Exile on Court Street

Bad Walking in NYC

2009-09-30T14:45:00.002-04:00

In my travels in and around NYC over the past 3+ years, I have found that there are several sub-classes of urban walking that I would like to present to you, dear reader. These people often make working and commuting to Times Square a veritable hell . . .

• Chubby girl in flip flops- they waddle down 42nd street with dirty feet and day glo shower shoes—be forewarned never to get behind this person if she has to ascend stairs in a subway station as they will breathe heavily and stop several times for breaks over the course of 15 steps . This specimen generally is chewing gum and compounds her slow walking by texting and not paying attention as to where she is walking. 6/10 on the bad walking scale
• Dumb tourists- this group travels in a pack and is often wearing sweatshirts/t-shirts/baseball hats with their home state university (i.e. Wisconsin, Penn State, Ohio State, Georgia, Tennessee). They walk 4-8 abreast and are difficult to circumnavigate as their collective gaze into the skyscrapers of Times Square leave them largely unmoved by the crowd around them. These are the people who actually eat at the Olive Garden in Times Square and speak with the amateur rappers selling mix tapes and the “do you like stand up comedy” asshats. 7.2/10
• Angry minority (or want to be minority) person who walks right at you looking for a fight- Enough said. 4/10 (10/10 on the scary scale)
• Sideswipe Walker- seemingly normal person who cannot walk in a straight line and instead travels in the same manner that an amateur skier takes down a trail. A big swooping “S”. This person slams into you as you try and pass them and rarely offer an “excuse me,” just a vacant look as they bounce back in the opposite direction. 5/10
• Mothers with their extra wide strollers- this specimen is most often found in the Park Slope, Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill neighborhoods of Brooklyn. They feel that just because they took a shit load of fertility treatments and spent a lot of money to have strange looking kids for their nannys to raise they can take up the entire sidewalk on Saturday and Sunday afternoons (they only days that they are not working too much in media and/or finance). Be wary of crossing this specimen when near pastry shops, the Tea Lounge and Ola Baby on Court Street. 8/10

CSKA Moscow vs. Zenit St. Petersburg--Beautiful Hooliganism (?!)

2009-09-28T12:26:00.003-04:00

Watch and marvel at the unbridled ultra-violence that the firms from CSKA Moscow and Zenit St. Petersburg unleashed on one another recently. Head stomps galore! Via Dirty Tackle/Deadspin

Wish Shannon Hoon Could've Played at Tipitina's That October Night in 1995

2009-09-23T11:53:00.002-04:00

Going to New Orleans in a few weeks and each time I visit that fine quasi-American city I cannot help but to think of Shannon Hoon . . .

A Fan's Notes--The Cleveland Edition

2009-09-18T11:42:00.004-04:00

Can you feel it? I can.

Its in the air like the toxins from a DeLillo novel and on my tongue like the guilt you can only find in the catholic church. Its right in front of my face and empirically impossible to deny and the smell, the smell is akin to the Merriman Valley in Akron when the wind shifts and brings the stench of the nearby waste management facility into the faux trendy bars. Its fall and its time for varying degrees of failure dressed in Brown and Orange as well as Scarlett and Grey.

Born into this like MF Doom we cannot help but to live and mostly die on autumn weekends with only alcohol to numb the embarrassing pain that New Yorkers and Bostonians cannot fathom. We die young and we die often with our Bernie Kosar jerseys but like demented lemmings keep coming back for more.

Most people cannot understand it and my affinity for this pain is ineffable, irrational. But right now, right this second as the lights of Times Square invade my office I am looking forward to kick off at 4:15pm this Sunday. Hoping that I will sleep soundly and wake up unafraid of the sports section and ESPN.com.

Pray for us.

Fashion Week in NYC

2009-09-15T13:53:00.003-04:00

It is Fashion Week here in NYC and I, for one, find myself once again annoyed. While I cannot deny that they overall beauty level has risen in and around 4 Times Square it is unfortunately eclipsed by the rude, solipsistic and bizarre behavior of the participants. Every couture minded freak has slipped out from behind the downtown shadows and largely inaccessible clubs to move their show to Midtown for the week. Designers, with noses firmly planted in the early fall azure, clad in polychromatic (meaning, unmatching) outfits that dare regular folk like yours truly to stare. And, oh, I do.

Yet the worst behavior lies with the stick legged, straw and mirror loving set who have unlearned how to see civilians on the street and in the Conde Nast cafeteria. They lurk behind oversized sunglasses while inside and leave behind them a trail of names like Isaac, Marc and Anna for the rest of us to stumble over. If, for some strange reason, one does dare to make eye contact with one of these glossy gals the reaction is what a Jacobin could have expected if they crossed paths with Marie Antoinette. Some, yes, are indeed attractive and some even act normal. Yet the vacant stares as they push past the crowd to get to the salad station in the cafeteria are too much to bear ...

Give me back Bryant Park at lunch, I plead!

Destiny

2009-08-22T19:04:00.004-04:00

My good friend from Akron, who now lives in that little enlightened hamlet by the sea full of hills and medicinal marijuana shops, burned me a reggae mix a few years ago that I play while drinking strong coffee from D'Amico's on weekend mornings.

This track from Buju Banton, with its sun infused effervescence, always provides a treat . . . although I do fancy myself as more of an existentialist and the idea of having a destiny strikes me as bullshit.

Poster in Carroll Gardens Brooklyn

2009-08-20T17:34:00.000-04:00

I Have Mixed Feelings About NY

2009-08-12T11:37:00.003-04:00

I once saw a New Yorker magazine cartoon where a man was wearing a shirt that read, “I Have Mixed Feelings About NY” as opposed to “I Heart NY.” After living here for three years, that is exactly how I feel about this increasingly bland metropolis.

There are no gorgeous natural visions to behold like one can easily stumble upon in Vancouver or San Francisco nor is there the bohemian charm that one inhales in New Orleans. In fact, New York—specifically Manhattan—has become nothing more than a place where the rich congregate to compare notes and stare at each other. Most of the enjoyable aspects of Gotham, such as the restaurants of Thomas Keller or a play like “God of Carnage”, hell even a few drinks at a bar like the Half King in Chelsea, command half of the average person’s monthly pay. I have never been so bored as I have been over the past few years and I blame NY for marketing a false bill of goods. There marketing pitch should be, “Come to NYC—only if you have a trust fund or work 90 hours a week.”

Outside of a few pleasant blocks in the West Village or in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn the architecture is overly austere and unwelcoming whereas in SF or NOLA half of the fun each day can be derived from marveling at the buildings that conjure up images of places far away and eras of yesteryear. A walk in NYC is spent trying to circumnavigate the overweight tourists walking four abreast in Times Square or playing chicken with the suit absorbed in his Blackberry. Unlike SF, there is no fog rolling in over the bay and rushing over the Sutro Tower nor is there the promise of the Marin Headlands that a 20 minute bike ride will deliver on. There is only the West Side Highway bikeway and Coney Island.

Simply said, New York just does not have the soul that buoys places like New Orleans or San Francisco—not unless you want to buy it at a inflated mark up. But I live here so I will head to my corner bar in Carroll Gardens, grab a $7 beer and dream of the day I can return to a city that is alive and accessible.

No Sleep Til Brooklyn- Jay Z

2009-08-04T13:37:00.002-04:00

Not a huge Jay-Z fan but I am a huge fan of the BK. Courtesy of the excellent blog Brownstoner www.brownstoner.com

Brian Jonestown Massacre. Dig it.

2009-07-30T15:21:00.001-04:00

Love the train wreck that is Anton Newcombe and the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Beautiful disaster . . .

MSB "My Town"

2009-07-28T09:15:00.002-04:00

In the early to mid 80's in the greater Cleveland area, a Michael Stanley Band concert tee, cut off jeans and a Tribe hat was the uniform de rigueur of the youth set. I was but a wee lad at that time but can vividly recall hearing MSB's "My Town" all over the place and as we get ready for another season of Browns Football I deemed it appropriate to share my love for the city of Cleveland along with this video.

My Town @ Yahoo! Video

Brooklyn-Queens

2009-07-21T11:45:00.003-04:00

Memories of being in the 8th grade in Northeast Ohio, having no clue about where Brooklyn was or what makes it the preferred borough in Gotham. Now, many years later, as a resident of the County of Kings I have a whole new appreciation for the two original white rappers (what? Beastie Boys? Meh.)

Watch more MTVM videos on AOL Video

It Takes Balls to Be a Browns Fan, It Takes Nothing to Be A Steelers Fan

2009-07-17T10:23:00.003-04:00

I just realized this morning that we are only about two weeks from the opening of Browns training camp. At last we can lay to rest the disappointment that has been Indians baseball and get ready for another year of disappointment on the gridiron. Yet every year I hope, I pray, I plead to God that this is the year that we break through . . . that this is the year we beat the Steelers and make the playoffs. So with that thought in mind, I found this tear jerking video on the excellent Browns blog No Logo Needed (www.nologoneeded.com). I am verklempt.

NoLogoNeeded.com Browns Highlight Video - Watch the top videos of the week here

Mark Farina. House Music Legend.

2009-07-16T11:26:00.002-04:00

I spent many a night in SF grooving to this legend. Still my favorite DJ . . .

Paging Employee #8 . . . The Casinos Want Their $$$ Back

2009-07-15T12:46:00.004-04:00

This just in: an arrest warrant has been issued for career underachieving power forward/turnover machine/machine gun Antoine Walker in Las Vegas. Seems that "Employee #8" was loaned a ton of cash by several Vegas casinos (including my favorite, far off of the strip Red Rock Casino) and has not paid back over $822,000.

He does kinda look like Chuck Barkley, doesn't he . . .

Here is the story via the Boston Globe

Gambling woes for Walker
By Frank Dell’Apa
Globe Staff / July 15, 2009

Former Celtic Antoine Walker owes $822,500 to three Las Vegas casinos, according to a criminal complaint filed this week with the district attorney’s office. The Las Vegas Sun is reporting Walker, 32, is charged with three felony counts.

In addition, a warrant was issued for Walker’s arrest late yesterday.

Walker took out gambling markers at Caesars Palace, Planet Hollywood, and Red Rock Resort worth $1 million from July 27-Jan. 19. Walker paid back $178,000 of the markers but now also owes $82,550 in fees to the district attorney’s office for executing the criminal prosecution requested by the casinos.

The complaint notes Walker obtained markers by writing 10 checks totaling $1 million from an account with insufficient funds. Six checks worth $100,000 each were signed to Caesars Palace and four worth $100,000 each were signed to Planet Hollywood and Red Rock Resort. By Nevada law, gambling debts are considered bad check cases.

Walker earned nearly $100 million in a 12-year NBA career, leaving the University of Kentucky to join the Celtics as a 20-year-old for the 1996-97 season. The next year, Walker was named an All-Star. After two more All-Star seasons (2001-02 and 2002-03), Walker was traded to the Mavericks in 2003. He was traded to the Hawks in 2004 and returned to the Celtics for a 24-game stint at the end of the 2004-05 season.

Walker then was dealt to the Heat and served as a reserve forward as Miami won the 2006 NBA title. He played the 2007-08 season with the Timberwolves but did not hook on with a team last year although he hasn’t officially retired.

Walker averaged 17.5 points in 893 career games. With the Celtics, Walker averaged 20.6 points, fourth on the team’s all-time list. Walker played in 552 games for Boston and holds team records for 3-pointers attempted in a season (645) and in a game (17) and 3-pointers in a season (222) and in a game (9, twice).

Two years ago, thieves took a car, cash, and jewelry from Walker’s suburban Chicago home while he and a relative were bound at gunpoint. In January, Walker was arrested on charges of drunken driving in Miami Beach.

Wilco. July 13th. KeySpan Park. Coney Island. BK

2009-07-14T13:12:00.004-04:00

At the Wilco/Yo La Tengo show last night at KeySpan Park in Coney Island (home of the Brooklyn Cyclones, Single A Mets affiliate) I was shocked when two different guys seemed to have either seizures or straight overdosed. I guess that at any given show people can go down but at a Monday night performance by a crew of late 30's/early 40's practitioners of a feedback drenched type of Americana I thought the crowd would be a little restrained.

The first kid fell victim to what seemed to be "a case of too much weed and nerd" and collapsed during a spirited rendition of the 1999 song "Shot in the Arm." As happens at many rock n' roll shows, the moment that the first chord was struck there appeared a spontaneous cloud of thick skunky smoke. Most of it found its origin from a huge joint held by the bespectacled kid in right front of us. Nope, he didn't pass it to anybody or even pause to enjoy the tunes. Just keep inhaling like an extra on the set of "Dazed and Confused."

Then he did a funny dance, stopped to look confused and down he went like a bag of green bricks.

The second kid, well, he was carried out from the front of the stage and looked like he might have had a date with Samael and Arturo Gatti. Pretty bad.

Regardless, the show was a good one. During the Yo La Tengo set, who I have seen countless times, we sat outside the minor league stadium on the boardwalk eating falafel from Zaytoons taking in the sweet scent off the sea. From our place behind centerfield, we could clearly hear Ira and company crushing "Tom Courtenay" and We're "An American Band" with some real sonic panache.

Once Wilco took the stage they opened with "Wilco (the song)" off of their new album before setting into a YLT inspired "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" where the absence of Jay Bennett from this spiritual plane infused a bit of poignancy into the night. I can't say that there was one song that I didn't enjoy but "Jesus Etc," "I'm Always in Love," "Handshake Drugs" and "At Least That's What You Said" really stood out. Oh, and they led the crowd on a sing-a-long of "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" which was awesome.

The fact that we left before the encores (yeah, waking up at 6:30am makes going to bed at 1am seem late) and missed what I am told were epic second and third sets where Feist, a member of Grizzly Bear and the aforementioned Yo La Tengo came on stage, makes it difficult to write much more . . .

Besides the fact that I am sure I'll find a way to check out Wilco live again.

Chambers + Mark Jackson = Poster

2009-07-09T14:42:00.001-04:00

No description necessary. This dunk drives white boys like me into spontaneous orgasm.

NYPD vs. Critical Masser

2009-07-08T13:34:00.002-04:00

While I have ridden in my share of Critical Mass rides in SF, I have found that a large portion of the participants, with their bombast and confrontational actions, only make cyclists look bad. However, this guy didn't deserve what this cop did to him last year. Good thing that the cop was indicted and the NYPD is now being sued for $1.5 million . .

Stuntin' Like My Daddy

2009-07-08T10:40:00.001-04:00

Never understood all the hype around Lil' Wayne . . .until I heard this track, courtesy of Greg Gillis of Girl Talk . . .

Inside Job at Swensons

2009-07-07T17:36:00.005-04:00

Its surprising just how calm I was while a gun was being held, a silver one, sideways—gangsta style—in my face at 2 in the morning. That August night in the late 90's, there was a hollow mist hovering over West Akron and the Honda CRX that my fellow Swensons employee, lets call him Greg, and I sat in smelled like stale grease and fetid cheese. After a night of running around serving burgers and shakes to unappreciative cars of menacing young men there was a palpable sense of freedom. We were done for the night. No more Galley Boys to be returned half eaten, no more ten cent tips.

We were laughing as we pulled up to the bank and I opened the car door. Some customer had asked us what was bigger, a half pounder or a quarter pounder. I asked him if he would rather have a quarter or fifty cents. The plan was to speed through, drop off the nightly take for the restaurant at National City Bank’s night deposit and then try to make last call at Annabelle’s in Highland Square.

Summer nights in Akron have a cruel tendency to extract the most uncaring elements that a person has deep in themselves and expose them to the world. Perhaps the pent up depression of the long winters are at fault. Regardless, there is an unfettered beast that shows itself in the eyes and mouths of young people during the summer in that part of the world. I once fell off of a highway overpass on Route 8 in Cuyahoga Falls after drinking too much only to be laughed at by a passing car full of kids with dangling earrings and hats on backwards. Obviously I lived but I never forgot the leering faces suddenly becoming animated, twisted into high pitched laughs and devilish in their schadenfreude.

Such was this night.

When the other car pulled up I was just about to swing the door completely open but paused in confusion. There was never anybody else in the NCB parking lot when we made the Saturday night drop. I thought somebody was playing a joke on us, like Matt Bailey. Standing up erect and fully out of the car, it became apparent that I did not recognize the muted gray, late eighties Cutlass Supreme that was partially blocking the front of the CRX. A tinted window obscured my vision into the drivers side. Things speeded up like a Spike Jonze video—slow then hyper fast—and a short fat black man in a ski mask was in quickly front of me with a silver pistol aimed between my eyes.

Then everything slowed down again and I was in a zen moment, not unlike in basketball, when angles and spatial relationships are clear and relevant. I knew exactly how far the gunman was from me and how far it was to the bank exit . . . How there were no stars in the Midwestern sky and no way out. I was trapped behind half court, about 80 feet from the basket.

“Give me the bag mutherfucker!” The gunman’s voice was a low and guttural and I believed that he didn’t want me to recognize it.

For a split second, I didn’t know what bag he was talking about and just opened my eyes as wide as they would stretch and semi-shrugged my shoulders. This did not amuse him.

“Bitch I will knock you the fuck down if you don’t re-ack. Give me the mutherfuckin’ bag!”

I recall being relieved that he did not say he would shoot me and this paved the way for my sudden understanding that he wanted the restaurant’s take. About $2500 that night.

“Yeah sure, no problem. Its not my money,” I expectorated sharply. “Its in the car.”

At this point Greg tossed the bag out of the car and it landed with a metallic ping next to me on the pavement. This seemed to unnerve the gunman as he shifted his weight back and forth nervously and looked down at it.

The car window of the Cutlass rolled down enough for the driver to yell. “C’mon nigga, les go. Break these white boys off!!”

With the gun still in my face and the bag on the ground the gunman motioned me back into the car. I hated being called white boy and this pissed me off. Not only was a gun in my face but I was getting the white boy treatment. Once I had sat back down he kicked the car door close and cautiously picked up the deposit bag.

“Reach over and get the keys out. Move mutherfucker!”

At the time, I was the proud owner of a 1974 Dodge Dart where the keys to the ignition just simply came out. They just pulled straight out. I didn’t know that with 90’s Hondas one had to twist and push the ignition key to remove it. I pushed and pulled to no avail. This did not make the man with the silver gun happy and he moved closer. I prepared to be at the best pistol whipped.

“You, driver, Get the fuckin’ keys.”

Greg swiftly removed the keys and handed them to me, I guess to hand to our assailant.

“Throw em in the bushes over there, put your fuckin’ heads between your legs and count to 1000 and this will be over. You feel me?”

I did what he said but watched exactly where the keys landed in the shrubs that were next to the drive through teller window.

He got back into the car and as they drove towards us to drive away out the exit behind us, onto West Market Street, with passenger side windows sliding next to each other, I looked up and saw the gun still pointed at me. That was the only time I really became nervous. He saw me look up. There was a hate in his eyes, the hate that James Baldwin describes so well in his novels. But, as we would later find out that this was an inside job and the gunman was one of the grill guys at Swenson's, he didn't shoot.

We found the keys quickly. Very quickly. Driving back to Swensons the truth filtered into the car and all of the pent up panic put a cold sweat on my back. We were just held up. That could have been it.

My Rights Versus Yours

2009-07-06T12:00:00.001-04:00

This song makes me happy . . . just like the weather in NYC this past weekend.

Dando Diddy from ABBA

2009-07-01T10:50:00.001-04:00

As evidenced from earlier posts, I am a big fan of Evan Dando. Awesome cover of ABBA's "Knowing Me, Knowing You" here for your listening pleasure . . .

Cleveland Is The Reason- Kid Cudi

2009-06-28T13:52:00.001-04:00

Gotta love when Cleveland gets love . . .

The Problem of Hard to Read Books

2009-06-26T10:54:00.000-04:00

Last night, I was asked why I would choose to read a long, challenging novel in the midst of summer when so called “beach reads” seem to make more sense. Its summer! Take it easy! Go pick up a Stephen King novel!

The question itself did not make much sense to me as I cannot say that I believe that any given season should dictate a persons reading habits but, what the hell. The simple answer, the one that I wielded while walking the leafy streets of Cobble Hill with a copy of Thomas Mann’s “The Magic Mountain” under my arm, was that occasionally I like to remind myself that even now, years removed from academia, I still have the capacity to read and comprehend difficult literature.

Then this morning while on the F train into work, I recalled an article by Jonathan Franzen that I had read in The New Yorker that confronted the “problem of hard-to-read books” and wished that I could have repackaged that argument last night as my answer. Taking advantage of the fact that I have access to the entire electronic archives of The New Yorker, when I sat down in my cubicle high above Times Square I downloaded the Franzen article from the September 30, 2002 issue.

Franzen (of “The Corrections” fame) creates a binary regarding the two prevalent models of fiction as it relates to its audience: the Status model and the Contract model. The former is grounded in the idea that “the best novels are great works of art, the people who manage to write them deserve extraordinary credit, and if the average reader rejects the work its because the average reader is a philistine; the value of any novel, even a mediocre one, exists independently of how many people are able to appreciate it.” The Status model draws a parallel between the difficulty and the quality of a given piece of work and leads one to believe that the author did not sell out and stayed true to the path of the artist.

Meanwhile, the Contract model insists that a novel “represents a compact between the writer and reader, with the writer providing words out of which the reader creates a pleasurable experience.” Its fun reading, escapism without much sweat, and perfect for the beach. To adherents of the Contract model, difficulty in a work of fiction is an alert that the writer has been allowed to wallow in his or her own artistic vanity, in fact encouraged by MFA instructors nationwide.

I cannot say that I would rank one of these over the other as in my opinion the best books represent a convergence of the two models. Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” Mailer’s “The Naked and the Dead,” and Balzac’s “Lost Illusions” all come to mind. Books that cause people on the subway to take pause due to their girth and strange titles but are truly straight forward narratives that do not require the mental gymnastics that it takes to read Thomas Pynchon, Lawrence Durrell or David Foster Wallace.

However, there is something redeeming about pushing through and finishing a BIG BOOK. As Franzen puts it, after he finished the 900 plus pages of “The Recognitions” by William Gaddis he felt “virtuous, as if I’d run three miles, eaten my kale, been to the dentist, filed my tax return, or gone to church.”

And this is what I love about a challenging read. The sense of literary self-worth that I get when it comes to an end that is almost cathartic. I don’t give a damn if it is 90 degrees and muggy out, I am going to take a 706 page vacation to a sanatorium high above Davos, Switzerland with Thomas Mann. A vacation that takes a little work.

We Talkin' About Practice?

2009-06-23T11:32:00.000-04:00

I couldn't resist. This is just TOO GOOD to not post.

Sienna Smoking

2009-06-22T11:57:00.003-04:00

I once sat through a symposium at the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival in New Orleans about the fascination Andre Dubus had with women smoking cigarettes. It never made sense to me until I saw Sienna Miller in this scene from the movie "Layer Cake." Enjoy . . .

Waiting For Next Year, yet again . . .

2009-06-19T09:20:00.003-04:00

With the Tribe, led by a bullpen that surely makes up the 10th circle in Dante's Hell, dying a slow death in the basement of the AL Central, I have slowly begun to turn my attention to the Browns. Ahh yes, another well run team that brings such joy to my autumn Sundays . . .

About a year ago I discovered a phenomenal blog that chronicles the misery (and occasional, fleeting joy) of being a Cleveland sports fan. Its called Waiting For Next Year www.waitingfornextyear.com. Each morning they comb the blogosphere for tidbits of Cleveland related sports news and today this quote from Jim Brown (yes, THAT Jim Brown) caught my eye:

"Mangini has at least one Cleveland fan, Jim Brown- “You’ve got one boss and you know who he is and he knows what he’s doing. He’s emphasizing intelligence and understanding more than just your job. Those are all the things we did with the ‘64 team. When you understand the concept of team, then you’ve got a certain kind of advantage. When you allow individuality to take over your organization, then you’re going to have a weak setup.”

Imagine that, a Cleveland Browns team that prizes intelligence over flash, one that can count to three and not lead the league in false starts, one that does not lose a season opener because a journeyman linebacker elongates the game via a flag for throwing his helmet off.

Yes, imagine. Thats all we can do Braylon Edwards Mouth is still on the team. Don't get me wrong, I think that Braylon is quite a bright guy- but he THINKS TOO MUCH on the field. In sports, thinking is your enemy and leads to dropped passes, missed layups and Steve Sax. And then he still feels the need to talk shit about the city of Cleveland. This is not an intelligent move.

But just like every summer, I have this irrational hope that the Browns will prove everybody wrong and make a run to the playoffs. And this year, with the disappointment that the Indians seem to be delivering, I am already hoping that Mangini can work some magic . . .

"Liquefy" The Servant & French MTV

2009-06-18T08:21:00.005-04:00

I saw this video on French MTV while in Paris a few years back. Jet lag and the dreary 15th Arrondissement where I was staying caused Paris to be underwhelming, but this video gave me a pre-Amsterdam smile.

A Perfect Day In Cleveland

2009-06-17T16:21:00.008-04:00

Whilst I managed the rough ride of a thirty year old single speed bike with a wobbly front wheel, we four pale riders rode from the relative comfort of Cleveland's inner west side, through downtown past Jacobs (yes, Jacobs) Field and into the Hough District via Superior Ave.

Our destination: League Park.

For over 50 years, League Park was the home turf of Cleveland baseball clubs such as the NL Spiders, the AL Indians and Buckeyes of the Negro Leagues. Due to the fact that the park was on a rectangular plot of land, the right field fence was only 290 feet from home plate and, to keep balls from flying out at a 1998 rate, was 60 feet high (thirteen feet higher that that little fence in Boston. Try hitting one over that without steroids, Big Papi.).

After dodging traffic on Superior for a few miles we hit the Hough District. We turned right on E. 65th Street and the neighborhood became increasingly run down, dare I say menacing. In the distance we could hear the faint bump and roll of a blues band playing. One of the Pale Riders commented that she felt like we were in a scene from The Wire and I noticed all the boarded up doors such as those in Baltimore where Chris and Snoop left their prey.

Strapped to my back was a 33 ounce wooden baseball bat. Brought for peaceful purposes.

The sky, which was an hour earlier leaden and threatening to soak the streets, had begun to smile in a sweet shade of blue while a guitar lick vaguely reminiscent of Albert Collins became clearer as Linwood Avenue came into view.

First, we saw the remaining brick facade of League Park that brought to mind a bombed out area of Berlin I once was in. Across East 66th Street was the Straight Up Missionary Baptist Church which was hosting a party out back where the blues band was set up.

Once we got onto the field, one of the Pale Riders gave us a well thought out lesson on the history of the park. We listened intently but really, I was just waiting to play on the overgrown grass where Joe DiMaggio had his 56 game hit streak broken, where Babe Ruth hit his 500th home run and where the Browns held their training camp until the late 1960's.

We played, it got hot and I started to sweat after shagging fly balls. Eventually we all decided it was time to find a beer and a banh mi at Superior Pho, but damn if that wasn't the best way to spend a Saturday afternoon . . . sharing a field with the ghosts of Indians teams that actually were the World Champions.

)I won't mention what happened that night to the current Tribe as Eric Wedge decided it wise to pitch to Albert Pujols four times . . .)

It's No Good

2009-06-16T18:10:00.002-04:00

Way too busy at work to write anything thoughful right now. Soon, though, I promise. In the meantime, here is the junkie version of Dave Gahan. My favorite Dave Gahan.

The Movie Adaptation of the Sequel to Your LIfe

2009-06-10T15:20:00.001-04:00

A Bout de Souffle

2009-06-03T11:18:00.003-04:00

While I would hesitate to consider my self a cinemaphile, I do appreciate a good film and last night I viewed one of the best I have ever seen. Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless" ("A Bout de Souffle" in the french tongue), the French New Wave classic that marked the beginning of an era.

What makes this film so great? On the first glance, it has a very straight forward, simple manner to it. Godard once said that "all you need to make a movie is a gun and a girl" and he adheres to this in "Breathless." A foul mouthed Lothario steals a car in Marseilles--leaving behind, naturally, a female admirer--and on his way to Paris shoots a cop. Once in Paris he meets up with an old fling, Patricia, an American girl selling the International Herald Tribune, and spends the rest of the film evading the police, bedding Patricia, cursing and imitating Humphrey Bogart. There is more, but I'd rather leave it at that for anybody who has not seen it.

But there is a level of intimacy that is conveyed by the grainy, black and white, documentary feeling of Godard's hand held camera work. The acting, all at once casual and spirited, is superb in its depiction of cool kids in the late 50's. At the conclusion of the 90 minute duration of the film I felt so in tune with the main characters. . . so full of grudging admiration . . . so ready to take up smoking that I am truly looking forward to watching it again tonight (now that the Cleveland Indians are done for the season).

As you may be able to discern, I do not possess the proper jargon that a true lover of film would employ in describing a movie as influential and classic as "Breathless." Yet I felt compelled to write about my first experience with this film and urge you, dear reader, to seek it out if you have not already . . .

The Legend of the Ski Lodge in Dubois Pennsylvania

2009-05-27T09:58:00.005-04:00

"I don't buy this beer, I just rent it."

In the men's room of the Ski Lodge bar in Dubois, Pennsylvania this is what passes for conversation. The genesis of this witty remark was a short, balding guy in his early 40's who had evidently had his fill of Straub Beer. The sound of the discarded beer pounded the porcelain and, much to my chagrin, was accompanied by the cacophonous drum roll of flatulence. Part of me wanted to laugh, another part of me was overcome by a strange sadness and yet another part of me wanted to cut my own piss short and run for the hills that were in no short supply in West Central Pennsylvania.

Without tearing my gaze away from the poster for a local cover band (ANNOUNCING THE TRIUMPHANT RETURN OF THE WORLDS GREATEST GARAGE BAND- TEN TILL!) that was directly above the urinal, I nodded. Pulling up my zipper I decided to eschew the act of washing my hands and without pause made my way back to the bar.

While 90% of sports minded America was watching the Cavs-Magic Eastern Conference Finals, we were squarely in Penguin country. That means hockey. Which, outside of the fights and mullets that occur both on the ice and in the stands, I find terminally boring. No matter, the big screen TV behind the bar was tuned to the Detroit-Chicago NHL playoff game relegating me to people watching while sipping my Straub (a really nice local beer from St. Mary's, PA, by the way).

And oh were there some people to be watched!

There were hulking tattooed Roughnecks working the local natural gas mines, middle aged prepsters in khakis and Calloway golf polos and orange tanned twentysomthings to observe. I started chatting with the roughneck, who ended up being a helluva nice guy, and he attempted to explain hockey to me. As I absently pretended to listen I noticed the crowd part near the entrance and a buzz invade the air.

And there he was. An aging hair metal refugee who everybody--and I mean everybody--happily referred to as "Rockin Robert." Rockin' Robert had graying hair styled like the rhythm guitarist from LA Guns or Dokken (that means BIG) and had a long star-shaped earring dangling from his left ear. Tight acid washed jeans clung to his thin legs while a black silk button up shirt fell from his narrow shoulders. Then I noticed his shoes, which were a non sequitur in motion: white Seinfeld style Reebok tennis shoes. As the aforementioned cover band went through their laborious sound check (Hey guys, the Rolling Stones have a shorter sound check . . .you are a bar band in the middle of nowhere-act accordingly) Rockin Robert moved through the bar collecting back slaps and handshakes with a eerie knowing smile on his face. I was set on speaking to this legend.

On the miniature stage that was at the other end of the bar, Ten Till (WORLD"S GREATEST GARAGE BAND!) slaughtered Zeppelin's "All of My Love" but Rockin' Robert showed a thin smile of approval as he met eyes with the lead singer of the band. This seemed to do wonders for the band as they ambitiously moved on to one of my favorite cheese out songs, "Tears of Jupiter."

I plotted my approach.

Please do not misinterpret this as some quasi-urbane elitist blog post making fun of Rockin' Robert. In fact, I was mystified by him and was very eager to hear his story. There had to be something behind his nickname, something propping up his status in Dubois . . .something about his look. I had met guys like him during my first bartending job at the Oakwood Bar and Grille in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio and they always had a great backstory. Long nights, hot women, a chance meeting with Dennis DeYoung from Styx in the parking lot of the Akron Agora, etc.

Yet I never did get to speak to Rockin' Robert as I just couldn't summon the nerve to do so (and at the conclusion of the boring NHL game I persuaded the barmaid to turn on the Cavs game just in time to see LBJ hit a buzzer beating three to beat the Magic).

So I sit here in my cubicle in Times Square, thinking about the next time that I visit Dubois (my grandmother basically lives in her camper there during the summer) and what questions I will ask Rockin' Robert . . .

Jimmy on Decatur Street in New Orleans

2009-05-20T15:12:00.005-04:00

Jimmy likes to walk. He likes to walk slowly down sidewalks speckled with cigarette butts and used condoms. While he ambulates he never lets his gaze rise much higher than the waist of any oncoming human traffic. The realization that he is a bit off was not something that he is without; in fact, a certain perverse pride bubbles within him when he thinks of just how different he is from the men in shiny oxford shoes, the boys in polychromatic Nike Air Force I's and the women in cherry red Mary Jane's.

One afternoon, on Decatur Street, just past Esplanade, a car pulled up and its door opened slowly. A few footsteps clicked and a juvenile snicker emanated from the idling car. As usual, Jimmy did not look up. A voice, languorously southern and whiskey soaked, called to him.

"Hey boy. Hey, why you and yer fambily tink yer better den evrybody else, huh?"

"..."

An old Rolling Stones song, "Sway," played on the jukebox of The Matador, the bar owned by the guy from an old TV show. Somebody asked for an Abita Amber.

"Hey boy, I'm talkin' te ya. Look at me boy! Ya'll never talk to nobody and yr poppy just stares out de winda all day. Boy, I said stop and look at me!!"

Jimmy stopped and looked at the man.

The man got back into his car quickly and sped off. Last anybody heard he was still driving 85 when he hit Bay St. Louis.

Jimmy walked to Canal Street, turned around, and walked back home to his shotgun apartment off of Elysian Fields.

Neil Young. Helpless. The Last Waltz

2009-05-14T10:41:00.004-04:00

Actually too busy to put much through into a post, so how about a video to tide you over . . .

Taken from the best concert film of all time, Martin Scorsese's "The Last Waltz", I remember first seeing this scene while at an after hours party in the Glen Park neighborhood of SF. Everybody there kept mentioning the white substance lodged in Neil's nostril . . . Hmmmm.

Why do the Cleveland Indians Want to Ruin My Saturday?

2009-05-09T11:20:00.005-04:00

Besides having to listen to the miscreants who spew their 'r' less Brooklynese ad naseum at all hours beneath my bedroom window, I woke up in a great mood. Its Saturday. I have turned off my Blackberry so as to not be bothered by bosses who do not respect the blessed weekend. A big bike ride is in my near future.

And then I opened up the paper (although it is hard to really consider the New York Post a real newspaper) and there it was staring up at me like a beaten puppy.

The Cleveland Indians, burdened with the lofty expectations of the media and amateurs like myself, are in dead last place in the AL Central with a record of 11-19. Not only are they dragging the bottom of one of the weakest divisions in baseball but they also have the worst record in the AL and the second worst record in the entire major leagues.

Thank God for the Washington Nats, right?

There is no shortage of blame to go around as Grady Sizemore is veering dangerously close to the dark and dreadful land of the overrated while striking out nearly every 4 plate appearances, Jhonny Peralta stranding runners in scoring position as if he were the skipper from Giligan's Island and Fausto Carmona has shown about as much control as Charles Bukowski at an open bar.

But the main culprit is the bullpen. Oh God our bullpen is atrocious. Look no further than the debacle that occurred in Boston on Thursday night where the hated Red Sox (remember when they used to be lovable? like the Cubs?) dropped a dozen in the 6th inning before our pen could record a single freaking out. Whether it be Raffy Perez or Betancourt, Masa Kobayashi or Jensen Lewis, Matt Herges or Vinny Chulk or even, dare I say it, Kerry Wood there is a terminal lack of confidence in any lead for our Wahoo Warriors and it hurts . . .

I wish that I could provide some solutions, but to be honest I can't. Just get hits with guys on base, don't let a fastball sit over the plate and try not to walk more than 4 guys an inning . . .

The good thing is this: when I was living in the Bay Area, it seemed like every year the Oakland A's would start about this slow then go on an absolute tear starting just before the All-Star break and win the usually mediocre AL West. That's all we can hope for. That Jake Westbrook adds a little something to the pitching staff, Grady gets contacts (or some cool glasses a la Ricky Vaughn) in order to see the ball while at the plate and that somebody-SOMEBODY- in our pen gets into a groove for all to fall in line behind.

NBA All Non-Tattooed Team

2009-05-06T11:15:00.005-04:00

During a recent work day, non-work related email exchange with my colleague (and former Midwesterner) A.B, I found fodder for my latest blog post.

After I had mentioned that Ron Artest was quoted making light of the infamous fight between Indiana and Detroit a few years back (A.B hails from Indy) we got to discussing why the NBA just does not have the same appeal for us that it did in the 90’s. We agreed that the “the crappy egos and one man teams” were among the reasons but there was something else that was prodding us to a mutual disgust for Naismith’s peach basket game.

“When [during the NBA All-Star Game] I saw that Chris Paul didn’t have any tats, I couldn’t believe it. I thought he was being edited. To see someone WITHOUT their baby’s face or some hands praying or some sort of Egyptian scroll on their right forearm is a complete rarity,” A.B wrote.

Being one who views tattoos as, for the most part, an act of conformity under the guise of being a non-conformist, I agreed and thought about how pervasive “body art” (a term I use loosely, much in the same way that the tags on the side of every bodega in NYC might be called art by teenage graffiti aficionados) has become in the National Basketball Association. According to a 2008 article by Jonathan Abrams in the Los Angeles Times, “A decade ago, the Associated Press reported that 35% of NBA players were tattooed. Five years later that number had doubled . . . Today, one can watch an NBA playoff game and be treated to jumpers and alley-oops and tattoos -- lots and lots of tattoos. About 75% of NBA players have them.”

So who is my All-Non Tattooed NBA team? The guys that are listed below, at least to my knowledge, have no discernable tats—I can’t speak as to what might lurk below their uniforms—and still are among the top players in the game . . .

Center- Dwight Howard, Orlando Magic
Power Forward- Tayshaun Prince, Detroit Pistons
Small Forward- Brandon Roy, Portland Trail Blazers
Shooting Guard- Dwayne Wade, Miami Heat
Point Guard- (the aforementioned) Chris Paul, New Orleans Hornets

Honorable Mention: Steve Nash, Ray Allen, David Lee, Al Thornton, Charlie Villanueva

And, the All-Bad Tattoo Team—with the MHT (most hideous tats) award going to Barnes . . .

Center- Amare Stoudemire, Phoenix Suns
Power Forward- Chris Andersen, Denver Nuggets
Small Forward- Matt Barnes, Phoenix Suns
Shooting Guard- Allen Iverson, Detroit Pistons (you cant really describe this cannon as a point guard)
Point Guard- Delonte West, Cleveland Cavaliers

Like Herod

2009-04-30T10:32:00.003-04:00

Went to the Mogwai show last night, the last of a three night run at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, and my ears are still bleeding. The explosion of sound that punctuated most of their set truly felt like a a roadside bomb where, instead of shrapnel, I was impaled by sonic bliss.

This clip is from the Terminal 5 show earlier this year (which I also went to) . . .

Falling from Above

2009-04-29T12:07:00.003-04:00

It was a Thursday night in early October 2000 and the Mets were in town for a playoff matchup with the Giants at Pac Bell Park. My roommate Mike had an extra ticket—which I was happy to take—and I just stopped by the Hyatt to pick up my paycheck before meeting him at Zeke’s Diamond Bar on 3rd St.

Getting off of the bus at the Embarcadero, I looked south towards the stadium, where fog spilled over Potrero Hill like an overzealously poured beer, and zipped up my jacket. There was a slight chill in the air, enough to color the cheeks and making for great playoff baseball weather. Truly great baseball weather . . .

After making the familiar descent into the bowels of the hotel via the employee entrance adjacent to Justin Herman Plaza, named after the patron satyr of urban renewal, I made small talk with the security guys who were responsible for handing out checks. We agreed that Piazza should be living in our fair city due to his likely sexual preference, that J.T. Snow was the consummate Giant and that the 49ers would be better off without Terrell Owens.

With the thought that there would be a fair amount of drinking before, during and after the game occurring to me, I felt it would be wise to grab a few bottles of water from the bar where I had worked the night before. The main floor of the Hyatt Regency-the Atrium-held a few restaurants, a gaudy 20 foot tall bronze globe-like sculpture and 16 floors worth of open air into which the guest rooms opened up. During the Holidays the space was festooned with strings of lights cascading down from each floor, sparkling over the heads of the tourists and business travelers who frequented the hotel. Year round people were always stopping in to take pictures and after spending most of my first 26 years in Akron, Ohio I felt that it was a pretty neat place to work.

I took the elevator up from the basement and emerged into the Atrium where I exchanged a “Como Esta” and a “Nay Ho Ma” with a few of the housekeepers who were waiting to take the lift up to do their jobs. The Atrium bar, that was given the moniker “13 Views” for the number of windows looking out on Justin Herman Plaza, was buzzing.

Anchor Steams were being lifted by suits watching Baseball Tonight and inexpensive chardonnays being discussed by rotund women who had just returned from a day trip to Napa with a newfound lexicon to play with.

Then it fell. It looked like a golf bag. Thats how I interpreted the white and black object falling from ten floors up at the very first moment that it entered my field of vision. As long, thin clubs started to fall away from the bag at strange angles, I spied two wide open spheres with bits of blue in them at the top of the bag.

You hear how things move slowly when peculiar things happen in life, or at least that’s how we recall them to have happened, and true to form I can clearly remember the electric pulse that ran through me when I came the the realization that this was not a golf bag, that there were not clubs extended akimbo from it nor were there a pair of blue specked balls careening from the top it.

She hit the floor about fifteen feet in front of me and bounced slightly. The explosion of weary flesh and bone on naked cement echoed throughout the Atrium slowly. For the first five or ten seconds nobody seemed to notice what had happened except me and I walked quickly towards her. I took my jacket off—appropriately a black one that I had just bought the week before—and threw it over her. Before I did, I was surprised to see that there was no blood.

That’s when the first rotund woman screamed. More shrieks followed as husbands held the gazes of their wives on their shoulders, away from where I was standing dumbly silent.

After being interviewed by the police and the same security guys that I was talking sports with earlier, I still went to the game. JT Snow hit a three run shot into McCovey Cove in the 9th to send the game into extra innings but the Giants lost in the 10th.

The next day was my birthday.

Flip Flops

2009-04-28T11:40:00.001-04:00

Summer has made an early visit to the streets of New York City and, as I write this, office squid such as myself are flocking to Bryant Park and Madison Square Park and Central Park to lay in the sun and gossip for an hour before heading back to the cubicles that hide us from the light for 8-11 hours at a stretch. This all makes me very happy. Happy enough that as I rode my bike to work today, zipping through traffic on 8th Avenue at 7:45am, I actually found myself smiling . . . And its only Tuesday.

But there is one blemish on the face of this fine weather that I cannot ignore . . . The bold insistence of people to wear flip flops as they traipse around this dirty city. On the subway, at the bar, (at work!!), with jeans, without a shower, with seeping blisters, with yellowed nails and without a conscious, people young and old ignore the fact that their feet are foul. And I just cannot take it anymore . . .

Even as I try to reason with myself and think, “Feet are just a part of the body” I cannot get over this fear and loathing. I hate feet, and have for as long as I can remember as, in my mind, they are the effluvium of dirt, sweat and toil. They are the lowest part of our bodies for a reason and I rue the day that they became so mercilessly ubiquitous. To be fair, I have no problem with flip flops while making a trek to the beach (although I choose to wear low top Chuck Taylors during my own beach visits) but while walking down 34th Street (or in the halls of 4 Times Square) they are simply an abomination and an affront to good taste.

Due to my strong feelings on the subject, and my unwillingness to dwell to long on it because frankly I hate even thinking about feet, this may be one of my least elegant missives but I just had to get it out . .

Hitchens on the Swat Valley and Sharia

2009-04-24T11:44:00.004-04:00

On the whole, I do not fancy myself as an overly political person. I read the papers, have opinions (although not always very informed ones) and occasionally will wade into a polite discussion on the what’s going on. However, when it comes to defending secularism, feminism and reason—all which are under attack by the archaic motives of Islamofascist jihadists—I will give no quarter and try to read as much as I can on the subject.

So when Pakistan, who has been counted among our "allies" in the war on terror, recently gave the Swat Valley—a former resort area—to the Taliban to be ruled under the moronic, stone age law of sharia, I was apoplectic. I just cannot understand why any right thinking government would want to mollify these savages who were instrumental in the murder of over 3,000 Americans almost 8 years ago.

So take a moment to read Christopher Hitchens March 9th piece from Slate magazine as his point of view is spot on . . .

http://www.slate.com/id/2213246/

Swat? Not! Handing the Swat Valley to the Taliban was shameful and wrong.

By Christopher Hitchens Monday, March 9, 2009,

A whole new fashion is suddenly upon us. If only, in the confrontation with reactionary Islamism, we could separate the moderate extremists from the really extreme extremists. In the last few days, we have heard President Barack Obama musing about a distinction between good and bad Taliban, the British government insisting on a difference between Hezbollah the political party and Hezbollah the militia, and Fareed Zakaria saying that the best way of stopping the militants may be to allow them to run things in their own way, since an appetite for the imposition of sharia does not equate to a thirst for global jihad and may even partially slake that thirst.

It would be foolish to doubt that there is some case to be made for this: The Karzai government in Afghanistan has been making a distinction between the "Mullah Omar" madmen and the merely localized Taliban for some time. In Lebanon, anyway, Hezbollah takes part in elections and so far abides by the results (also serving as a proxy for possible future talks with Iran). In Iraq, the initial success of the counter-al-Qaida insurgency depended on the suborning and recruitment of other Sunni insurgents who were hostile to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Osama Bin Laden. One of the many reasons that I have always opposed the use of torture and other extralegal methods is that such conduct destroys the possibility of "turning" certain kinds of Islamic militants and making potential allies of them.

However, one should be careful of the seductions of this compromise. In a wishful attempt to bring peace with the Taliban in Pakistan itself, the government has recently ceded a fertile and prosperous and modernized valley province—the former princedom of Swat—to the ultraviolent votaries of the one party and the one God. This is not some desolate tribal area where government and frontier have been poorly delineated for decades, as in Waziristan. It is a short commute from the capital city of Islamabad. The Taliban have never won an election in the area; indeed, the last vote went exactly the other way. And refugees are pouring out of Swat as the fundamentalists take hold and begin their campaign of cultural and economic obliteration: no music, no schooling for females, no recognition of the writ of the central government. (See the excellent report by Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah in the March 5 New York Times.

According to this and other reports, the surrender of authority by the already crumbling Pakistani authorities has had an emboldening effect on the extremists rather than an appeasing one. The nominal interlocutor, Maulana Sufi Muhammad, with whom the deal was signed, is related by clan and ideology to much fiercer and younger figures, including those suspected in the murder of Benazir Bhutto, in the burning of hundreds of girls' schools, in the killing of Pakistani soldiers, and in the slaughter of local tribal leaders who have resisted Taliban rule. Numberless witnesses attest that the militants show not the smallest intention of abiding by the terms of the so-called "truce." Instead of purchasing peace, the Pakistani government has surrendered part of its heartland without a fight to those who can and will convert it into a base for further and more exorbitant demands. This is not even a postponement of the coming nightmare, which is the utter disintegration of Pakistan as a state. It is a stage in that disintegration.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, where many very hard-line Muslims take the side of the elected governments against the nihilists, there is also a determined NATO or coalition presence that can bring firepower to bear as part of the argument. This was the necessary if not sufficient condition for the "awakening" movements on which Gen. David Petraeus relied and still relies. But even in default of that factor, the handing over of large swaths of sovereign and strategic territory to the enemy was never a part of any such plan, and it would have been calamitous if it had been.

Fareed Zakaria makes the perfectly good observation in his Newsweek essay that no Afghans have been found among the transnational terrorist groups that apparently most concern us. (He's righter than he knows: It's more likely now that a wanted would-be hijacker would be a British citizen than an Afghan one.) However, this can easily decay into being a distinction without a difference. What the Afghan fundamentalists did do when they were in power was offer their country as a safe haven to al-Qaida and give it a hinterland that included the ability to issue passports, make use of an airport, and so forth. Comparable facilities will now become available, much nearer to the center of things, in a formerly civilized province of our ally Pakistan. This is incredible.

There is another symbiosis between state failure of that kind and the spread of deadly violence. A state or region taken over by jihadists will not last long before declining into extreme poverty and backwardness and savagery. There are no exceptions to this rule. We do not need to demonstrate again what happens to countries where vicious fantasists try to govern illiterates with the help of only one book. And who will be blamed for the failure? There will not, let me assure you, be a self-criticism session mounted by the responsible mullahs. Instead, all ills will be blamed on the Crusader-Zionist conspiracy, and young men with deficiency diseases and learning disabilities will be taught how to export their frustrations to happier lands. Thus does the failed state become the rogue state. This is why we have a duty of solidarity with all the secular forces, women's groups, and other constituencies who don't want this to happen to their societies or to ours.

By all means, let field commanders make tactical agreements with discrepant groups, play them off against one another, employ the methods of divide and rule, and pit the bad against the worst. C'est la guerre. But under no circumstances should a monopoly of violence be ceded to totalitarian or theocratic forces. For this and for other reasons, we shall long have cause to regret the shameful decision to deliver the good people of the Swat Valley bound and gagged into the hands of the Taliban, and—worst of all—without even a struggle.

Junior Boys "Work"

2009-04-22T13:12:00.005-04:00

Going to see The Junior Boys on May 7th at the dreaded Webster Hall . . . this track is off of their new album "Begone Dull Day" and while the video itself just a still photo the tune is head bobbingly, dancing-in-my-cubicle good.

Carroll Gardens to Times Square . . .

2009-04-21T11:08:00.006-04:00

This coming weekend--much like the last--the weather is allegedly prepared to abandon its sadistic winter ways and bestow Gotham with a touch of light and warmth. Which, for me, no matter what happened on a rainy night a few years ago in San Francisco, means getting back on my bike and riding to work as often as possible.

The dilemma that I am confronted with at this time of year is what route to take from my apartment in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn to 4 Times Square. It seems straightforward- cross the Brooklyn Bridge, cut down Chambers Street, head north on the West Side Highway bike path and then venture back east towards Times Square around 42nd Street.

But one has to consider a few things when planning the best way to and from the County of Kings

- Traffic. It is well known that NYC cab drivers (especially the virulent menace of livery/gypsy cabs) are the worst drivers in the Western Hemisphere (I didn't say FROM the Western Hemisphere) so it is best to avoid busy thoroughfares such as Chambers, 42nd Street, etc. Even with a bike lane, these guys are always on their cell phones and can't seem to drive in a straight line for too long.

-Tourists. Although the walkway on the Brooklyn Bridge is clearly divided so as to safely accommodate both walkers AND cyclists this does not prevent the cute couple from Indianapolis, here on their honeymoon, or the group from Germany from ambling into the bike line. They mean no harm but, damn, they slow you down and scare the shit out of you. Who wants to run over somebody on vacation?

-Roller Bladers. The bane of my cycling existence. Hordes of them clog up the West Side Highway bike lane and have caused me to wreck in the past. This Friday, when the temperature reaches the 70's, I can see them now: Hands behind the back, swaying from side to side and from lane to lane, iPod blasting the latest Coldplay album, in their own little universe. Ugh.

-Pot Holes. Another reason to avoid Chambers Street.

So, I in lieu of the "easy" way to and from work, I believe that this Friday I'll be taking the Brooklyn Bridge/West Side Hwy in--at 7am there are not too many tourists out, or roller bladers out-- and coming home via the East Side, as prescribed by the peeps at Ride The City, a great website that helps the urban cyclist get around safely.

Pray for me . . . .

www.ridethecity.com

Mogwai. "Dracula Family." Pics of Argentina.

2009-04-16T17:07:00.006-04:00

Utterly beautiful song from one of the finest bands around. Check them out April 27-29 at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. Or wherever you are.

Easter Break.

2009-04-14T15:10:00.007-04:00

It was one of the rare nights that I decided not to stop for a post-work drink at the Irish Bank off of Bush Street or The Expansion on Market and Church. As I pedaled down Drumm Street, running a few red lights before making a right onto the foot of Market Street, I heard the electric snap and fizz of a MUNI bus approaching and looked back to see the 21 Hayes bus pulling up to its stop at the corner. For a moment, I entertained the idea of throwing my bike onto the rack that MUNI had recently installed on its fleet and getting dropped off a block from my apartment. But I then remembered the ten different types of cheese, the crab cakes, the jerk chicken and everything else that I had grazed on over the course of my shift.

I could use the ride, I was sure of that. A few hills, a brisk pace, a slight sweat and I would be home in twenty minutes.

------------

About an hour earlier, from the 17th floor of the Hyatt Regency, where I was tending bar at The Equinox -“San Francisco’s only rotating rooftop restaurant”- I could see the black water of the San Francisco Bay churning and the pavement of Herb Caen Way slick with a late spring rain. I went back into the kitchen, where they hid the service bar, and remembered that the next day was Easter Sunday. The radio, tuned to KFOG, croaked out an old Elvis Costello tune and in-between making drinks I flipped through the Bay Guardian seeing if there were any worthwhile shows in the coming week. There weren't.

The mélange of servers—mostly Chinese but with an HIV positive gay man and a few Latinos sprinkled in—came by sporadically to pick up their orders, all with a complaint of some sorts to deliver to me.

“Not enough rum in the Cuba Libre at 34! Why so weak, huh? No good for tip.”

“Table 12 wanted a Grey Goose martini. He says this isn’t Grey Goose. I need Grey Goose or he’s not gonna tip. And make sure you give him three olives.”

“Can you pour me a little Don Julio on the side? I just cannot deal tonight . . .”

I silently complied to their various requests and thought about my plans for the next day: sleeping until about 10, a pot of tea, the Sunday Chronicle (which I would bitch about being a terrible paper) and maybe even shoot a little hoop in the Mission before coming back to work for the 3:30pm shift at the main bar in the Atrium.

By 11:30, the rain had given way to a phantasmagoric mist.

-----------

I went down on Market just past Third Street. The doorman at the Four Seasons ran over to see if I was alright and, being as that I really didn’t know what happened, I assumed that I was and went to pick my bike up. A few homeless guys hooted and laughed at me from the other side of the street.

The doorman, a black guy in his early thirties with a cherubic face who smelled like sweet menthol cigarettes, tried to dissuade me from moving. He grabbed me gently and said, “No man, no. Don’t. C’mon over here lets call you an ambulance.” Seeing my bike lying in the middle of a deserted Market Street with its handlebars twisted sideways, I slowly began to regain the last five minutes.

I was in a rush to get through the stretch of Market that at the midnight hour was populated by the detritus of San Francisco’s liberal politics. Passive drunk bums. Passed out derelicts. Menacing drug dealers in front of bottom of the barrel strip joints. The truly insane, Emperor Norton like characters. For about three blocks I had tried to pass the accordion-like 38 Geary (or it could’ve been the 31 Balboa) but each time I had started to creep up on the outside, the back end of the bus would jerk in my direction. Finally, wanting to just get past the damn thing, I decided to push past with several furious pedal strokes. Once I reached just about the middle of the bus, I took my eye off of the road in front of me and tried to make eye contact with the driver in his side mirror, to make sure that he knew where I was and didn’t decide to switch into the middle lane. The lane reserved for the F Market trolley car. The one that I was in. The one with slick metal tracks that are the scourge of every SF cyclist.

------------

As the doorman helped me pull my bike out of the street, a police cruiser pulled up and flashed its lights. Two officers emerged- a short, fat lesbian cop with salt and pepper hair and a tall thin Asian cop. The doorman, resplendent in his uniform, ran over to give them the lowdown on what had just happened—a conversation that I wished I would have been privy to as the minute or so between trying to make eye contact with the bus driver and then coming to on the side of the street remains locked up somewhere deep in my subconscious.

Once again, I assured the officers that I would be fine to ride home if I could just get a hand in realigning my handlebars. One of the officers, the stern looking Asian cop, just held his gaze on my right arm and shook his head.

“What?”

“We’ll give you a ride home. Where do you live?”

“No, I’m cool, officer. Can you just give me a hand with my bike?”

The cop helped me, throwing my bike into the back of the cruiser and then opening the back door and motioning for me to get in. Once I was in, the lesbian cop asked me if I had a light on my bike. I said no. They asked me again where I lived and I told them. By the time we got to Steiner and Fell my right wrist was swollen to the size of a Yule log but curiously without even a tinge of pain.

Coldly, but courteously, the Asian cop looked back at me and said, “I have to tell you, sir, you will not be able to bring any action against MUNI due to the fact that you did not have a light on your bike.”

OK.

My girlfriend and I spent a few hours in the Emergency Room at the Kaiser Hospital on Geary and Divisadero where we found out that in fact both my wrists were broken.

Needless to say, I was not shooting any hoops the next day.

The Summer of 89

2009-04-10T10:49:00.000-04:00

In the cool pond of youth we once bathed carelessly.
Under an oak tree with knotted arms and twisted leaves,
mixing hot breath with naiveté,

We used a sewing needle and a bit of ice to impale our
earlobes while dew formed on the Midwestern grass.
The threat of discovery kept us sharp.

The next summer I got my drivers license,
you found Nietzsche and the Bauhaus,
and we traded infidelities.

Make Me A Mix Tape

2009-04-07T14:03:00.008-04:00

I love a mix tape. Giving them, receiving them, making them.

A mix of inoffensive yet catchy pop music can be the perfect way to introduce oneself to a new person in the office. A well thought out mix can also be the perfect third date gift while a collection of Jeff Buckley, Tom Waits and Elliot Smith can provide the salve to (what you think is) a premature goodbye.

But things just ain’t the way they used to be when it comes to making a mix . . .

Whereas the creation of a mix tape used to require listening to each of the fifteen or so songs on a given mix in their entirety, making sure that you hit pause after a each track was over but before the start of the next (inferior) song, sorting through other tapes or cd’s and queuing them to the proper song, now you just make a playlist from the 5,000 or so songs in your iTunes library, click on “burn to disc” and sit back.

It used to be when somebody handed you that little rectangle cassette case with a cheeky title meticulously penned on the cover along with the tile of each track, you knew that there was not only a lot of thought put into its creation, but a minimum of 90 minutes as well (nobody ever makes 60 minute mixes). You took pride in playing the tape—loud in your Dodge Dart—and read into each song, knowing that this person was thinking especially of you when they chose it.

This is not to say that burning somebody a CD today is meaningless. Far from it. But I just don’t know if they really speak for themselves like they did way back in the day. . .

And with that, I leave you with some lyrics from Milwaukee pre-emo kids The Promise Ring

You remind me that I'm never going to be twenty-two
listening to the alarm, waking up south of north avenue
my skin is going to wonder what I'm doing now.
So write me a letter, tell me where you are how to get there and how long that it takes to tape me some songs.
Make me a mixtape something old and something new
something I said or that we did that reminds me of you
make me a mixtape that makes me yours.
Don't leave out Husker Du.
Put something on that The Cars did in 1982.
It makes me yours.

Bryant Park

2009-04-03T15:14:00.002-04:00

Mist drifting down, opaque amongst
canyons of mortar, brick and steel,
silent as songs unsung.

Shattered rays of green, red and yellow
light maintain order on this
island that thrives on chaos.

Come On Feel . . .

2009-04-02T11:26:00.003-04:00

The etymology for the word nostalgia combines the Greek roots nostos, “returning home," with algos, “pain.” From the early 15th century until as recently as the 19th, nostalgia was treated as a medical condition, a form of melancholy, with entire medical texts devoted to it. And in the modern novel The Immoralist, Andre Gide writes that “happiness is never so easily destroyed than by thoughts of past happiness” lending credence to the idea that nostalgia is something to be avoided.

Yet when on the F train last night, reveling in the slight distortion of reality created by a touch of after-work tequila, I dialed up the Lemonheads 1993 album “Come on Feel The Lemonheads” on my iPod and was happily under the spell of dear old nostalgia . . .

The Lemonheads burst onto the scene in 1992 with their major label debut “It’s a Shame About Ray,”and as well received as this album was, critics were equally as blasé about “Come On Feel . . .” (Rolling Stone was in the vast minority giving the album four stars). But from the moment that the dulcet tones of Evan Dando’s voice in “The Great Big No” hits my ears to the last note of the hidden track “The Jello Fund” there is no doubt that this is my favorite album from the grungerific 90’s.

My love for this album is borne from the fact that Dando’s voice was not only the honey that soothed my soul during the breakups and disappointments of my late teens and early twenties but also from the memories of freedom and youth that it recalls. Coupled with the knowledge that “Come On Feel . . .” was created from beneath Dando’s burgeoning drug habit that would soon spiral out of control (which he confesses to in “Rick James Style” when he frantically sings “Don’t want to get high/but I don’t wanna not get high . . . Just give me a killer line/ and I’ll figure it out myself”) makes it an even more impressive feat. Yet even with this touch of darkness lurking beneath the surface, Dando’s effervescent pop sensibilities that offer tales of the mundane some pep (“Paid to Smile”), honesty when addressing the legions of gay men under the spell of his pin-up looks (“Big Gay Heart”) and desire for sanctuary (“Into Your Arms”) make this album too much fun to dig very deeply.

Are The Lemonheads as ambitious or complex as, say, Radiohead or Nirvana? Of course not. But ambition is overrated and complexity works best in puzzles, not pop albums.

The Palm At The End of The Mind

2009-04-01T12:25:00.003-04:00

There is something wonderful in letting go. Releasing one's grip and watching everything fall away in the rear view mirror. Of course, in this life, just letting go is not possible in any type of perpetuity (unless you are either a Buddhist or a bum, as if there is a difference), but today I was reminded of a Wallace Stevens poem, "Of Mere Being" and everything stopped.

Stress, like that person you marginally know but who won't leave your dinner party even though you are ready to call it a night, shrouds modern life and dyes it in an uncertain hue. Yet when I read and re-read this poem this morning, I truly was able to let go and bid stress adieu for a few blissful moments.

Perhaps I should mention that allegedly Stevens wrote "Of Mere Being" on his death bed . . . but does it really matter?

Of Mere Being

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze distance.

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

Two Quotes

2009-03-31T11:09:00.000-04:00

“Just as in the music of harps and flutes or in the voices of singers a certain harmony of the different tones must be maintained . . . So also a state is made harmonious by agreement among dissimilar elements. This is brought about by a fair and reasonable blending of the upper, middle and lower classes, just as if they were musical tones. What musicians call harmony in song is concord in state.”
-Cicero

“Order is the dream of man while chaos is the reality of nature.”
- Henry Brooks Adams

It Can Happen to Us

2009-03-30T15:41:00.006-04:00

As winter starts to retreat back into the northern provinces of Canada, allowing blue skies to become more commonplace and parkas less so, the inevitability of a new baseball season invades my dreams.

The Cleveland Indians are wrapping up a mediocre preseason at their new Goodyear, Arizona spring training digs but I am not discouraged. Not one bit. With names like Sizemore, DeRosa, Wood, Peralta and Lee making their way towards the corner of East 9th and Carnegie Streets and a strong second half of 2008 in the books, there is reason to believe that this is the year that they find their way back to the Fall Classic (and this time get that third out in the 9th inning of the 7th game.)

Before the first pitch is thrown, when the standings are even at 0-0 . . . this is the best time of year for Cleveland sports fans. The days leading up to the opener, where optimism abounds, allowing us to build a collective cocoon of confidence around ourselves and really believe that it can happen. We forget about Jordan floating in the Richfield air, waiting for Craig Ehlo to start his early descent to the Coliseum hardwood, before delivering that famous and fatal blow. We cease to talk in hushed tones about Jeremiah Castille jarring the ball loose from Earnest Byner at the Mile High goal line. There is no mention of Rocky Colovito, John Elway, or Jose Mesa.

We believe that Cleveland is a championship city and, you know what, it feels good.

So I will unveil my prediction(s) here, so when they come to fruition this fall, nobody can doubt the veracity of my words . . .

The Tribe, on the strength of an MVP season from Grady Sizemore, will win the AL Central with somewhere around 90 games before dispatching of the wildcard Athletics in the ALDS and then the despicable Red Sox (and their fans, reminiscent of a pack of neandratals in heat) in the ALCS.

The World Series, pitting the Chicago Cubs against the Tribe, will be one of the most widely watched as two long suffering clubs battle. When it is all over, Cleveland win their first World’s Championship since 1948.

And I will drop to my knees and cry.

Hallelujah . . .

Excuse me, Do You Like Stand Up Comedy?

2009-03-27T15:17:00.004-04:00

Most annoying thing heard while walking in Times Square:

“Excuse me, do you like stand up comedy?”

This question is posed by fashionably scruffy kids milling about on 7th Ave near 42nd Street (usually guys who, judging from their nascent dirt locks and hemp necklaces, likely own a vault of Widespread Panic bootlegs somewhere near Boulder) paid by various clubs to sell discount tickets to comedy shows. In most cases, they gravitate towards the obvious tourists (slightly overweight to morbidly obese, ill fitting tight jeans, white tennis shoes, Oakley Blades, a hat with the insignia of the football team of the state they hail from and matching sweatshirt) who think of the interaction as being such a quintessentially New York moment.

Luckily, for the most part, office squid such as myself are left alone as we rush to overpriced delis like Café Eurpoa to strap our feedbags on.

However, in less than two blocks today (starting in front of the ESPN Zone and ending in front of the Swatch store) I was set upon by no less than three of these street urchins as I walked to grab lunch. After parrying their advances, saying loudly that “I HAVE TO GET BACK TO WORK,” and then rounding the corner onto 45th St. I suddenly froze in horror. Why would they try to talk to me? What mistake had a made when getting dressed this morning? Quickly I appraised the outfit I was wearing: Brown suede Camper boots, dark 501’s, dark purple gingham check button down shirt and a beige Macintosh jacket. Confused and unhappy, I walked on in a stale mood wishing I had eaten at my desk.

Next time: the savagely idealistic “Save the Childen/Greenpeace” attackers who line 42nd Street in front of Bryant Park . . .

Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before

2009-03-25T09:16:00.006-04:00

Tonight I am going to the church of Morrissey at Webster Hall. I cannot deny that this particular venue is a terrible place to see a show, but when it comes to The Moz I would pay $75 to see him in a Bikram Yoga studio—which says a lot as I hate feet and yoga gives me the creeps. Often, my friends and co-workers will wonder aloud why I—a sports addled guy from the Rust Belt—would be so enamored with an asexual guy from Manchester who preens himself with gloom. How can somebody who screams at the television during Browns games harbor such an affinity for a guy who sings “I wear black on the outside/ ‘cuz black is how I feel on the inside”?

Why not address that here?

It all started when I was in high school outside of Akron, Ohio in the early 90’s. I discovered rap in the late 80’s and even though I lived in a white washed city of 40,000 I decided to emulate Flavor Flav, going so far as to wear a clock around my neck and speak in mode of affectation borne on the waves of urban radio. Feel my pain here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ltgXtrR_A4

This was before hip hop crossed over and was deemed cool by suburban white kids . . .Prior the moment in time (that continues today) when ebonics became the lingua fraca in towns like mine and guys named “Blaine” used words like “fo’ shizzle.” The result was daily verbal, and occasionally physical, evisceration from my classmates. Yet somehow, I found solace in the fact that I was not simply following the pack like a drunken lemming, wearing acid wash jeans and White Snake T-Shirts and looking at my reflection in the windshield of my red Camaro. I was special because I could withstand it and recall all of the lyrics to Big Daddy Kane’s “Raw.”

How does this relate to Morrissey? In about my sophomore year, just as rap was being accepted by the mainstream and kids at my high school were asking me if the could borrow the latest Eric B & Rakim or Jungle Brothers tape, I started to get bored with the whole gangster mentality that overtook the scene. NWA, with their gratuitous violent imagery and disdain for white folk like me, killed rap for me. Of course I know that Chuck D. also was not very fond of ol’ whitey but Public Enemy had an intellectual agenda that sent impressionable kids like me to the library asking for books about Malcolm X, Joanne Chesimard (Assata Shakur, if you like) and Marcus Garvey. NWA just had kids racing to their local black market in search of an AK-47 . . .

This was about the time that I first heard The Smiths “How Soon is Now?”. I was (am) a goofy, pasty red haired kid and was invisible to girls (at least the ones that I dreamt about) and when Morrissey sang about loneliness and despair I was there to empathize with him. It was like black laced manna from heaven as I knew what it was like to go to a dance in the high school gymnasium and watch my friends make out with girls while I stood in the corner. Let’s face it, red headed men are the antithesis of the “dark handsome stranger” that women long for and nowhere is that more certain that in the cruel minds of high school girls.

While I didn’t instantly go out and buy the entire Smiths catalogue (they had broken up by 1987 and my family was less than affluent) I started to chat with the kid in the Depeche Mode t-shirt in study hall and ask him about this Morrissey guy. I heard the witty, side of The Pope of Mope in tracks like “Girlfriend in a Coma,” “Hairdresser on Fire” and “Some Girls are Bigger Than Others.”

And because of songs like “Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before,” where he croons:

“And the pain was enough to make/ a short bald Buddhist reflect/ a plan a mass murder/ who said I lied to her?”

Or, in “This World is Full of Crashing Bores”:

“It's just more lock jawed pop stars/ Thicker than pig shit/ Nothing to convey/ They're so scared to show intelligence /It might smear their lovely career”

I slowly became yet another acolyte, unable to dismiss Morrissey as just a pop star.

Now, as I am much more secure in who I am (not really), I can say that Morrissey’s appeal to me is derived from his dark gravitas as much as his poetry. He represents the amalgamation of Dylan Thomas, Oscar Wilde, Elvis Presley and David Johansen of the New York Dolls and carries himself as such. As evidenced by his latest album “Years of Refusal” his skill as a song writer has remained strong and I am eagerly anticipating this evening’s show as a chance to see eye to eye with the my musical hero . . .

I just hope that he does not rip his shirt off at any point during the performance.

"A True Friend Stabs You in the Front" -Oscar Wilde

2009-03-24T08:58:00.008-04:00

This morning, circa 8am, I found a seat on the F train. This usually is reason for celebration but today this wasn't the case for the moment I sat down, I realized that while three-quarters of the train was jam packed the end of the train that I entered was oddly deserted. Please remember that this was pre-caffeine . . .

Bergen Street

There is nothing at all unique about a homeless man sleeping on a subway train as it moves from Brooklyn into Manhattan--the young urban adventurers that populate Thomas Pynchon's debut novel "V" call it "yo-yoing" through the boroughs-- and after a few years of living here in Gotham, it becomes commonplace to see homeless, or inebriated people doubled over in subterranean repose. You just leave them be.

Indeed, the patina of grime that covered this particular bum's hand and wrist, the only parts of his body discernible from beneath the vastly over sized hooded sweatshirt that rendered his form imperceptible, even the hospital bracelet he wore, gave me no reason for pause yet there was something oddly magnetic about him. I should mention that it wasn't his cologne of sweat, urine and Thunderbird either. It was, I believe now, a leaden sense of foreboding that pinned me down.

Jay St/Borough Hall

As is the case every morning, about a quarter of the train jumped off at Jay St. in order to transfer to the A/C line, leaving a few seats open further away from the nearby derelict. Yet I didn't move. Not because I was so attached to sitting in that particular seat but I had begun reading the latest issue of The New Yorker (James Woods' review of the new John Wray novel about paranoid schizophrenia,"Lowboy") and was just about to find my happy place behind my Ray Ban Wayfarers that delivers me to 42nd St unbothered. But as soon as every available seat had been occupied, the cold sensation of being gazed upon came over me.

York St.--last stop in Brooklyn

This man, who with his hood up over his head reminded me of a Jawa, had shifted and had lifted his head just enough to show me his alcohol rouged eyes. There was a confidence in this action that unnerved me. Under normal circumstances, homeless people do not look one straight in the eye unless they want something (even then rarely). Yet he just kept his eyes on me and I feigned reading as we burrowed beneath the East River. Unable to take it any longer, I looked up from my magazine and asked firmly but without barb, "Can I help you?"

"Nobody can, man. Nobody."

East Broadway

This is the stop that sees the majority of the Asian people who had been on the train in Brooklyn detrain while a new contingent jumps on. As these two rivers of people flowed in opposite directions, a pair high school kids, white boys with massive backpacks, fashionable shaggy hair and skinny jeans, spoke in a hushed, polite tone about biology class and I started reading Atwul Gawande's piece on solitary confinement. Gawande posits that extended periods of solitary confinement is tantamount to the most extreme forms of torture, but on this packed train, heading for my job hawking ad pages, having a homeless guy siphon away any joy that may have been latent within me, I had to agree with Sartre's famous line--"Hell is other people."

Delancey Street

Here come the Hasids and the hipsters. The Lower East Side. There was a rush and a push accompanied by the sharp crack of metal on metal as an art school drop out dropped his laptop and proceeded to softly sob. His effeminate shoulders heaved as he simultaneously dealt with the uncaring crowd and the jagged pieces of his Macbook Pro. I felt bad for him but worse for the two lobsters in Woody Allen's Shouts and Murmurs column. That Woody Allen is a funny guy . . .

2nd Ave.

Where was the homeless man who piqued my interest about 15 minutes earlier? While I couldn't see him his scent remained in the air like gnats under bright lights. Or did he leave it behind, a gift to protect the art school kid, and slink off towards the few remaining nooks of the Bowery left ungentrified?

The remainder of the commute- Broadway/Lafayette, West 4th, 14th, 23rd, 34th Sts- was spent scanning the rest of the New Yorker and thinking about my disdain for advertising. As we left the 34th St station I spotted him again. He was sprawled out face down on the floor of the train as we hit 42nd St., arms akimbo and stains on the seat of his weathered camouflage pants.

Nobody seemed to think much of it so I went off to work . . .

In the Beginning . . .

2009-03-22T18:41:00.008-04:00

I am waiting for something, or someone, to arrive but I don't know what or who. This weary feeling occasional lifts and I become a man of action, but for the most part I just observe and keep an internal running tally of things with a wan smile on my ruddy face . . . until now.

My reasons for penning this blog are simple: to chronicle the abominable, the strange and the occasionally awe inspiring events that I experience. However, most importantly, I see this blog as an opportunity to laugh at just how sublimely absurd this life truly is.

Whether it be frustration from the subway as I schlep to and from my office in Times Square, the sense of injustice that being a Cleveland Browns/Indians fan inspires or the masochistic joy that follows an ear splitting Mogwai show, I am giving you a front row seat to the cinemaplex in my head.

Make sure you boo or applaud as you see fit . . .