Manic Monday Debacle

I should really be studying Philosophy right now. I have a final at 9:00 AM the next day. But for some reason, I'm just not in the mood. I pretty much know the material. I mean, I passed the other two exams with A's. How hard can this next one be?

I refuse to crack open my notebook, for fear that I might crack a fissure in the already volatile thought bubble that is my brain. I refuse to fall into that chasm called worry.

But I'd rather splurge in chronicling my cluttered cognitive formations surrounding yesterday here.

Right now, I'm hungry. There's this cozy restaurant called Spice along 8th Ave., close to NYU, that serves yummy Thai food at affordable prices. For only $5, I ordered a Crispy Calamari Salad, which filled me up right away. It tasted heavenly. A frenzy of flavor tantalized my tongue: the fried salty goodness of the calamari, the fresh mix of veggie greens and tomatoes, and a melt-in-your-mouth minty cool sauce of sweetness. I'm definitely eating there again and I'm definitely going to google the recipe.

That was yesterday evening's dining experience. Just before that, Priscilla, Lily, and I tried going to Washington Square Park. We'd heard that there was a free Fall Out Boy concert going on at 3:30 in the afternoon, thanks to Pete Wentz calling up Z100 and announcing it. Pris told us about it, and so we wanted to check it out. Note that FREE was the buzzword that got our ears signaled to this goal... honestly, it's been a LONG while since I last listened to FOB and I kind of outgrew them. But in any case, it seemed like a cool experience. We figured that it would maybe/sort of make up for the fact that we MISSED a free concert by Adele, one of our favorite artists, at the Apple Store in SoHo a couple weeks before. Unfortunately, we got to the park at around 5:00, and it was pretty much empty. Just our luck for being late (thanks a bunch, MTA!). Not that we were overly bummed out or anything.

(According to Z100 this morning, it turns out the concert didn't even last that long. The police came and said that FOB didn't have a permit to play, so they couldn't set up their instruments. Instead, they performed a capella. Thus, the whole she-bang was relatively short.)

As we stood amid the emptiness of the park, I started hearing drumbeats in the distance, thinking that the band was still there. But as we followed the sounds, it turned out to be a street performer doing a rendition of what must be some kind of cultural, Native American music - complete with chanting and trills.

"Do you really think Fall Out Boy would play that?" Lily said with point-blank sarcasm. Obviously, not. We erupted in laughter right then, and laughed even harder as Lily started to kind of mosh in front of us. Eyes closed, head bouncing, hair flailing, hands and hips gyrating - she looked outright ridiculous. Passers-by shot stares at what looked like three young women who've lost their grasp on reason. Honestly, though, it was fun. :D

While we were at Spice later, Priscilla "introduced" (since Liliana contested that there was no such word in the English dictionary) debacle in one conversation. She pronounced it as "de-BOK-l." But I'd only heard it pronounced as "deb-a-kel" (short a phonetic sound). We got into this whole debate that itself proved to be a debacle, as there really wasn't much of a resolution. We even went so far as to walk into Barnes & Noble on Union Square to look up the pronunciation in a dictionary. When that didn't help, Pris asked a man what the correct pronunciation was.

"Excuse me, sir. But my friends and I would like to know if there is such a world as debacle?" (Here she said it as "de-BOK-el")

"Yes, there is," he replied.

"And can it be pronounced as 'deb-a-kel'?"

A brief, puzzled look came over the man's face but then disappeared into amusement. "Ah, I see. Well, there could be two different pronunciations for the same word."

Liliana looked absolutely affronted. "Well, you know what, Priscilla? I have never in my life heard of such a word as 'de-BOK-el'! I mean, WHAT NORMAL PERSON SAYS THAT?! De-BOK-el!" She started waving her right index finger in Pris's face and doing her trademark head-roll, typical of a Hispanic New Yorker incensed with an affluency for attitude.

"Thank you so much, sir," Pris said as we tried to hush Liliana over to the escalator.

"Not a problem. Have fun!"

The guy must have thought we were obsessive - and in Lily's case, obsessive compulsive - over a single word. We were so engrossed in our stupid debate that we walked towards the wrong escalator.

Pris and I couldn't stop laughing at her persistence, and it continued even as we went to Starbucks to satisfy Liliana's chronic caffeine cravings. (Okay, well not "chronic." Lily just happens to be an avid coffee enthusiast. So to speak. Hehe.)

We were even planning to go so far as to double-check with Mr. A, our English teacher in high school, on Alumni Day (which is scheduled for January 9th). It's kind of sad that we were having this debate when all three of us took AP English during senior year.

Finally, we gave it a rest as we joined the sewer rats in the subway to get home. That was one of the funniest arguments I've ever come across. It was a debacle in itself, if you catch my drift. The only thing that was really solved was Lily's denial of the word's existence. But for me and Pris, it was a win-win situation.

But after all of this absurdity, what can I tell ya?
It was just another manic Monday.