A little of what I've been doing

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F789462311004CAE

I guess I live in a different world (surprise!)

I was eating lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant today and all of the sudden "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" started to play. I stopped and looked around. Nothing. The rest of the diners were oblivious. Granted it wasn't CCR -- maybe "Run Through the Jungle" or "Fortunate Son" -- but still... "Where have all the young men gone? ... Where have all the soldiers gone?" Thirty people eating pho and I'm the only one to stop and say "Qua?".

Sigh.

This weekend I ...

got nagged, beaten and degraded for "art." How was your weekend?

So, how was your day?

I spent a beautiful day in a luxury condo with a pen stuck in my neck. How was your day?

P.S. I still have blood in my navel.

Black Power and Panhandlers

Two young black men in PantherWear (complete with berets and buttons with pistols on them) were hustling money at the 42nd Street A/C station Saturday.

"Support Black Power", the one holding the cardboard box said.

I waved him off, as I always do when approached for money. "Don't feed the pigeons" is my motto. When I was about 10 feet away, the kid muttered, "Afraid of Black Power, huh."

First, I have hoot owl hearing. Second, subway stations carry sound better than a tight string between two coffee cans. Third, you want power? Be a man and say it to my face. Don't mutter it like some punk with a mouth full of Tic Tacs.

I stopped. I turned. I laughed. I said, "I don't think so. It's not black I'm afraid of. It's power ... in the hands of anyone."

I don't think that was covered in Black Power Boot Camp. The recruits just sort of stood there, blinking.

Aside from the fact that young militants have resorted to raising money in a cardboard box and mumbling like 7-year-olds in the back of a classroom, it comes on the heels of another incident.

I live in a poor neighborhood that also happens to be a black neighborhood. I know this because 99 percent of the people who live in my neighborhood are poor and black. I did the math. I never have any problem in my neighborhood (outside being called an Eskimo for shoveling dirt in the community garden in a t-shirt in February, with snow on the ground ... and that guy might have a point).

A couple of days ago, I was getting off the subway and this middle-age white guy comes up to me with a story about losing his money and trying to get back to Connecticut, but being stuck in a bad neighborhood. Could I help?

You already know my policy on feeding the pigeons. I waved him off and continued on my merry way.

The next morning, the guy was out there and he approached me with the same story -- Starting with "I've been here a couple of hours and ..." I stopped him.

"Bullshit."

"What?"

"Bullshit. You've been here since yesterday because you hit me up then too, telling me you were stuck in a bad neighborhood. This isn't a bad neighborhood. This is my fucking neighborhood and the only problem with it is you. Carry your ass. Walk if you have to. Connecticut is that way."

"I'm sorry."

"Get outta here." I wanted to add "You fuckin' fuck" but I thought it might be a tad too much.

Two days later I'm accused of being afraid of black power? Well, fuck you, you fuckin' fuck.

Super dupper Easter eye candy, but not ...

I think I saw the most beautiful woman in the world as I walked through the West Village --- someone named Gisele (no curly horns that I could see). I wouldn't have known who she was, but about half a block up the street there was this gay guy gazing toward her. As I walked by, he said, "Do you recognize them?"

"No. Do I have to?"

"That's Tom Brady and Gisele."

"Sorry," I said, not recognizing either name. "I avoid popular culture like a plague."

He looked very disappointed. Apparently, Tom Brady is quarterback for the Patriots and Gisele is the "Most Beautiful Woman in the World", according to Esquire. I know this because several blocks later the cover of Esquire was shining in a shop window. There was Gisele and beside her picture was the caption, "Most Beautiful Woman in the World."

To tell you the truth, when I saw her she just looked like a somewhat haggard -- but well-kempt -- mom with her husband trying to load a family into a minivan on Easter morning. I'm still gonna claim the sighting. I'm gonna trust a gay man to recognize a swarthy 6-foot 4-inch quarterback and a super model. Besides, what are the odds there'd be a married doppelganger?

T-shirt quote of the day

This guy walks up to an average looking woman in a bar and says, "You are unapproachably beautiful."

So ...

"Unapproachably beautiful"

Bold, yet mindless.

T-shirt quote of the day

For reasons of medical privacy, I won't mention the source of today's T-shirt quote of the day, but it came from a walk-in clinic.

"They treat me like I'm poor. I live in Manhattan!"

Thanks and get well soon.

T-shirt quote of the day

This one spilled from the lips of a young woman sitting at a table in a very tiny Indian restaurant. As she spoke, she was holding hands with a much older gentleman, but I don't think that's necessary.

"I guess this is what comes from not having a father."

Well, I guess.

T-shirt quote of the day

A bag lady shouted at me as I rolled a cigarette at the Sara D. Roosevelt Park (Chrystie and Delancy):

"Lick those fingers and get busy!"

I want to thank her for the first instalment of what I hope is an ongoing feature.

What I really need right now is more bagpipes

Every bagpipe player (Pipest? Piper?) on the planet marched up 5th Avenue yesterday, a mile of them, showing their Irish pride at the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. I hope it was all of them because if there are more out there, this world is a dark and terrible place.

I say this as a man who has “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” buttons for blood AND love in his heart for his people.

Bagpipes sound like angels trapped in hell.

Come on guys, we’ve been a major force in this country for more than century. Maybe we are on firm enough ground here to set the angels free.

Whacha think?

Dogs and cats living together in my mind

I didn’t want to think about animals Sunday. I just didn’t.

I don’t usually want to think about animals at all – one reason I don’t own any – but I certainly didn’t want to think about them on Sunday. It wasn’t a religious prohibition. There is no “Thou shalt not ponder, nor shalt thou dwell upon puppies” in any of the world’s holy texts. It wasn’t a political protest, although I like the idea of “International Forget About Animals Day”. I also like “Ignore the Children Day” and “Scratch Your Butt and Give Out With a Glorious Sigh Day”, but I doubt I can find much support for any of them.

It wasn’t anything but Sunday. I just didn’t want the aggravation. That’s right. I said aggravation.

Consider me small-hearted if you like, but thinking about animals – specifically those animals commonly referred to as pets – never fails to annoy me. If I can avoid a direct reference or blatant visual, I manage not to really see pets – more specifically those pets commonly referred to as dogs – roaming the streets being pet-like as opposed to animal-like while their owners roam the streets and being pet-owner-like as opposed to human-like. But once I’ve thought about the first pet, a chain reaction happens and I’m thinking about and being annoyed by them all day long.

I didn’t’ want that on Sunday. I was having a good day. I woke up early, wrote for a couple of hours, took a nap, woke up at noon, had a little cheese and fruit, took another nap and was ready to walk around the city I love for the rest of the afternoon and enjoy the pre-spring temperatures that had pushed into the mid-50s.

I made it as far as Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side, almost four short blocks from the Delancy Street subway station, before I was pet mugged. I don’t know if it was the fact that I have a kind face (I doubt that), or if the woman unlocking the door to her apartment building was just mean-spirited. It doesn’t really matter. There I was, strolling down the street, pets the farthest thing from my mind, when she made eye contact and smiled.

I should have known something bad was going to happen. Nobody makes eye contact and smiles when they are entering an apartment building. That’s a universal moment of vulnerability in the city. Your concentration is split, you have a locked door in front of you and there’s no place to run. And yet this woman made eye contact with a stranger walking toward her on the sidewalk and smiled.

I met her eye and she said, “Say, do you want a cat?”

“Oh, good Lord, no!” I said it with a force that startled both of us. “I can’t believe you asked me that.”

“I’ve got this extra cat …”

“Stop it!” Then, and this is the truth and shows just how disturbed I was by the exchange, I clapped my hands over my ears and said, “I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you,” as I practically sprinted down the street away from her.

But it was too late. I had heard her. I had been tainted. I was doomed to pet-think for the rest of the day. Every pile of dog shit on the sidewalk glowed. Every dribble of dog piss shimmered. Every yap from a little yippy dog stabbed into my eardrum. Every corner pet store shoved its most ridiculous items into the display windows and surrounded them with neon arrows that pointed and signs that flashed, “Bob, you poor bastard, look at this!”

“Look! St. Patty’s Day leprechaun outfits. Look! Back massagers for poodles. Look! Puppy strollers. Look! Spiked cat harnesses.”

But that wasn’t the end of it. Memories of every pile of shit, puddle of piss, yap of yip and stupid costume I had ever experienced flowed over me. Months of pet-related distress buzzed in my brain.

My mind literally reeled. My balance was affected. I tried to rein it in, but I was in the weeds, wobbly, trying to make sense of it all.

I was wearing a light sweater because there was a cool breeze and I’m fur deprived. Dogs were passing me wearing their God-given fur AND human-given coats. And it wasn’t one or two of them either. At several points in my trek I was literally swarmed by animals wearing clothes. Every day in this city people are homeless and hungry and yet border collies are wearing leather coats, poodles are getting back massages and English bulldogs are riding around in strollers.

Something really bad is happening, and I’m apparently the only one who can see it.

Here’s what I think has happened. Dogs have evolved a way to secrete hormones that eat away at the human frontal lobe, thereby domesticating us.

I present the following evidence:

I was standing at a corner, waiting for traffic to ebb when a woman in a puffy coat walked by with a pug in a light blue slicker on a leash. The dog trotted over to me, sniffed my foot and attempted to raise its hind leg on my shoe. I didn’t kick the dog, per se, but there was a vigorous foot-assisted relocation.

The woman glared. “How dare you?”

How dare I? How dare I? I called her glare and raised her an angry retort. “Lady, your dog just tried to piss on my foot.”

She huffed off, and I swear the pug looked back at me and winked.

Then, a couple of blocks away, outside the dog walk in Tompkins Square Park, a man had his English bulldog – a massive, meaty bulldog – stuffed into a stroller. That was disturbing enough, but the spectacle had drawn a crowd, and not the lynch mob I wanted to form. This crowd stood beaming at this disgusting public display of human debauchery, the likes of which have not been seen since the orgies near the end of the Roman Empire.

But that wasn’t the bad part. That didn’t signal the Visigoths at the gate. Another man bent over, patted the slab of meat’s ham-size head and said (I shit you not), “Isn’t he sooooo cute? Look, a big strand of drool is about to fall.” The rest of the crowd “ooooh’d” and beamed.

And the bulldog sat, a flaccid, placid emperor before his bootlicking senate.

I fled. I could smell my own fear. Out of the park, across Avenue A and east on 9th Street I ran, the kind of panic one gets in a nightmare beating in my chest. Home. Home. I had to get home. I found I was carrying the knowledge of mankind’s collapse in my head. My spine had become a sharpen pike that the weight of this awareness had driven into my heart.

Ahead, man was digging through a trashcan. As I got closer, he emerged from the waste with a magazine in his hand. I noticed he was oddly well dressed for a bum. He saw me and started to wave the magazine at me. Then he started to run at me.

Then he started shouting. “Over there! Look out! To your left! To you left!”

A quick glance to my left showed me there was nothing there but a couple of parked cars on 9th Street. I faced the charging well-dressed, magazine-wielding bum, and started shifting my backpack off my shoulders so I’d have greater freedom of movement in the impending fight.

“Step to your left!” he shouted and tore a page from the magazine. “My dog … my dog …”

And there it was; a red, wiry-haired dog of unclear pedigree, sitting serenely with its leash unattended and a trail of dog shit snaking down the sidewalk behind it. The man, for whom I suddenly felt more pity than if he had been a bum, started doing a squatty hop and plucked the shit up with the paper one piece at a time like he was gathering a bouquet of wildflowers.

I outwardly thanked him for his civic mindedness, but inwardly I cursed his self-imposed slavery.

Something snapped. The buildings buckled and oozed the blood of civilization. In every window I saw the taunting face of a “pet.” On the street, the tethered beasts spoke words of revolution and the people yipped like yorkies.

A woman on Second Avenue carried a Boston terrier in a sling across her chest. It nuzzled her breast. Her face was a pastel wash of bliss.

I wept.

I wept because I could not cry out. “Brothers and Sisters, please! Do not go down like this!”

I could not cry out because a Rottweiler was eyeing my crotch and in its throaty growl I heard “Just give me cause, human.”

I could not cry out because a spindly woman with liver-spot talons and orange hair had five teacup terriers – so many land piranha – waiting for the scent of my blood.

So, I wept. And I ran, back to the comforting embrace of savage subway rats.

At Houston Street, outside the Whole Foods and the Second Avenue F station, I passed a seeing-eye dog humming, “We shall overcome.”

When I can make myself leave my room, I am going to hunt down the woman trying to give away cats on Ludlow Street. When I find her, and I swear by all I hold holy I will find her, I am going to give her a right good scolding.

On second thought, maybe I won’t. It occurs to me I could be playing right into their hands. She may be in cahoots, infected … one of the beaming pet-tender pods. I’ll bet she is. After all, she did smile in a moment of universal vulnerability.

I just wanted a couple of t-shirts

Spring is on the way and with it, almost whispered in the sharp breezes, is the call to restock my spring wardrobe. This, of course, means I need more t-shirts – colored t-shirts: no pockets, no slogans, no brands, no designs. Just t-shirts – plain and simple.

I have five or six plain tees already (and a couple of branded t-shirts that fit and don’t offend too much), which would carry me through an average week between laundry visits, but I – apparently -- am a slave to consumerism. At a gut level, a dark level where control fails, I need to freshen my look for spring.

To fulfill this primal urge, I followed a giant red posterboard

!!!!!!
Up to
50% Off
!!!!!!

starburst into an O.M.G. store on Broadway just north of Canal Street.

Oh. My. God. … That’s the name of the store.

O.M.G.

Oh, my God?

It is Canal discount retail in a Soho boutique retail space. High ceilings, bright lights, thumping music, a dozen or so cheery young retail clerks scurrying about, hip-hop hoodies, baseball caps, $100 shoes, jeans, jeans and more jeans … and t-shirts – most with nesting skulls or white-on-black flames or 8-balls or Obama or the rest of this year’s cool symbols of urban American youth.

Granted, I’m cool. Granted, I’m urban now. Granted, I’m American. But … I can’t, with any real conviction, lay claim to youth anymore. It’s the silver in the beard, I think. Or maybe the fact that chronologically I am standing on the sidewalk in front of the dreary Manoir de Middle Age, a “For Rent” yard sign in my hand.

As I walked past the jeans, jeans and more jeans toward a stack of t-shirts that looked to be your plain, general purpose Fruit of the Loom Heavy tees near the cash register, a cheery young retail clerk woman swooped in on me … at my six, out of the sun. I didn’t even hear her coming until she buzzed my ear.

“Help you?” she asked in a cute, cheery Hispanic-swept Brooklyn accent. She was about 5-foot-6 and curvy in a blood-churning way.

“Just looking, thanks.”

I always say that, even when I’m on a genetically induced, seasonally specific wardrobe mission. “Just looking, thanks.” I wasn’t just looking. I was a driven man. I was a haunted, hunted man. I was a man consumed by a need for tees.

“Just looking, thanks.”

“Kay,” she said. “Could you look here for a minute then?” She pointed to a wall, 20-foot high and loaded with Levis 505 jeans. “I really need to stretch my back out and I can’t unless I’m talking to you. Rules …” She rolled her eyes.

“Anything to help,” I said. I’m just that kind of pro-labor fellow.

I pulled a pair of jeans out of the stack and checked the price. $48. She started stretching. It was actually closer to writhing, thrusting and jutting than stretching, but it wasn’t my place to say that. Add a pole and a mirror ball and a platform and I would have been holding a $10 beer and a fist full of dollar bills instead of a $48 pair of jeans. I put the jeans back, making sure the stack was squared off.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said with a smile.

“Yes I do,” I said. “O.C.D. Attention to detail.”

In response, she bent and touched the floor with the palms of her hands … with a smile.

O.M.G.

“Just looking, thanks.”

I couldn’t see Manoir de Middle Age anywhere anymore. It was gone in a flex and a flash of youthful sun, but a line about washed-up, middle-age salesman Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman” flashed through my head. “Attention must be paid.”

And attention was paid … to the gentle curve of my cheery, stretchy stripper clerk’s tawny back at that point in reality and fantasy where shirt and jeans fail to meet.

“So, finally attention must be paid to such a person.” And who am I to argue with a classic of American theater?

Out of the thumping din of jeans, jeans and more jeans – at my six, out of the sun – another cheery Hispanic-swept Brooklyn accent pushed into my head.

“36/32,” it said, a runaway non sequitur careening into and derailing a warm train of thought. Again. “36/32.”

“Huh?”

“36/32.”

I turned to face the voice. It belonged to a cheery, short, round clerk with slivers of silver stabbed through various parts of her face. She was holding a pair of khakis, which she thrust in my face.

“Excuse me?”

“36/32. I got you 36/32.”

For the record, I wear a 32/32 … so I said, in what (upon reflection) was an amazingly girly voice, “Do I look like a 36?” I don’t know where the voice came from and I hope it never returns, but there it was. “Do I look like a 36?”

My cheery, stretchy, stripper clerk straightened up and said with what (upon reflection) was a sly smile, “Not even close.”

“Aren’t you him?” the cheery little round clerk asked.

“I’m sorry. I don’t. … What?” I asked.

Her bulb grew dim. I watched it on her face.

“He ain’t a 36, Kimee.”

“You’re looking for a rounder guy,” I added, hopefully helpfully.

Kimee threw the khakis on the rack, right next to my precious tees -- $4.25 each. “36/32,” she said.

“T-shirts,” I said to my stretchy clerk with her back like summer sun. I was very confused, grasping for something to keep me from falling down the thumping, shopping, stretching, gay-voiced 36/32 rabbit hole of hip-hop hoodies, tawny backs, high-dollar sneakers, sly smiles, jeans, jeans and more jeans.

“T-shirts. That’s what I’m looking for.” She nodded, smiled again and walked across the store to another customer. T-shirts don’t justify floorshows at O.M.G.

I was left with poor, lost Kimee.

She stood next to me as I searched for a large gray t-shirt from the stack (returning each failed attempt to the stack, squared off and tidy) and kept muttering “36/32” into thumping air. Suddenly – at my six, out of the sun – a male voice rang out from across the store. “Are those my pants?”

I whipped around hoping to see a tubby doppelganger. Instead I saw a man about my height, but that’s where the comparison ended. It was wishful thinking on the 36-inch waist for one thing. He had a full head of hair for another. And, finally, he was … old.

I threw Kimee a glance and hissed in her ear, “You thought I was him? He’s old enough to be my father. You are so off my Christmas card list.”

She threw me a blank stare. Actually, she didn’t throw it. It just sort of dribbled out of her eyes. “36/32,” she said, then went to help her old man with a pleats v. no pleats conundrum. I was left to my t-search.

That’s when I noticed another old guy – thin, balding, looking through a stack of t-shirts – in the full-length mirror to my right. And Manoir de Middle Age arose out of the mist of my mind.

O.M.G.

Oh, the warm winds blow

The other night, the weather was criminally pleasant. Nice enough for me to park myself at a sidewalk cafe off Tompkins Square for a little catch-up people watching. I don't like winter. The people are in too bundled up and in too much of a hurry for good recreational observation. The first thaw came the other night, and with it, people.

One of those people was dressed head-to-toe in black. Black wide-brim hat. Black suit coat. Black Pants. Black pleated skirt. (Yup.) Black chukka boots with toes like icepicks. The sun was well down, but his eyes were covered by black wrap-around sunglasses. Even his hands and the lines in his face not covered by a black beard were etched black. He staggered in front of me, trying to eat a slice of pizza and maintain forward movement at the same time. He was drunk. He failed.

Somewhere in the course of this aborted attempt at walking, he managed to spot me. He stopped. His eyes tried to focus. He advanced on me. There was a nasty gash on his left cheek. The blood was dried black, but it hadn't had time to completely scab up yet.

He was close enough that I could smell dead alcohol and old skin in the breeze and he said something in a blurred whisper that was so soft, I couldn't make it out.

"What?"

"You look like a writer. You a writer?"

"That's what some people call it." He was good, I'll admit. Top notch observation skills. I hadn't taken my notebook out. My pen was concealed and my computer holstered. And he still called me out. I wouldn't have pegged him.

"I could tell," he said. "I'm a writer too."

"Oh, that's great," I said. Just great, I thought. Me and you, brother. Me and you. Kindred spirits. It hurt a little.

Just as I braced for the "you got any spare change?" line that wino writers like to close with, a small man with a large voice shouted from the corner. "Al! You fuck! You look like a Goddamn ninja. Where you been?"

My brother of the ink turned away from me. Old friend trumps new comrade, I suppose. "I been busy," he said as the two men split the distance between them and collided in a free-form hug.

I wasn't sad to see him go. I'd been spared the need to tell him to fuck off about the money.

But part of me figured I owed it to him to write about our little moment.

Take a walk on the wild side -- NYC

Yesterday morning was a glorious morning for a stroll through Central Park. Snow from the storm a couple of days ago lay on the ground. The sun was out. The air, while crisp on my face, couldn't penetrate the layers of clothing. I was on my way to a rainwater harvesting seminar sponsored by the Council on the Environment for NYC.

Basically, things were zippidy do-da-ing my way. I think I might even have been humming a happy tune despite myself -- something that happens, sadly, when I'm far from feeling sadly.

All of the sudden, from the high branches of an oak tree about 20 feet to my right, a hawk dropped down looking for breakfast, courtesy of a gray squirrel zippidy do-da-ing its way around the base of the tree. There was a sharp flurry of feathers and fur.

When it ended, the squirrel skittered about three feet up the tree, leaving the hawk standing, embarrassed, talon deep in snow. The hawk was doing its best "cat falls off counter but meant to do that" posturing. Up the tree, the squirrel was giving it a major ass chewing.

The hawk ignored the verbal abuse, waited about 10 seconds (an acceptable amount of "I meant to do that" time), looked at me, puffed its feathers and flew into a nearby tree, where it perched, back to the still bitching squirrel.

Zippidy do-da!

Acme -- Southernish food in NYC

The sign outside Acme reads "Authentic Southern and Cajun Cooking". Proclamations like that make my Epicurean Security Administration terror alert system go to orange.

The only thing that keeps me out of Red is that I automatically disregard claims of "authentic cooking". It has nothing to do with the tastiness of the food or the authentic-ness of the recipes and everything to do with the fact that it ain't authentic unless someone's momma is cookin' it on a Hotpoint range and you're eatin' it in their Formica accented kitchen.

It's a core mistrust of the concept my biscuit-bakin', bream-fryin', collards-boilin', Sno Cap-slingin', Hotpoint and Formica kitchenin', Southern to her Karo syrup-slurpin' soul (may it rest in peace) ma-maw sniffed at and called "cafe food." Unless you are advertising "authentic cafe food" at a cafe, you ain't exactly tellin' the truth. Not that I expect you too, really. It would be unreasonable for me to demand that your sign read "Authentic Southernish and Cajunlike Restaurant Cooking."

The culinary waters get even murkier when you start mixing genres ... Southern and Cajun, Chinese and Korean, Mutt-ern and Jeff-inese (I'll let you youngsters Google that one). For the record, Southern and Cajun ain't kin. Think of it this way. Southern and Soul are cousins across the fence ... or more correctly, sadly, across the tracks. Southern and Cajun just happen to live within a long day's drive of each other.

If that isn't bad enough, we have to add in market factors. To put it bluntly, my ma-maw would never have grilled a portobello mushroom cap. My friend's Nonc Nile (Nonc is coonass for uncle. Nile is the river, cuz that's how crooked he was) would never have grilled a portobello mushroom cap. Wouldn't never have happened. Not even if Christ his own self or a resurrected Gov-nna Huey Long had asked. Truth to tell, my ma-maw woulda jack-slapped either of 'em upside the head for even askin'. I'm pretty sure Nonc Nile'da felt the same way, only he'da used a hammer.

So, let us grab a ladder, a brush, a can of whitewash and a cadre of our most gullible friends and eradicate the word "authentic" from every damn restaurant in New York City.

I'll wait.

Done yet?

Good.

Now, let's talk about Acme.

I go on a regular basis -- and, to ma-maw's eternal shame I always get the grilled portobello mushroom caps. Tuesdays are $2 beers. Appetizers are half price until 7 p.m. every night. The canned music is OK until they get into a Zydeco jag (but that's a different rant). The food is purtey near tasty, even if it ain't really authentic. The hot sauce selection is prodigious. The dress code seems to be that you have to wear clothes ... for the most part, although no one has actually come right out and said it.

And the bartender -- Rudy -- is ... ummm. ... Mere words can't describe. I'll just say this. If you don't love Rudy, you are a degenerate puppy kicker and should be forced to walk through town from "authentic " restaurant to "authentic " restaurant with a scarlet "PK" sewn to your chest. Not to your shirt. Straight to your heartless damn chest.

That's all I'm sayin'.

Last night at Strand

I don't get out and do the free stuff like I did when I first got here. I'm thinking that will change in a couple of weeks. Right now, the sun goes down and Bob goes inside. To freakin' cold ... unless there's drinkin' involved.

Last night was an exception. There was a book talk at the Strand by science writer Jonah Lehrer who wrote the New York Times best seller "How We Decide."

I decided to stop by and see it using my superior deciding brain thing.

Here's how I decide to do things. I think it's called answering questions. You are more than welcome to try it at home.

First, is it free? This was. It is amazing how broadly educated a cheap bastard can be in New York City.

Second, can I find a comfortable way to kill time before the thing starts? Midtown isn't conducive ... unless there's drinkin' involved. This was in the Union Square area ... so, I camped in a little coffee shop a couple of blocks away.

Third, do I have to stand in line early for a chance to do it? If I have to wait in too much of a line, or get there really early to get in and sit, I'm usually not that interested. Last night, I walked up 5 minutes before start time at 7 p.m. and found a spot to lean. It was about why people will turn their nose up at a $5 bottle of wine and love the same wine if they think it is a $90 bottle of wine. Right up my alley. That would have been worth a wait and it certainly was worth standing in the back of the audience for 90 minutes.

And, finally, the temperatures were in the high 40s after the sun went down, so I wasn't testing my frostciles.

Anyway, the talk was filmed by a C-SPAN BookTV crew. I don't know when it will air, but when it does, it should offer visual confirmation of my location in New York City. I'll be the guy in the flannel shirt in standing in the back deciding not to shout "Why don't you just shut the fuck up!" at the interviewer ... Robert Krulwich from NPR's Radio Lab, a flaming twit who was more interested in hearing himself than he was in letting us hear Lehrer.

If the camera pans slowly enough at the right moment, you might be able to see me make another decision. I want the twit's job. I am currently deciding which steps to take to have it.

The oddest thing happened on the way to ...

I was wandering past Saks (on 5th Avenue, oddly enough) two days ago when I found myself inexplicably stepping inside. I don't know what came over me, but it may have had something to do with the head blow described in my previous post. The old Bob would only have gone into Saks if his bladder was full to bursting or his bowels needed immediate emptying in the "Men's Lounge", but this strange new Bob ... apparently there has been a personality shift because there I was. ... Ground floor of Commerce Central, gateway to the land of the lost, Red Hell.

My eyes watered.

Perfumes. Mutants. The rubble of Babble.

Obsession. Envy. Compulsion. Euphoria. Opium. Romance. Ice. Heat. Radiance. Passion. Escape. Poison. Stalked youth. Plastic faces. Dead animals. Matrons wearing granddaughter clothes. The sticky ick of humanity adrift without a compass. Eternity. Seriously enthralling. Neato!

The stigmata on my unicorn nubbin oozed as I road the escalator up six flights to the men's department. I know because I watched the new Bob in the polished brass mirror wall, standing between a man in a cashmere overcoat below me and two 60+ women in matching Juicy Couture sweat suits above me. I don't know what the man's deal was. But I think the women were churning butter in their sweats.

But I didn't care. Euphoria. I was so looking forward to looking at suits, and shirts, and shiny black loafers.

There was a sale! I was gleeful ... full of glee (or something). I picked up a shirt that was 70 percent off -- Super sales price? $275. ...

People are idiots. But, I want to take this chance to thank Saks for setting me straight. I emptied my bowels -- it was a forced evacuation -- in the "Men's Lounge" and made a break for the street (5th Avenue, as it happens.).

Escape. Lovely. Rapture.

Knocking myself out

I almost killed myself with an ancient NordicTrack machine a couple of days ago.

Remember NordicTrack machines? They mimicked cross-country skiing and were all the rage in the late 80s.

I was whining to a friend (Descarte said "I whine, therefore I am," so I must be ...) that I wasn't getting as much time on a bicycle as I was used to -- 17 degree weather here in New York, icy roads and no absolute need, thanks to mass transit, had reduced my cycling urge to zero -- and, while I was walking quite a bit, I missed the aerobic part of the exercise. My friend said she had an old NordicTrack machine folded up in a closet under layers of old clothes that created a sort of archaeological dig of her passing tastes. She figured it might still work and I figured it was worth a shot, so I dragged it back to my place.

That should have been aerobic enough, but then I set the machine up. It was a simple device. A flywheel attached to rollers for the "skis" and a jointed upright that held a spool of rope with a tension nob in the center and a handle on each end to simulate ski poles. Truly, it was a marvel of exercise engineering.

I climbed aboard and started sliding my feet and pulling on the rope. It didn't go well.

I found myself doing the exercise equivalent of rubbing my head and patting my belly while reciting the alphabet backward under the steady gaze of a state trooper at 3 a.m. on New Years Day. My legs were sliding and my arms were pumping, but my legs were fighting my arms, my arms were fighting my ass and my center of gravity was fighting my center of gravity. It was a grave situation.

Then I noticed there was a leather-like pad about stomach high and about a foot in front of me on the machine's upright arm. I'm not a particularly smart guy, but I know that leather goes with sliding and pumping like tuna goes with egg noodles and cream of mushroom soup. I thought, "Gee. I'll bet that's got a purpose. And, I'll bet that purpose is to give the exercising person something to brace against so gravity doesn't kick the slats out from under his center."

I angled the upright toward me. This moved the pad close enough to me that I could press it against my hips. The move also moved the upper level of the upright into a more vertical position so I was pulling down on the ski poles. It seemed more ski-polesque. And, it worked. I was foot-sliding and arm-pumping at 15 kph. The Nordic wind was whistling over my bald spots, and I was whistling an Alpine hiking tune.

Then the upright lurched closer to me. My ass lost center and found gravity. I started to fall over backward. There was flailing.

My deep genetic connection to northern Europe screamed, "Use the poles!"

I yanked on the arm ropes to right myself. It worked. My upper body shot forward to counter balance my wayward butt, just as the upright with the arm-rope tension dial, possibly weakened by time in the closet but more probably incorrectly set up by my incompetence, shot backward.

There was an (Old Testament) "awesome" explosion of light and sound as the dial hit me right between the eyes at 15 kph times the variable "x", with "x" being the sum of the kinetic force of my adrenaline-fueled upper body and the counter force of gravity.

This is probably a good time to mention that I am descended from unicorns -- on my mother's side. I'm not prettier or more lithe or more pure for my genetic link to myth. I'm all those things for other reasons -- having to do with clean living and a godlike moral sensibility cleaved from years of self-examination.

All I got from the unicorn DNA is a skittishness around really bad people and a vestigial horn. The skittishness forced me out of corporate America, possibly saving my life in the long run, and the other night, the unicorn nub might have saved my life in the short run.

When I picked myself up off the ground, my eyes burned from the blood flowing out of the half-inch gash on my nub. But my pupils dilated as nature intended and beyond the ringing in my ears and the dent to my pride, I seemed to sustain no cerebral damage. I'm going to have to break down and buy a bicycle helmet, though. For next time I decide not to leave my room.

Underground New York

Magic time on the subway


There are multiple millions of people in New York City and multiple millions more who come from outside the city proper every day.

A great deal of this flow of humanity, this ant-like thrum of activity, takes place below the city.

I'm a fan of the subways ... I've even found myself riding them just to read (This might be only a couple of stops from Crazy Time Station, where I eat sandwiches out of the garbage, count empty seats with religious fervor, recite the next subway stop information with savant-like detail and clean my toenails with coffee stirrers on the Broadway local, but I think I'm a ways away yet. Then again, did those guys know they were on the way? Did they think, "I'm a ways away yet."? Or did they just wake up one day and decide it might be fun to grab a book and ride the A train from the Rockaways to Inwood ... and maybe grab half a sandwich and a cup of coffee along the way?)

Future mental prospects aside, I -- being of sound mind and body ... for the moment -- profess to be a big fan of the subways.

There are a million stories in the naked city and almost all of the characters crawl underground at some point. The range of faces is global. The range of voices, musical. The subways are magic.

They are freedom for $2 a trip (a lot less if you buy the unlimited-ride cards. I figured my ride costs last month at well under 80 cents per ride.). From practically anywhere in the city you can get to practically anywhere in the city 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

They are entertainment. Between the subway buskers and the subway riders, there is never a car that doesn't have something to watch.

They are inspiration. Billy Strayhorn would have told you that. Duke Elington's directions to his house ... "Take the A Train" ... inspired a jazz classic. I can attest to it. A bad advert on the J Train worshiping "Mighty Cod" inspired a play I just wrote. Sketch artists and actors, musicians and storytellers all draw from the pool of ideas seething beneath New York's streets.

They are home to the walking dead. Ride the 6 train at 5:30 p.m. on a financial district work day and believe.

The are home to unbridled life. Check out the same train two hours earlier when the kids are on their way home from school and believe.

They are rock shows. A group of European wanderers ... obviously high on life ... breaks into a rousing rendition of "Bad Moon Rising". Five black kids start singing "Just Another Brick in the Wall." iPod rappers stare dead straight and unblinking while they atonally parrot the tunes pumped in their head. I've even been practicing my toenail cleaning song. It wanders the musical landscape in time with the clacking of wheel on rail and goes like this: "Take good care of your feet, my children, and they'll take good care of you. Let them breathe, let them breathe, let them breathe. Believe. Believe."

Millions of people are crammed together and few make more than fleeting contact, but the subways are magic. Yesterday, I caught the J train before 7 a.m. (see post below) and found myself in a regular coffee club. A group of commuters from different stops going to different stops have been riding the same car at the same time every morning for so long that they have become friends. The conversation ranged from work to grandkids to the health of someone who missed the train to the Mets vs. the Yankees. And it ends when they leave the car, to be picked up the next day.

Next time you are in the city, do yourself a favor and go underground. "Take the A Train". Keep your eyes and ears open. Have fun. You'll be glad you did.

Snow day in New York City

It snowed last night. Not a lot, maybe three inches, but it was enough to do what snow seems to do for me and that is kill time.

I can't tell 5 a.m. from 5 p.m. in the snow. It all just sort of feels the same and my internal clock responds to the confusion in unpleasant ways.

Time: 4:50 a.m.

I was awake. "Blink, blink ... what the hell time is it? Shit, now I'm awake," awake. The odd light above the curtain confused me. It was blue and rose, but black too. "Snow," I told myself, aloud because I'm apparently becoming one of those old guys who says things aloud to himself at 4:50 a.m. for no reason. This thought occurred to me as I sat up and threw myself out of bed.

"Shit," I said aloud. "Don't start talking to yourself."

"Damn!"

Nothing was moving. Nothing. It was so early even the usual commuter traffic down my street was nonexistent, so I stood in the window, naked, and watched the snow dance through the streetlights and listened to the strange sound Simon and Garfunkel called "silence."

That was fun for about three minutes. Time: 4:54 a.m. I hand-cranked the emergency radio -- it wasn't an emergency. There was plenty of power. I just like generating my own electricity, particularly when standing in a window ... naked. The weather report said it was going to snow until rush hour and then switch to sleet for a while before becoming rain.

Time: 4:59 a.m.

I decided if I was going to be awake, I might as well take advantage of the snow situation in some way. That advantage, I decided, was going to be getting to Central Park before the humans ruined the snow.

Time: 5 a.m.

I crawled back into bed, hoping the feeling would pass.

Time: 5:05 a.m.

Nope. I was awake. I showered, bundled up and walked into the snow.

Time: 5:57-6:40 a.m.

Subway ride and hike from Lexington Avenue and 63rd Street to Central Park's 66th Street entrance. From across 5th Avenue I saw two humans -- joggers actually -- going into the park. It was going to be a lot trickier than I'd hoped to thwart the humans and find pristine snow. There weren't many humans in the park, but I know from years of clinical observation that it doesn't take many. In fact, I followed footprints across the park, into the Grand Plaza and then around the lake and into The Ramble at 72nd Street on the west side of the park.

I was beginning to despair at finding pristine snow.

Time: 7:30 a.m.

I got to the top of a knoll in The Ramble, a knot of paths that er ... ramble around for a while for no reason other than to get you tired. The humans were really starting to flow into the park, I could make out their hunter orange and lime green jogger colors in stark relief against the black and white of the snow on trees. If someone were hunting moose in Central Park on this dreary winter's day, there would be no accidental shootings. Unless, the hunter shot me. I was wearing camo.

I didn't want someone to mistake me for a jogger.

Between the joggers, the next wave of commuters and the dog owners, the window of opportunity was going to close on my winter wonderland.

Then I saw it. A fork in the road. There was a path that was not less traveled. It was not traveled at all ... at least not since the snow started. It was a white carpet of powder. I stepped into it after testing to make sure it would hold me. As my foot pushed down to the asphalt below there was this lovely crunching sound like busting open a beanbag chair and walking on the spilled guts. I was going where no one in New York City had been in five or six hours.

Time: 7:34 a.m.

I was a child again; wide with wonder, frolicky. I kicked the snow and it sent out a perfect fan of icy dust. I slipped and slid and my boots made snake tracks through the virgin snow as I shifted my weight to keep from making an accidental snow angel in The Ramble.

Time: 7:35 a.m.

My 20-feet of virgin path rejoined the path more traveled. I took in my small victory as I stared at a sign on the lamppost in front of me that read, "Wild Forever." (I have a picture on my cell phone and I'd share it if I could figure out how.)

It was time to find coffee ... wild coffee.

Time: 8 a.m.

I'm doing coffee and typing across the street from a large banner on the side of the ABC building on 66th Street and Columbus Avenue advertising "Lost". Between my seat in the window and the sign I've got 20 feet of shit-brown sludge, a hacking wino, two overflowing garbage cans, a parking meter and a steady stream of bleating cars.

"Wild Forever"

New Year's Day -- 2009

2009 started with a hail of bullets -- apparently a longstanding tradition in my neighborhood.

So, at 11:58 p.m. someone down the street emptied a clip into the air. Someone else joined in. And someone else. And someone else. At midnight, I drank a glass of bubbly with my roommate, listened to the shots and watched fireworks as they topped the trees between me and Manhattan. The fireworks stopped at 12:20 a.m. So did the gunplay.

And 2009 was off to the races.