, my cousin only had three glasses of wine, and they were more like half glasses. But that boy would not stop jabbering and laughing toward the end of the evening and talking about how much game he had with the girls at his leadership conference last week. Fucking drunk.

Earlier that day my cousin, The Princess, and I had gone down to the Mall to visit the National Air and Space Museum. Since my cousin wants to be a commercial pilot someday, he was pretty stoked.

That museum, though, is incredibly out-of-date. Between the broken displays, the low-tech features, and the barrage of immensely ugly children wandering around, it was a miracle we got out of there.

Rockets

What we look light in infrared light.

“Get off my plane!”

Of course, on the way to the museum, we had noticed a litany of police setting up along Constitution Avenue. The Princess walked up to one of the security guards nearby and asked what was going on. When he stopped staring at her cleavage, he informed her that they were preparing for a neo-Nazi rally.

“On Passover?” I yelled.

I then described to my cousin how our country’s first amendment allows bigots to scream hatred as long as they have an approved permit issued by the Park Police.

On Sunday, I tried to wash away the stench of neo-Nazis invading our city and took my cousin to see records of real Nazis at the Holocaust Museum. The Nazi-themed weekend took on an ominous tone when we noticed the Department of Agriculture’s exterior design:

Also, it being Hitler’s birthday and all (April 20) made me wonder if it all amounted to irony.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one:

Now, the Jewiest weekend since Yom Kippur involving the Ten Plagues, Hitler, and Nazis has given way to a week without eating any sandwiches, tacos, burritos, cheeseburgers, or sushi. And not drinking beer.

This has been harder than I thought and, I would argue, tougher to do than fasting for 24 hours.

For those who remember, I once wrote the following words on this blog:

…when I go out, I turn into Teen Wolf hooked on bread.
Bread? They have bread? Give me some bread! You have any more bread? Give me five motherfucking baskets of bread!

I better get a good seat in synagogue. You know, the next time I go.

I don’t have “game”.

I once walked up to a girl in the men’s razors aisle at Target and said, “So, picking up a little something for yourself?”

She responded with a look that would have made your balls fall off.

Another time, while in Boston, I was chatting with the very hot friend of a friend. She obviously wanted to get in my pants because she was asking what my plans were that evening and if I wanted to go to a bar. I told her, “I’ve been known to a have a drink or two in my lifetime”.

I didn’t hit that.

Back in my day, we didn’t call the act of flirting “game”. We called it “let’s see who gets shot down first”, which is much tougher to say when you’re drunk than you realize. I didn’t tell women they reminded me of my adorable little sister and the only “3-second rule” I was aware of had to do with dropped food.

So it intrigues me to no end these days when I hear my single female friends tell me about being “gamed” by dudes who rehash all of the same techniques that have been around since the first caveman clubbed a woman over the head. (That works, by the way.) These techniques might be moderately successful and give men the courage to hit on chicks, but in their quest to come across as unique, they are instead becoming a cliché.

Just this past weekend, my friend MJ was “peacocked” or “targeted” or whatever it’s called by a man with a misguided obsession with the Flintstones. In an e-mail yesterday, MJ broke down for me every “Pick-Up Artist” move this guy made that she had already seen on VH1:

At a party, “this guy comes up to us and asked who would make a better boyfriend, Fred Flintstone or Barney Rubble. And since we’re nice girls, we’re not going to be completely rude, but really, you want to have a conversation about that?”

“It gets worse. He doesn’t even have his facts right about the Flintstones and claims that Fred works and Barney doesn’t. It’s simply ridiculous because we don’t want to argue about the freaking Flintstones. And i saw the Fred Flintstone line on that TV show.”

Either this guy owned stock in Flintstones vitamins or he needed a new TV show from which to steal. I hear Everybody Loves Raymond reruns are a veritable treasure trove of seduction techniques.

MJ’s night with the prick-up artist (see what I did there?) continued.

“So then he makes us guess his job. We said IT guy. He then brags about not even having a TV. Wrong crowd to think that impresses us.”

Being one of the world’s foremost TV junkie, MJ was at this point beyond annoyed.

“Then he goes, you look familiar. Do i look familiar? I go no. Then he goes, well you have a twin out there. She was really cool, I would have asked her out, but she had a boyfriend. I didn’t say anything to that.”

When “what’s your sign”-era attempts don’t work, you should always try sounding worldly.

“He then tried to convince us that he learned how to do massage therapy in Iraq.”

Maybe not.

I know I’m no expert at hitting on women. But the thing is, when I was interested in someone, I wouldn’t make it a game of making passes. I found that trying to hit on a woman was usually the best way not to go home with her. The trick, if there was one, was just to come across as a comfortable and confident man. That’s it.

I asked Roissy once if he felt like the “meat market” was being saturated by these self-professing “pick-up artists”.

He said, essentially, that yeah, it was, and that certain “routines”, like the “best friends test”, had become off limits due to its overuse.

I think MJ explained it perfectly:

“Obviously, you have issues if you are using lines like that. I don’t understand why this stupid approach is being encouraged. and it makes for REALLY awkward situations.”

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There is a school of thought that scoffs at the notion that we can ever photograph a moment as it really was. We crop, frame, eliminate, and choose what we decide to photograph, in a way robbing the viewer of what we were truly experiencing.

I think about this whenever I see the Cherry Blossoms. Thousands of tourists jockey for position to get “the perfect shot”, one that usually means not showing the other tourists competing for the same shot. But the tourists were there. They were part of your experience. So why try to eliminate them? Why not just photograph them in the scene?

That’s what I did on Saturday afternoon. Instead of taking photos of the Cherry Blossoms and pretending that I was there alone with the seasonal flowers, I decided to capture them as they are this time of year: coveted and documented by hordes of visitors (and locals).

After all, anyone can take a decent photo of the Cherry Blossoms. But can anyone take a decent photo of the tourists taking photos of the Cherry Blossoms?

Whether this “meta” form of photography is intriguing or not is up to the beholder. To me, it was just a fun process. I saw tourists crouching, straining, pointing, climbing, sitting, lying, aiming, and bending over like human origami, each one eager to document just how much they love our Cherry Blossoms.

Some got yelled at for climbing the trees. Others acted frustrated they couldn’t get a clear shot. Most wandered around aimless, clicking away, oblivious to the moment. Here are some of my favorite shots.

Not a bad opening act.

On a cold night that featured a ridiculous security line, overpriced hot dogs and undereducated vendors, and a blown save that made us rue the prospect of fighting the cold much longer, the last thing anyone expected was such a dramatic finish.

Unless you asked INPY.

“I called it, I called it!” he screamed for 10 straight minutes after Ryan Zimmerman drilled a walk-off homerun in the bottom of the 9th to win the first Nats game at the newly opened Nationals Park.

Yes, INPY called it. He had predicted that Zimmerman would hit the homerun with two outs, nobody on, and Nats’ pitcher Jon Rauch having just blown a save. But I think everyone could claim they called it. Because it was the perfect moment for a Hollywood finish. I thought it. The drunktards banging the metal railing with their beer bottles thought it. Even all the frozen kids huddling under their parents’ arms thought it.

And Zimmerman delivered, christening the new stadium and allowing spectators to revel in an opening night that, despite its many tiny imperfections, still managed to be a perfect one.

More than seven months after I sneaked into Nationals Park to take some photos of the stadium’s construction, I entered the $611 million baseball arena last night for the Nats’ first game of the season — legally, this time.

I went with INPY (who had gone online to get the tickets the second they went on sale weeks ago), Beth, and another friend. And it did not disappoint. We arrived for the 8pm game around 6pm and were greeted with a long security line that snaked down First Street, thanks to President Bush throwing out the first pitch. It took us one hour to get in and only because we “kinda” cut in line.

Once we did, though, we were like kids in a candy store. The stadium was absolutely beautiful, greater than anything I had expected. The field was manicured to perfection, the lights seemed to shine brighter, and there appeared to be no bad sight lines anywhere.

I walked around for a bit and strolled down to field level by the first base side. I beheld the field and decided I wanted a picture to capture the moment. I turned to a teenage girl seated nearby and had this conversation:

Arjewtino: “Hi, can you take my picture?”

Girl: “No thanks.”

Arjewtino: “No, I meant a picture of me.”

Girl: “Oh, sure!”

This was the picture she took:

I snapped some more shots and settled into our seats, Section 237, Row A. Row A! We sat in the very first row of the mezzanine near the right-field foul pole, an incredible view that allowed us to see every other area of the stadium with ease.

It being Opening Day Night, we had hot dogs, cold beers, and Cracker Jacks. Like INPY always says, the best hot dog you’ll ever have is at a ballgame. He had ordered Hebrew Nationals at the hot dog stand earlier in the evening, to a vendor who apparently didn’t understand something as complicated as English.

Finally, after realizing that INPY was ordering the kosher hot dogs with the distinctive name, he yelled back, “Four Heebs!”

Not the most culturally aware group of workers you’ll ever meet.

Bush threw out the first pitch to a mixture of boos and cheers. The Nats’ starting lineup were announced coming out of center field. The game started and I decided to keep score for the first time in years. I thought, if there would ever be ANY game to score, this would be it.

The Nats took an early lead, 2-1, and then their bats went dead. Despite strong pitching from starter and former Dodger Odalis Perez, and a strong bullpen, the Nats held onto that one-run lead for most of the game.

In the 9th, it looked like Jon Rauch would save the game, but with one out, Mark Teixeira smacked a double off the right-field wall that was just a foot away from being the game-tying homerun. Rauch got the second out with Texeira moving to third.

The fans got to their feet, elated in what we all knew would happen. Just one more out. We stomped and clapped and cheered, knowing Rauch would deliver. And then he threw it away. The Braves tied it at 2 and we were headed to the 9th. And with the way both teams were hitting, I suspected extra innings.

But Zimmerman, who had gone 0-3 up until his fourth at bat, came up with two outs and we all knew. We just knew it would happen. Zimmerman hit a rope that just barely cleared the left-field wall, sending everyone into hysterics. We celebrated, high-fived, hugged. We watched Zimmerman circle the bases and watched him celebrate on the huge HD screen in center.

For that moment, the Nats were undefeated and in first. And Nationals Park became the House That Ryan Built.

Here are some additional pics:

First-base side.

Stadium seats.

Crowded vendor area.

I wish I could claim this was Zimmerman’s homerun at-bat. But, alas, this is merely the first pitch ever thrown to Zimmerman at Nationals Park.