Well, finally, I've got electricity again. You don't live under rocks, I don't need to tell you that half the world, the moon, and scattered portions of Jupiter experienced a massive power outage yesterday afternoon. While technically living in what's considered part of NYC, it's admittedly the ass end part, so we were some of the last to get our lamps and hairdryers operative.

Of course, something like this would happen on one of the rare days of the year when I'm not just sitting home watching Nickelodeon reruns. I was actually in the city when the outage hit -- in a meeting with some people from VH1, of all things. I'll hopefully have more to tell you about that in the future, but I'd like to thank Robin E. and the rest of the crew for sharing this less tragic of the NYC disasters with me. Loads of fun! Literally five minutes after making those "nice to meet you" handshakes with everyone, I barely had time to worry if I got sweat on any of their hands before the power went out and the entire Paramount Plaza was evacuated. Only after hitting the streets did we realize the scope of the problem....

No power anywhere. After bullshitting with the VH1 people, (who were even nice enough to offer me and the woman a ride home, thanks again) I split and tried to figure out how I was going to find that woman in question with the 650,000,000,000,000 people swarming the streets, effectively creating a NYC Opposite Day where the pedestrians ruled the road and drivers were forced to suffer through inch-an-hour crawls for all of eternity...or at least until the electricity came back on. This was my first "on scene" experience with this sort of event, and I've gotta be honest -- I haven't really heard the status report yet, so while I feel bad for anyone who got trapped in an elevator or overwhelmed with heat and exhaustion, I actually liked the city a lot more than I usually do. It was chaos. At first, nobody knew anything. Few, if any cell phones were operating when the outage first went down, and when the news started trickling down that other major cities were without power, everyone began assuming the worst. It wasn't one of those deals where you feared for your life or anything, but you certainly wondered if the power outage was going to segue into a bunch of those ID-4 motherships hovering overboard with genocidal weapons. Then, while passing one of the corner-side flower vendors, I overheard the traveling botanist utter these words:

"Hey hey HEYYYY! Flowers, folks, get your flowers! 5.00 BLACKOUT SALE!"

Right then and there, I knew everything would be fine. Actually, it was even better than "fine" for some. There were thousands upon thousands who just wanted to get home as soon as possible, but after the woman located me while I was in the middle of an extensive search for her, (I was sitting on a bench with a Snapple, but I swear I was looking around for her simultaneously) we decided to spend a bit of time there since the buses were just too crowded to even attempt boarding. There were countless others who did the same, and for them, it was like getting the party nobody was going to let us have under any other circumstances. People carousing through the streets with alcohol in hand is normally illegal, but the cops were too busy making sure old ladies weren't getting run over. Even further down the list of priorities was upholding the city's poorly received "no smoking in bars" law, so smokers who could find an open bar had reason to praise poorly developed power cells. For those who opted to wait out the insanity for clearer travel routes home, things could've been much worse.

Still, the sight of the normally car-packed streets filled with sweaty people was something to behold. Click "more" to see some of the pics I snatched with my trusty camera -- it would've seemed a bit more like I was giving into sensationalism if it wasn't for every television station imaginable having cameras at every corner...

So, obviously, most everything in the city was closed. No restaurants, no stores, no museums, no Broadway shows -- nada. What can you do in a New York City without electricity?

Not much. But you can still get hot dogs!