Keep Entertaining Us, Oh Crazy Hyped Up Girl!

The buzz around the watercooler here at Nuts In NY Plaza today has been this report filed by Ashley Tiffany-Amber yesterday. Just the kind of wackiness that gets folks here talking, some fine nut gathering.

Ashley writes:

I am a graduate student at New York University… In one class, there is a crazy girl. She talks so much. Every class… she just sounds a bit hyped up on coffee. Or speed. Everything she says is frantic, complete with hand gestures and bobbing (in and out of her seat). She comes off as oddly excited and inquisitive…

Remember in high school when taking standardized tests? Students would always ask about how to fill in bubbles? Even though, for the most part, it is self-explanatory? She asks questions like that. And then asks for oh-so-much clarification. On everything…

The teacher…listens politely and is neither dismissive nor, you know, interested in what she is saying. She hasn’t, as of yet, been so irritating that students hate her because while she sounds moderately insane, she limits herself to 1-2 bursts per class… Either people really don’t mind, or they are polite enough not to snicker when she speaks. I think it is a little of both. Until last class…

Professor was explaining something, using an example, but not saying who’s paper it was in order to be polite. Crazy girl started asking questions. Then said to us, “Just so you know, it’s my paper he’s talking about.”

To which our professor responds, “I didn’t want to embarrass you.”

Crazy assures him, “You’re not embarrassing me,” and continues, while the student next to me whispers, “No, she is doing fine on her own.”

Crazy continues to argue that her paper was clear, etc., etc., and “I think you should read it again,” offering her assignment back to the teacher.

At the end of her frenzied protest, she apologized to the class, as she was taking up our time with her individual concern. However, I gathered from the class’s general reaction to her that we all thought what she did was very much worth our time with its entertainment value…

Thanks to Ashley for the keen reportage, for acting as our eyes and ears at NYU, and for finding such a perfect nut!

Read more about nutty students, ummm-kay? Or maybe there’s a perfect nut you know that you’d like to share with the rest of the class??

© 2008 NutsInNY.com

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Of Mice and Nuts: Reasons Not to Act

Actor Todd Robert Anderson describes himself as “one of television’s most vaguely recognizable performers”. But despite that self-deprecating tag, the graduate of New York University can claim some pretty big television credits on his resumé, ones that make him sound a heck of a lot like an acting success story: Will & Grace, CSI, Judging Amy, and The Guardian.

Todd Robert Anderson

However, despite the high profile credits, Anderson has penned a cautionary tale for those considering a career in acting. Originally conceived of as a book, his collection of essays titled “Don’t Act: 101 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t” is freely available, being presented in installments on his blog. An eye-opener for would-be actors, it details his early struggles in New York, providing the kind of gritty local color familiar to struggling creative types in NYC.

In Don’t Act, Reason #3: You will be broke, Anderson discusses the hardships and grim existence he faced after graduating from NYU, as a struggling actor in New York, and we meet some of the checkered characters who populated his world:

I was forced to find a new dwelling in Astoria, Queens. The only reason I had ever been able to live in Manhattan in the first place was because I was in college and my parents were footing the bill for food, shelter and tuition… But once I graduated, I was on my own, and food and rent cost a lot more than I could afford. The job I worked paid only eight bucks an hour, and that’s not enough to make it happen in The Big Apple. The only place I could afford…was a one-room shack at the back of an alleyway. I shared it with two roommates who put up cheap walls to divide the place into three rooms. One was a pothead…and the other was a fair-skinned vegan who ate only green vegetables and had only one bowel movement a week which gave his skin a greenish hue and made me rather anxious.

Then there were the creepy neighbors:

I once lived next to a guy who claimed to be the president of the Manhattan Chapter of the Young Republicans Club, and he was always stopping by our apartment…to tell us about the great time he had just had at a strip club. On our other side was the shut-in lady who only came out of her apartment to walk her retarded Doberman. If our door was ever open even a crack…the shut-in lady would come over…and sit on the sofa to smoke her Virginia Slims and talk my ear off. One night…I was trying to write an essay for class… the shut-in lady was smoking cigarettes and yammering while I continued to try to write. My roommate never shut the door, to give her the hint we didn’t want her sticking around too long. Twenty minutes later the Young Republican poked his head through the door. What happened then was astounding. The two of them began having a conversation as if my roommate and I weren’t even there. The Young Republican was apparently allergic to dogs because his nose started literally draining snot, but he refused to leave, so engrossed he was with the shut-in lady. They discussed her dog. He said, “I love these guys, but they kill me.” She answered, “They kill you? Look at this.” Then she pulled her upper row of teeth out of her head, explaining that the dog had jumped for a ball and slammed into her jaw. The Young Republican then said, “Oh, yeah?” And then he pulled his teeth out of his head! Now, I would have demanded that they leave, but chances were quite high that they were both homicidal maniacs…

Finally, some thanks is overdue for Todd Robert Anderson’s efforts to rid the boro of Queens of mice, one by one:

Both of my roommates were allergic to cats, so we had none, but all the neighbors had several felines apiece which meant that the neighborhood mice made their home in our shack… Before attempting sleep, I often would pull the blankets back to find several of these critters having a warm nap in my bed. I became obsessed with killing all the mice in Queens, and I am generally a very peaceful person. After trying all manner of traps and poison, I found the most efficient way of killing them was to put out a glue trap…turn off all the lights, and then sit poised atop a stool with a hammer in hand. I would wait that way until one of the mice had the misfortune of getting himself stuck on the trap… leaping with a triumphant howl from my perch…

Sure does sound like Anderson’s life as a struggling actor in NYC was chocked full of nuts. But also maybe, just maybe, having a bit of his own nuttiness helped him pull thru the tough times. Est-ce possible?

Photo credits: Bob Neches; The Jackson Laboratory

© 2008 NutsInNY.com

Read more about apartment living with NY nuts! Or maybe you yourself have a nut story you’d like to share with the rest of the class?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Mayor Bloomberg: NY Does Not Exist Til Jess Returns

New York City is missing a nut, and vice versa.

Jess, a 20 year old NYU undergrad, loves Paris but she is homesick for New York. She writes home comparing the two cities, two cultures:

People actually amble when they get off the Metro here! If you do that in New York you get run over or verbally abused. But I think all these things contribute to an attitude that is in contrast to one that people used to living in New York have cultivated. I have no patience, a strikingly entitled outlook (I don’t care how Catholic you are, stores should be open on Sundays!), a hurried, intense way of living and an arbitrary sense of safety even in the most dangerous situations.

The no-24-hour-metro thing is a problem in the sense that I am broke and can’t afford to take a cab home every time I go out. (Not to mention it’s not like cabs swarm the streets like in New York)…

It’s not that I hate Paris: quite the contrary. I love it here. It’s just that New York has been so woven into the person that I am that the very idea of it existing without me makes me homesick. My friends here from NYU and I talk about it constantly, and Parisians or people we know from different schools stare at us like we are legit insane. Perhaps we are. We get this dreamy look in our eyes like we are reminiscing about some long ago high school romance… a high school romance with a 24 hour subway system and an intense delivery network that can allow for anything your heart desires to appear on your doorstep within the hour.

I was browsing through friends’ Facebook albums this morning and saw a picture of someone walking up Astor Place towards Broadway. I suddenly experienced this dramatic lurch in my stomach and felt like I might cry. It’s almost as if I’m in this one sided long distance relationship or something, wherein I desperately miss this place and it just ignores me and continues to spit out pollution and embarrassingly pun-laden Post headlines…

Jess et une amie a Paris

Jess, I think I speak for 8 million New Yorkers when I say it’s just not the same without you here. Hurry home!

Photo credit: Jess and Josh Talk About Stuff

Read more about nutty NYU students!

© 2008 NutsInNY.com

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Wall Street Shuffle: The Economy, Cheap Booze and Chicks

I read the news today, oh boy: Schadenfreude is on sale, big time…

Over the past week it’s as if a new cottage industry has popped up, providing steady employment to those ready and willing to snicker about anyone affected by the plummeting stock market.

In “Top 5 Places for Brokers and Bankers to Drink the Pain Away,” BlackBook writer Ben Barna encourages us to smirk along with him about “financial types who saw their immediate futures evaporate”. He thoughtfully offers a list of bargain basement happy hour joints to the less-than-happy employees of Lehman Brothers, Merril Lynch and AIG. He describes establishments “you might want to jot down in that company Blackberry you’ll soon be turning over to regulators…”

Smirking yet?

The biggest shock might come when you suddenly realize how pricey Manhattan suddenly feels. Thankfully, there’s a whole other city across the East River known as Brooklyn, where the drinks tend to be cheaper and the females less generically hot (thank God for the cheap drinks, am I right?)…

(Did he just mention “generically hot” as if it were a good thing? Requiring less liquor?)

Finally, he recommends Bar None in the East Village:

It’s the ultimate NYU hangout, where happy hour lasts eight hours a day and drinks are cheaper than the girls you’re likely to pick up. But if both of you drink hard enough and squint hard enough, she’ll still look sophisticated and you’ll still look rich.

We’re still smirking about the nasty financial types we dislike, right?

And the joke is their misogyny - not our own - right?

Just checking.

Read more about financial crisis nuttiness!

© 2008 NutsInNY.com

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Lather, Rinse, Repeat, Infinity…

This NYU student is a nut right up our own alley here at Nuts in NY Plaza… We believe her when she tells us the following on the About page of her blog:

My name is Nicole. I am a student at New York University, and sometimes, when I’m showering, I forget whether I’ve shampooed my hair or not, so I’ll do it, but then I’ll remember that I already did, so my hair just ends up clean to the point of unhealthiness.

Not to mention it’s a good excuse to include a photo of a babe taking a shower!…

Photo credit: pixelateit

Read more about nutty students!

© 2008 NutsInNY.com

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Last Chance Freakshow

NYU Local informs us that this weekend will be the last chance of the season to experience the freakshow at Coney Island. Linda Leseman writes, “What better way to bid the summer of 2008 goodbye than with a stroll through this collection of living oddities? It’s potentially thrilling… and definitely cheap!”

The Coney Island website offers this description of sword swallower Heather Holliday:

A practicing Mormon, Heather was struck twice by lightning as a young girl growing up in Utah. While this had a profound effect on her faith, she also discovered she had the ability to absorb tremendous amounts of electricity, which bled off her fingertips, or even her tongue. As she struggled with her new talent, she performed dangerous electro-pyrotechnic tricks in the seedy Salt Lake City underground club scene to save enough money to enroll in Coney Island USA’s Sideshow School, the only place that could teach her to harness her talents. Graduating in good standing, Heather now performs her amazing acts on our stage, and at 19, is the youngest female sword swallower in the world…Heather is 5’3”, 110 lbs with blonde, red and black hair, dark eyes. Body modifications include small black tattoos TK, a number of discreet piercings and a nose ring. Costumes include Young Hipster, Golden Bikini, Retro Nightclub.

(Or as we call her here in Williamsburg, “ANYONE”!)

10 live acts and attractions total; other sideshow cast members include Insectavora, Donny Vomit, Serpentina, and Scott Baker the Twisted Shockmeister.

September 19, 20, 21

1:00 - 9:00 pm

Admission $7.50

Read more at the Coney Island website.

Photo credit: coneyisland.com

Read more about Brooklyn nuts!

© 2008 nutsinny.com

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!