Circus leaving town

Today Michael Jackson was acquitted of the ten counts against him. I tried not to pay attention to the trial, but the prurient details sometimes proved irrestistible: the sad porn collection of a middle-aged man, the secret jukebox passageways, the licking of boys' heads (!). All those bizarre Europeans camping out the courthouse for months at a time, with their weird fashions and curiously juvenile posters. What is going on here? And why couldn't the posters have been better? It's not like they have much else to do, besides weep a lot.

In eighth grade I wrote an English paper about Michael Jackson's arrested development, his efforts to recover a childhood from within his gilded cage. When I was very young I used to go crazy when my parents played "Beat It" - I developed a foot-stomping, furiously aerobic dance dubbed the Boothead Shuffle by parents and relatives, a state of mind into which I would plummet whenever I heard those first guitar licks. I did this on birthdays, anniversaries, family reunions, and at least one occasion in which a video camera was present.

All this to say that my relationship with Michael Jackson is long and multifaceted. Today I can't even listen to him on my iPod. I see how the prosecution couldn't prove anything beyond that pesky reasonable doubt, I see how the accuser turned out to be a total wackjob with the reliability of a narcoleptic doing air traffic control, but something is not right. He should have been found guilty of something. If not a crime, then at least squandering a life of wealth and influence.

Honestly, he should have died tragically in a plane crash in the late 80s. Or even, say, 1993 - I'd give him "Dangerous" just for the joys of "Remember the Time." But think how he would be remembered if he left this earth before all of this came out. In some ways it may have been better - and that is a sad and deflating idea to consider.

Life is but a dream

Yesterday L and I went rowing in the boats in Central Park. This has been a goal of mine for three years now. Running through the park, or meandering, I would always see cheerful couples or bustling young families or lone former crew people paddling along the lake, under the bridges, near the guitar player, by Bethesda fountain. When L arrived, I told her, "I will row you in a boat. Let me row you in a boat."

Sitting in the boats is a somewhat grimy experience. Your ass ends up a little damp - lake water? Sweat? Residual moistness? The oars squeak horribly and you sit facing the rear of the boat to propel yourself forward, gazing into the face of your companion as you try not to get mad by her seemingly-constant litany of course corrections. You can push the oars forward, leading with the rear of the boat, and it feels kind of like a chest press. You can spin yourself around with the oars or just float aimlessly and enjoy a view of nearly uninterrupted greenness, the grass, trees, shrubbery, doubly seen through a lens of water. Towers and apartments rising from behind like an old species of tree.

It felt good to row her in a boat in Central Park. We will do it again, I am sure.

All that, and the new Coldplay CD is spectacular.

Freon dreams/Perils of athleticism

Last night I bought an air conditioner, after two nights of stifling heat and one rejected invitation for L to stay over. I found a decent air conditioner for about ninety bucks at Le Home Depot, and I decided to catch a cab home. A cabbie stopped, but he called out the window to find out where I was going before he would pull over. What the hell? My New York Survival Aggression reared its ugly head as I snarled, "Tenth and Sixth. You taking it, or what?" I was surprised at myself, but I blame the effects of the heat. Putting the damned thing in place was an ordeal, requiring me to shove the fridge and oven away from the wall, where I discovered a warren of power strips and extension cords. I simplified things somewhat, but now I have a fridge, oven, and AC all connected to one power strip leading back to the outlet. I am a little concerned by this, but I figure I'll only use two at a time and I'll be all right. Several times I almost dropped the air conditioner into the bottomless shaft of my building. And my lingering question is: Will the pigeon shit that is quickly accumulating on my AC somehow makes it way into the environment of my apartment? And would that have any detrimental effects on me? I googled this, but couldn't really find anything.

Anyways, the week has been good. Stifling days make for pleasant evenings. The reading on Monday went very well - a smaller crowd, but everybody was into it. A few people came out to see me, and I was grateful for that. I ended up reading last, and I did this piece on Little League and playing softball with my friend's Olympic coworkers. I had pecked it out over the weekend for the "Sports Night" theme, and I tried to write it in the vein of one of the New Yorker's "Personal Histories," which I love. I wasn't sure how it would go over, but it got a really good response and I felt great about everything in the world.

However, last night I confronted a problem that has been creeping up on me like - well, like a mold on your feet. ATHLETE'S FOOT. I went on WebMD.com, a site I will not even link to due to the miserable compulsion I feel to go there and identify new ailments from which I suffer, and I learned all about this condition and why I'm such a bad person for getting it in the first place. After two weeks of ointments I should be all cleaned up. In the meantime, I'm deciding if burning all my footwear, rugs and bedding is enough, or if I need to immolate myself alongside them. Today, the first full day of treatment, my feet feel like they are on the rotisserie, because I am thinking of them a lot. And the empathy and support I would expect from friends and family is nowhere to be found, instead I suffer the usual derision and indignities. Well, good for me for at least getting "Athlete's Foot" - maybe someday I could get "Jock Itch," too. Or maybe even "Stud Burn," except that's just plain ol' herpes. No thanks, WebMD.

A fistful of Pez

On Saturday night I find myself standing with Ashesh by the bar of the Sapphire Lounge. Fantastic music - R & B, reggaeton - was pumping over the system, but we had no women to lure onto the dance floor. There were a couple of bachelorette parties going on, as evinced by the preponderance of white girls of a certain age, and an excess of woo-ing, which you can usually escape at Sapphire (as well as girls dancing with their arms over their heads).

Ashesh and I were talking and suddenly two girls were standing before us. They were looking at us expectantly and I felt a moment of pride. The tall blonde who looked like the muscles in her face weren't entirely under her control was covering Ashesh, and I had the slightly mousier brunette (maybe she would be smart-cute in the light?). Well, well, I thought. But of course. And how are you ladies tonight? They were both emissaries of the bachelorette parties, and they were both wearing candy necklaces. "Bite off a candy . . . a dollar?" was all I could hear over the music. We sort of dumbly agreed and I soon found myself gingerly trying to bite off a single candy from the strand, while fastidiously avoiding touching the girl's skin and trying not to snap the twine. She didn't smell particularly good. I finally succeeded and was unclear about what kind of transaction was taking place until Ashesh took out his wallet and gave his girl a dollar. I did the same and they wandered away. "That was weird," I said. "That was not worth a dollar." "I got her hair stuck in my teeth," Ashesh said.

As the night continued more and more girls came up asking us for a dollar to bite a piece of candy from their necklaces. What was this money for? And wasn't a dollar kind of steep for such a wretched prize? The girls were sadder and sadder as the night progressed. The more prudish ones wouldn't wear the necklace, so one came up with the whole thing wadded into a damp napkin. One twirled it around her finger, and another dropped hers onto the floor and then picked it up and offered it to us: "Do you want a piece of candy for a dollar sorry it fell on the floor?" They completely divorced the "sexy" aspect of the process, and thus bled it dry of the last shred of appeal. Would I pay a dollar to take a Pez from somebody's sweaty fist? No, madam, I would not.

These were not sexy girls but they were trying to be. Near the end of the night the eventual bride came up and asked if we would sit down and hold her drink between our legs. It was the saddest thing in the world. We both said no, of course, but then we soon saw her consuming her drink from between the legs of a random seated guy, a veritable piece de resistance for the evening. Woo!

The main event

The Church Basement Reading Series continues this Monday night! And I'm in it. The theme is "Sports Night," so it will be a night of both hilarity and pathos.

Micky's Blue Room
Avenue C between 10th and 11th Streets

Monday, 6 June 2005
8 pm

See you there!

Call me out my name

Yesterday I walked out into the main area of my workplace and mentioned that a new show was going to be on TV that night, a show that I was mildly interested in watching and that would provide some structure for my night. The show was on Bravo, and it was called “Sportskids Moms and Dads.” (In hindsight, I see how pathetic this sounds, and why it was never a fruitful topic of conversation.) One of my coworkers, a woman I consider a friend, said:

“You’re such a TV whore!”

I retreated into my office thoroughly chastened as everyone else laughed ruefully. As I returned I could hear someone mutter, “Dang, that was harsh.” My face turned all kinds of red, and I was surprised at the wave of humiliation and shame that coursed through my body. TV’s not the only thing I do, you know. I read books, magazines, newspapers. I exercise. I can talk about music and film. I’ve done improv, I write some. I’m going to school soon. Yet beyond all of that, I think this woman hit a deeper truth, one I find myself afraid to confront.

But what’s wrong with watching some TV as long as you’re well-rounded? I feel the same ambivalence and guilt about watching television as I think I would if I, say, chewed tobacco regularly. And the damnedest part is that I did watch the show, and it wasn’t even that good.

My big fat greek trip to Italy

Well, I’m back from ten days in Southern Italy. With my family. On a bus.

Sicily was beautiful: clear waters, rocky mountains, stunning hillsides. The food and wine were great, the people were goodlooking and friendly. It was a strange trip, though, because it’s so different from the ways I’m used to traveling. Here we were with 30 other Americans on a big loping Star Bus, which was pretty comfortable, but which pretty much served as a holding pen on wheels. We all woke up together and ate together in restaurants and hotel dining rooms. They would drive us from one tourist trap to another. “See the centuries-old mosaics and the Greek temple ruins!” They’d tell us. Or: “Now we’ll drive to the mountaintop to snap photos of the beach!” And then we’d get there, and there would be twelve buses in place already, with a bunch of fat Americans mooning around and asking for mayonnaise. At that point, while my mom went to the restroom for a period up to 40 minutes long, we would lose our own tour group and become stuck behind three others. I don’t believe in stereotypes, but I can say that Japanese tourists are assholes.

We woke up very early and went to bed very early, we walked slow, we took our time. I felt frustrated at every turn, like the kid in “The Incredibles,” but a lot more sullen. At different points I got frustrated with everyone in my family and everyone in our tour group. “Why can’t you even try to speak Italian!” “Why do you shuffle so slowly! Does that cane even do anything?” “Why are you so diabetic all the time!”, etc. This was not a healthy attitude, and so I don’t think I managed to really relax on the trip. It was a very task-oriented vacation, which has its own set of peculiar charms, but it was a rough way to live for ten days. I mean, we woke up at six every day – we didn’t even get a weekend. It was worse than working.

Here are some of the positive things about it: quality time with my family, great reading, beautiful country, hiking up Mt. Etna (my second volcano this year!), the Isle of Capri (birthplace of Capri Sun beverages, I like to believe), walking down the streets of Pompeii, I communicated with the Italians pretty darn well (another European even thought I was a clerk in store, which was mind-boggling), and I got some good sun. And now it’s good to be back.

Two great things

1. Yesterday at work, one of my female colleagues, feeling unusually spunky, slapped my ass. I was standing at the time, and resting all my weight on the side which would soon be slapped. Somehow, as her hand began its trajectory, I realized what was happening and I -- well, I flexed my butt -- right as she made contact. This produced an impressive reaction. "Wow!" she said. "You've got a firm ass! I was expecting some flab, but you got something hard back there! All that running must pay off." She said this in front of a gaggle of women we work with. I tried to look bashful but I probably failed. I didn't have the heart to say that I was doing everything in my power to tense things up back there, but it was a good compliment. You can always stand to hear more good things about your own ass, that's what my parents always told me.

2. Tonight I'm going to home to Virginia, and tomorrow my beloved nuclear unit - mom, dad, sis, me - is going to Italy! We're starting and ending in Rome and exploring the southern half of the boot, as well as Sicily. This is one of those trips where I'm on a bus with 49 other Americans and am required to make no decisions at all. I'm very excited, but I'll be out of commission for a while. More on this little blog after Memorial Day.

Interpretation

The other day a friend and I were trying to interpret this phrase: “We’re just friends, for now.” I thought this meant that this friendship was expected to eventually blossom into a relationship – good for them. My friend, though, saw this statement as the final death knell of a relationship about to disintegrate from tentative friendship into awkward conversation, unreturned phone calls, and disregarded Evites. I never thought about it that way.

This week I also got a copy of Frou Frou’s cd, “Details.” It was odd, because I had been listening to this album a lot back in October, when one of my colleagues passed away very suddenly. So when I heard this disc again the other day in my office, it brought back a rush of feeling that I hadn’t experienced in six months or so – nothing I can aptly describe, not even a sense of smell or sound, but rather a frame of mind and an awareness of my own existence in grief. (They told me she had died after I came into the office late carrying my rental tuxedo for our big banquet that night, an event she had planned – they told me and I dropped the tux and I couldn’t get my fingers to pick it up again.)

One song in particular stands out – it’s called “Must Be Dreaming.” It’s a great song, very jaunty, but with an undercurrent of melancholy buried in it: the love the singer is experiencing can’t last, it must be a dream, it is wonderful but it will end soon. Yet when I heard it I experienced it differently: the sad strain took it over, and whatever happiness the song still had came from the possibility that the grief itself was only a dream, that the death that occurred was too sudden and bizarre to possibly be real. Somehow this song has become a kind of anthem for her death and what came after.

Seemingly clear ideas that suddenly become wide open for interpretation – ideas that seem very simple and straightforward until you peer straight them through into another side – grief and loss and a fearful ambiguity. Oh, the vagaries of language.

Wedding hangover

Last week I received an email from my friend, a friend I'll call Kitty. I went to Kitty's wedding a few months back during a very hectic and stressful period, and I spent a considerable amount of money and time getting there. Amidst all of this I did not buy Kitty (and her husband, Travis) a wedding present. I felt bad about this for several months, and then received a mass email from Kitty offering an update on her life. Lovely. But still, I let about a month pass, and then I wrote her an email - a very generic, 'hey, how are you, please don't be angry because I didn't buy you a wedding gift and I'm afraid this is the kind of lapse in judgment you would really sink your talons into' kind of email. The next day, I received this email (paraphrased, but not really):

I am really glad you emailed, because I honestly thought you were mad at me. I've had this question on my mind for a while now, and I know it's awkward, but when I hadn't heard from you since the wedding I thought for sure that you were angry. And for good reason: Travis and I checked and checked and checked, and we realized that we never sent a thank-you note for the wedding gift you gave us. I feel so bad about this, and I am completely embarassed about the lack of a thank-you. I'm sure your gift was backordered or lost in the mail or stolen from our mailbox or something, and I'm sure I would have LOVED what you gave us, and I wanted to let you know that we would have thanked you properly had we known what it was. I am soo sorry but I am so relieved you aren't angry! I just wanted to let you know what happened and why you didn't get a thank-you note in the mail! (Please don't be mad!)

Well. At first I couldn't tell if Kitty was genuinely remorseful and embarassed, or if she was being fantastically malicious and nasty. I think, though, that she really felt humiliated at her perceived etiquette failure. I briefly debated trying to ride out the lie ("Someone at Crate & Barrel is about to get a PIECE OF MY MIND!") but I couldn't do it. After consulting with a few friends and my mom, who instantly dashed to her Emily Post manual, I wrote Kitty back and came clean. I told her I was the one who owed an apology, etc, and that she could expect a gift soon. It was a very pained reply and it took a while to figure out, and I haven't yet gotten a reply.

This whole Henry Jamesian comedy-of-manners etiquette dance is a bit much.

Contentment

I went for a fantastic run tonight - straight from work, through the Park, and around the Reservoir twice (and then back up to work). I'm calling it four and a half, five miles. Mariah Carey, Amerie, Seal, David Gray, Frou Frou, Coldplay, and Jill Scott got me through. I realized that for me the best runs are the ones where you can listen to slow songs and still keep moving. I felt completely under control - usually I run as though I'm fleeing from an angry dog, and everything is kind of falling apart as I move. Yet this time I felt calm and serene and thought about my life and how happy and fortunate I am. One of the best runs I've ever had here was through Central Park, on the east side by the reservoir, and I was listening to John Mayer's "Wheel" and having this bittersweet and yet aerobic moment that can really never be duplicated. But it came close today, in a different way, with Mariah's "Fly like a bird."

I am one lucky bastard. Job, School, Woman, Friends. Sardonic wit. Devastating good looks. Fly like a bird, baby.

Email me

My cell phone's dead,
My cell phone's dead,
Who knows what calls I'm missing?

Unexpected rest,
No talk or text,
It's all a bit deprissing.

My charger broke
Last words were spoke
The fall was so surprisin'

By the end of the week,
God willing I'll speak
But it all depends on Verizon.

The walking man walks

Yesterday I did The Great Saunter, although this is a misleading name. If the truth in advertising people had been on the case, it whould have been called "The Manhattan Death March." We walked the whole 32 miles around the New York City shoreline, dear reader, we completed that thing. But we paid a price.

In the morning, when we got there at 7, there were only a few dozen people milling around. The crowd skewed way old and did not seem particularly athletic. When we finally began it was pretty anticlimactic - there was no gunfire, no blood-curdling Saunterers' Yell, just the sound of a couple hundred people sighing and muttering, "Well, I guess we should start."

Cut to ten hours later, as we limped - in literal and figurative ways - back to the starting point. At that moment the bottoms of my feet were on fire, my left ankle was refusing to bend, and I was developing what would become the worst instance of chafing I can recall. I developed a bizarre walk wherein my infamously Latin hips would swivel outward, and I would actually move farther laterally than I would forward advance. This became a sort of bowlegged crabwalk, which I used to maneuver my way into Rite Aid to buy the staples of every Saunterer's medicine cabinet: vaseline and baby powder. I came home and applied the baby powder (not an easy job for a single person) to such a degree that if I closed my legs too quickly and with too much force, enough powder dropped to make you think that a very large and significant cocaine bust had just occurred on the floor of my bathroom.

But there were some good things of the walk, too: I saw some beautiful parks, especially the upper reaches of Riverside Park and Fort Trion, near Inwood. There are actual hills and stubby paths and forested areas on this island of ours. I was very thankful to actually be on a hike in New York City. It was a good time to rest and eat trail mix and enjoy some time with my friends and in my own head, and I was ultimately very proud of walking the whole damn thing. Although I did find it very funny that we just walked in a circle with a net gain of exactly 0. Who walks for 32 miles and ends up where they started with nothing to show for it, because the t-shirts for sale were very ugly and bland? Me.

It was easier to pretend to not think about the distance we actually walked. By the last third of the trip, I was desperate to end it all and just sit down. At 125th St on the east side, I was waiting til 110th, when we would be near the Park. Once we were below 100th St, I figured we were in the home stretch - what's another 130 blocks or so when you've already walked three quarters of the island? To find myself thinking this way was kind of stunning. Honestly, to finish it I drew on my boy scouting experience, my dad, my mom, the peer pressure of my fellow walkers and my own foolish pride and stubbornness - not to mention the 5 60-year old ladies who smoked us in the final stretch, their elbows pumping with military efficiency while I swiveled my way downtown, arms akimbo, like a marionette on crank.

Anyways, I'm thankful I did it. I am still exhausted. I am sore as hell today but the chafing is improving. I am sleeping very well at night and I'm proud too, and I feel as though I am earning a place in this city, in this island. I am a Shorewalker. I am a Saunterer, and yesterday, for a few hours, I was Great.

Bring it on

Tomorrow I'm participating in The Great Saunter. This is a thing where you show up at 7:30 in the morning at the South Street Seaport and walk around the island of Manhattan, and end up back at the Seaport twelve hours and 32 miles later. I don't know that I've ever consciously walked 32 miles in a day before. This is somewhat daunting, but then again it's all flat and it's all paved, so what's the difficulty? Right?

Sadly enough it's supposed to rain intermittently the whole day, but I am determined to do this. I think it would be good to brush up my Manhattanite credentials and get in some good, elbow-thrusting power walking. I am internally debating which shoes to wear: the ones that give me shin splints? the ones that are decomposing before my eyes? the new ones that sort of hurt my arches and have not yet gained my confidence? Maybe I ought to go shoeless, central-African-marathoner style. I don't know.

Many begin this saunter, but last year only 130 people finished it up. Do I have what it takes, or will I be trying to catch a cab in Inwood, pretending I'm not really crying as I limp away from the shore? Only time will tell, dear friends. Only time. Will tell.

Eating disorder

I am really making a concerted effort to eat well these days. I am inspired by both my desire to continue living and my desire to save money rather than dump $10 into every meal I choose to consume. So on Sunday I went to the grocery store and bought: milk (1%), cheese, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, orange juice, turkey, whole grain bread, yogurt, bananas, spaghetti sauce. Pleased with my selections, I looked at the contents of the other shoppers' baskets with disdain: ice cream? No, thanks, Fatty. Butter? Not in my house! No, instead I've launced a new Fruit Initiative, which has translated into eating seven bananas in seven days. Wonderful!

Then, a day later, once the reality of this sad and unappealing bounty set in, I returned to the store to buy: gatorade, E.L. Fudge cookies, and Coca-Cola. This made me much happier, but in the meantime I'm still enjoying these meager and kind of pathetic meals: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Yogurt and a piece of bread. Spaghetti that took twenty minutes to cook yet was consumed in nearly a single commericial interruption of "Desperate Housewives."

This is unsatisfying. Yet I am being so good! What gives? Well, today as I read the new Newsweek, about our delightful new Geometrical Food Regime, MyPyramid.gov, I was disappointed. About fruit, Newsweek says: "Most [fruits] are fine, but be moderate with bananas and juices." Why? "Bananas are starchy and high in sugar." Oh! Starch! I forgot to worry about starch! Thanks for shooting my awesome new Fruit Initiative straight to hell!

And what's that, Newsweek? "Excessive dairy consumption may be linked to prostate and ovarian cancer"? That's funny, because I actually HAVE a prostate!

Oh, what's that about white rice and white pasta, two staples of my diet? Did you say that "Refined grains are linked to higher risk of type 2 Diabetes"? That's what I thought you said. Oh well, at least I eat vegetables, like lettuce, and tomatoes, and cucumbers, and arugula, and potatoes--

"[Potatoes] really shouldn't even be in the vegetables category - they're more like white starches."

Starch! My new archnemesis. Curse you! Despite Newsweek's bitchy and unnecessarily snotty tone, I fear deep down that they are right. Yet I know we will meet again, Starch, most likely over a burrito stuffed with white rice, drenched with trans-fatty oils and dappled with negligible servings of vegetables. Yet we both know, without a shadow of doubt or hesitation, that I will succumb.

"It is no excuse to be young"

Tonight I saw "Downfall," a movie about the final days of the Third Reich - Hitler and his associates huddled in his bunker awaiting the last minutes when they commit suicide to avoid the unflinching judgment of the rest of the world. This movie was really not funny at all.

But it was just about as wrenching and exhausting as any war movie I've seen. I didn't realize it would go into the lives of those in the midst of the hell in Berlin - civilians, children, doctors, secretaries - in addition to being a kind of Third Rech "West Wing." ("Der Westen Wing, fraulein?") It had a lot to do with the banality of evil - the young men and women doing administrative tasks for the Nazis and enabling them to carry out their work. It made me think of our new Pope, who I am rooting for, and his own brief involvement in Hitler Youth, and it was troubling.

There were also the clearly evil people, who showed glimpses of normality and compassion and even charisma at times: Hitler, whose first appearance on the screen was more jarring than I thought it would be (an icon of evil, he is, truly); Eva Braun, his fucking wackjob of a mistress; and the calm and hideous Frau Goebbels, who killed 6 of her own kids rather than allow them to live in a world sans Nazism. And many others, people who were just doing their jobs.

(Adolf and Eva - naked and unashamed, passing the forbidden fruit between them, not yet thrown from the garden to create their own flawed line - the snake lying curled below them.)

War movies always make me think of how I would do in a combat situation. I assume I would die early in the skirmish, and probably in a stupid way. Like I would mistakenly eat a grenade or something. But maybe that would boost morale for the other guys, I don't know. "This is for Kip!" my fellow soldiers would scream as they stormed the foxhole/rice paddy/mountainous cave region du jour. 'Kip' would be my combat nickname.

I did think, though, about what I would be willing to die for in a war. I came up with two lists:

Beliefs/Ideologies I would die for:
-Democracy
-Catholicism

Beliefs/Ideologies I would not die for:
-Constitutional Monarchy
-The Metric System
-Parliamentary Procedure
-Daylight Savings Time

I'm sure these lists will grow with time. But this movie was amazing, and a reminder of the troubled times we have endured and the questions we face now. I think - I hope - there will always be things worth dying for, but how can anyone be asked to do the dying? Or for that matter, the killing.

That's enough for now. This movie is hard to process.

Henpecked

"Look at your hair, how it's going up on the sides! Did you sleep like that?"

"I don't know, I guess so. I showered this morning, so that should have taken care of any bed head."

"Oh, so you must have slept on your head then! It looks like horns!"

"Yeah, really. No, it just gets like this when I don't comb it."

"Man, looks like you slept on the same side of the bed as your hair!"

"What?"

"Look at those horns!"

"What?"

"Uh oh, someone's in a bad mood..."

"No, I'm not."

"Aww, don't be in a bad mood now, I'm just teasing--"

"I'm not in a bad mood. I wasn't in a bad mood."

"Michael's in a BAD MOOOOOOOOD!"

"No, I'm NOT." But now I am.

The people that you meet each day

I have made a new friend at my neighborhood Chipotle. He works there. I go there frequently to eat. But I am there with such frequency that I now feel a twinge of shame every time I pass through those doors - shame at my lack of originality, my utter dependence on this national conglomerate for sustenance, my questionable nutritional intake and my wanton disregard for eating frugally. But I love it, and they have fountain sodas I can refill.

My friend's name is "E," and he initiated our relationship by noting how often I am there. He's probably the kindest, most decent person working in food services in Manhattan, but I always have trouble with this kind of relationship. We always meet on his turf and I never have anything to say. Honestly, I just want to get my burrito and sit down and read a magazine. But as I progress down the line E always makes conversation and smiles and is very easy-going. Things really got started when I questioned his burrito-making skills one night (E: "Sorry man, is this all right?" Me: "Yeah, I just gotta eat it, not look at it." Zing!) But E always asks the kind of large, ambiguous questions I can never answer comfortably, especially in front of the other patrons - people who eat here rarely, only when they run out of baked chicken and mixed vegetables at home; people who certainly don't have relationships with their Chipotle cashier/burrito assembler.

"You always get steak or veggie, eh, Mike!" "How you doing today, Mike!" "Dap it out, Mike - whoa, I got sanitary latex gloves on." I'm never quite sure how to respond to these overtures - this kind of jocularity is sort of tough to fake when you're tired and just want to ease your troubles with a little sour cream and cheese. So I find myself maybe giving him more information that he would otherwise need to know about me. The other day I looked up from burrito to see him saying my name across the room. He started gesturing towards a girl alone a few tables away. I nonverbally communicated the idea that I found her cute. E gestured that I should go say hi. This introduced an elaborate pantomime on my part, expressing the idea: "Yes, she is cute, but I have a girl already - you know, the short one who comes in here with me sometimes..." And then I realized, why am I trying to explain all this?

He's a cool guy. The awkwardness comes from me. I'm just glad my neighborhood burrito maven knows who I am and even bothers to ask how things are going. That can be a rare find here, and it makes the city that much smaller, you know?

Women we love: Mariah Carey

I, uh, bought the new Mariah Carey album on iTunes a few days ago, and, um, I love it. No more skanky Mariah with a voice like an asthmatic in a coal mine; she seems to have gotten her mojo back, after a series of shitty albums with names like "Rainbow," "Glitter," "Charmbracelet," "Lollipop," and "Femininehygieneproduct." I have a long history with this woman. I remember receiving her eponymous debut cassette tape way back in the early nineties, and I religiously purchased her albums for the next seven years. Then she felt the need to compete with Britney Spears and her ilk, leading to the sad spectacle of a thirty-five year-old woman in pigtails and baby tees. What happened to the Puerto-rican looking Long Islander the nation fell in love with?

Well, one shitty movie later, looks like we're all back on board. Honestly, her voice sounds pretty awesome and her songwriting is on point. For some reason I've always found her to be a sympathetic figure - through the failed marriage, adult contemporary sugar ballads, ludicrous dye jobs, and hip-hop ho showdowns. I don't know, she seems kind of smart and funny at times. And she has a musky speaking voice that I like. Anyways, the new album is good - solid r&b, awesome production, ridiculous rhythms and syncopation, nice range. As I've been listening to it and singing along at points, I realize that I sort of learned to sing from her, in that when I try to add my own little M-Killa-D ad-libs to the songs, it sounds like what she's doing anyway. I guess she was a bigger influence than I realized.

Anyhow, Mariah: welcome back. As you wrote so profoundly, "them chickens is ash and [you're] lotion."

The Time Out New Yorker

Dear David Remnick,

I recently received my copy of The New Yorker, the issue dated April 25, 2005, with a somewhat bizarre Istvan Banyai mixed-media image on the cover. As Mr. Banyai happens to be one of my favorite artists in your employ, I had high hopes for what has become my favorite magazine (following in the hallowed footsteps of Highlights for Children, Ranger Rick, Boys' Life, Newsweek, Vibe, and, for one excruciatingly boring afternoon in 1987, Women's Wear Daily).

But little did I know, as I perused the new issue, that there were shocking changes in store. Frankly, my good sir, the 'Goings on About Town' section was in shambles. A haphazard, poorly organized 'This Week' sublisting. Boring three-column organization leaning too heavily on 'Critic's Notebooks' and varying font sizes. Blocky paragraph text where nice, orderly listings used to be. The removal of 'Auctions and Antiques' as its own subheading - sure, no one reads it, but I used to skim this section, to see whose estate was on the block and which collection of Faberge eggs and porcelain scabbards would become available in the coming week. And finally, adding a wretched symmetry to 'This Week,' we can now welcome 'On the Horizon,' a completely unhelpful preview of one movie, one exhibit, one concert, one spectacle to see in the weeks ahead.

Thanks, David Remnick. Really, this was awesome. Like the bastard child of Sunday Arts & Leisure and Time Out New York, with an assisting hand lent by TV Guide and Personality Parade.

And of course, most egregiously, this issue does not include a short story. No fiction. Whither the poor ingenues of Bread Loaf and Sewanee! This is unacceptable.

New Yorker subscribers are known to be a little... twitchy about their magazine, and I acknowledge that this is true. Get right, David Remnick, or you'll send me into the welcoming arms of the Atlantic.

Since 2002,

M.M.

Command Function

At this point I would like to Ctrl-Alt-Delete everything in the world. Fuck this. Fuck all of this.

I understand that everything ends up flowing from me - I really do believe that I bring most of my stresses and worries unto myself, and that most of my problems, insecurities, fears would be solved if I was just more open and communicative with people. But I am so tired of apologizing for being mad or sad and stressed out. Most conversations in which you introduce your own problems become these elaborate dances around the issue, and I find myself reluctant to bring things up because I don't want to burden someone with my own situations. Since, after all, in the big picture of things, I have it pretty good.

I caught this bizarre episode of the Oprah Winfrey a few nights back - it was the 1 am showing, I still have a job - and it had the girl from Growing Pains explaining that she had developed an eating disorder and been arrested for DUI because she had always been raised to be a "people pleaser." This made me laugh, in a move that really demonstrated that I am a callous person, but in a bizarre way I kind of understand. I am the kind who sometimes daydreams about getting into major arguments with friends and significant others - yelling, door-slamming brawls. Why do I do this? I don't want to fight with people. I just want to be liked. Maybe part of this is the wrenching process of staggering into adulthood: self-sufficiency, realizing people's limitations and weaknesses, understanding that because of your own activities and peccadilloes you cannot rely on hardly anyone.

But I don't want to live that way, I don't want to believe that about people.

Tonight I came home from the bar and walked to my freezer and took a swig from the bottle of Petron. Is that a good thing? Using tequila as a snack food?

Nobody read this, please, and if you do, let's not talk about it, hmm?

Swing and a miss

The other day I went to my office with the full intention of donating blood at the Red Cross drive on campus. The moment of charity makes me feel good, and I always enjoy cookies and juice. Really, I just do it for the food (which is true in so many cases). The first time I gave blood at the office, I felt physically drunk for the rest of the day - I ran into doorways with my shoulder, I tripped over my chair, I couldn't type very well. It was one of the best workdays I've ever had, so you can understand my eagerness to give blood again.

So that day I strolled into the room with a sense of ease, ready to watch my lifeblood make its unexpected journey from my veins to a surprisingly warm plastic bag. My blood type is B+ and they usually want my platelets, too. They always call me up a few weeks after the appointment and try to get me to make a special trip to offer my platelets, but I don't know. They're mine, you know what I mean? I filled out the questionnaire - "Have you had sex with a drug user? Do you currently have avian flu? Have you ever made love to an animal?" - and waited my turn. The guy was friendly. He asked, have you traveled outside the US in the last year? "Yes," I said firmly. "I went to Costa Rrrica." "When was this?" he asked. "Two months ago," I said, filling the first stirrings of apprehension. "Where did you go? Rural areas?" I nodded dumbly. "We rented a car..." I began. "I have a t-shirt from the mountain we climbed..."

"I'm sorry, we can't take you," he said. He made a series of violent slashes and circles on my form. "You can give blood again in a year." He handed my back my copy of the form. You don't even want my platelets? My next donation, it noted helpfully, would be in March 2006. "Thanks for trying, though," the guy said. I looked forlornly at the table of cookies and juices. "Yeah, good luck with everything," I replied. I stood and tried to walk out of the room with my head held high, feeling like the most recently dismissed contestant on a mediocre reality show - The Donor ("Who will be eliminated this week: Michael (25, education administrator), who stupidly went to Latin America mere months before trying to donate blood, or Kelli (19, model/bartender), who is showing the early signs of hepatitis?").

The shame, the shame.

Sprung part 2

I was walking down the street this afternoon, feeling good about life. It was a beautiful day - I went for a run, got some sun in the park, I was wearing shorts with no hesitation. I was walking down the block - nay, strutting down the block - and I noticed this really pretty girl going in my direction. Black, light-skinned, long hair, looking very lovely. Heads were turning as she walked by.

Being the ambitious walker I am, I loped past her and thought our my interaction was over, thankful enough for the visual rendezvous. I was half a block away when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around, removing the earphones from my head. It was the pretty girl! She said: "You have a really large bug on your back, and it's getting.."

She didn't finish the sentence but began brushing something from my back. There were three points of contact, and I remember this as distinctly as if it happened moments ago. The first point of contact was my upper back. The second point of contact was my lower back (at this point I was thankful I had exercised and felt moderately attractive. I don't THINK my back felt like a baggie full of pudding as she touched me.) And then, dear reader, the third point of contact: the pretty girl brushed her hand along my upper butt. Perhaps she was misled by the length of my shirt; perhaps she was trying to cop a feel. I'm not mad at her either way.

And let the record show that throughout the whole encounter, from the moment she spoke until after I said thank you and she continued her journey down 6th Avenue, causing men to follow her progress with laser-like precision and the primal determination only a hot spring afternoon can summon, I did not see any bug fly away from my person or tumble onto the sidewalk.

Sprung

There has been a change in New York City in the last few days, seismic in scale, profound in its implications. There is something in the air – a sense of possibility, a promise of warm evenings and river breezes, an invitation to lock eyes, a natural aphrodisiac. The women of New York have shed their peacoats and scarves and are walking the streets with their skirts a-blowin’ – look outside, you can see them now.

Welcome, shoulders! Hello, calves! Lithe bodies, supple curves, languid necks. Smooth skin the color of honey. Faces flushed with early spring heat.

After the winter, it’s good to see the flowers bloom, the buds emerge. Welcome back.

Jesus wouldn't do this

This weekend James and I were driving between Washington and New York, and I concluded that every rest stop in the nation, even the ones in Marin County or the Upper West Side, are red-state territory. You cannot wait in line at Cinnabon or use the keepsake penny-flattening machine without tripping over a stack of Left Behind books or a box of remainder WWJD lanyards.

This red state sensibility extends to the other major obstacle at our nation’s rest stops – and I know you know this, nimble blue-state travelers: Fat People! Wading through the travelmart, blocking numerous urinals with a single stance, plodding along the Sbarro’s line like Depression-era Okies in a bizarro alternative history in which struggling family farms produce complex sugars and corn syrups instead of actual vegetables. When did poverty starting making people fat and not skinny? I don’t know the answer, but I bet the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan would.

But anyways, my point is that we were sitting at a table enjoying a slice of pizza as I saw a porky little ten year-old girl (swaddled in layers and layers of sweat-clothes) drop her 32 oz soda all over the beverage station. Human traffic, which was already slow due to the wheezing and puffing of the supersized herd, ground to a halt. Feeling particulary spiteful, I said to James, “That fat girl spilled her Coke.”

He added in a bastardly tone: “And now she’s mourning the loss of it.” I’m going to hell, but at least I’ll have company.

Wrong time

This weekend I returned home to go to Denise’s memorial service. It was long – about three hours and change – and we sat on the floor for the Hindi proceedings. There was a lot of religious activity I couldn’t understand, as well as brief talks by her relatives and friends and colleagues, as well as a slideshow, a video clip from the local news, and a video of her in an African dance performance. During the slideshow they played U2’s Twin Horsemen of Sheer Sentimental Power, “With or Without You” and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For But I’ll Keep Looking Until One of Us Ends Up Crying.” Which ended up being me, as well as the other 100 or so people there. I defy anyone to watch a slideshow of a beautiful dead woman’s life and family and not cry. Maybe if they were playing “Baby Got Back” or something, but not “ISHFWILFBIKLUOUEUC.”

The memorial service did not bring closure as I would have hoped, but it wasn’t like picking a scab, either – it was more like stirring a pot. I don’t know what has bubbled up to the surface in this salty emotional jambalaya, but I feel as sad and angry and disconcerted as ever. I had been looking forward to this day as a chance to say goodbye and lay this tempest to rest, but in hindsight I recognize that this was a foolish goal.

That night I came home and changed the clocks before I went to bed – 11 to 12, 2 to 3, a jump in time that is erratic and inexplicable and in some ways unnecessary (just ask the good people of Indiana). Making this shift reminded me of how I wanted this process to be: leaping forward in one moment, a discrete change to produce a new and expected result. But this process (grieving, to name it) does not work like that.

Ironically, though, as easily and as suddenly as the clock moves ahead from 4 to 5, Denise slipped from life to death. In a way that does not seem right or logical or fair. And so today, as I looked at a variety of clocks reading an hour behind (in the car, in the café, in my apartment) I thought to myself, wrong time – as I was hungry or tired only to find it too early to eat, to sleep, to wake, to move, to confess, to explain, to forgive, it was the wrong time. As Denise has died and as the rest of us live in her wake it is still the wrong time.

Ten to eleven, eleven to twelve. Twelve to one.

Closure

You know, I’m not sure if I want to go the memorial on Saturday.

Really?

Yeah, I mean, I’ll go, I’m just not that excited about it. You know.

Huh.

See, I think the thing is that I’ve reached a point of closure in dealing with it for myself. And I know that going to the thing will kind of reopen a lot of that. I’m just not looking forward to that.

Ok, that’s fair. You don’t have to go, you know.

Oh, I know.

So why are you going?

Well, to pay my respects. And to support you, too.

You don’t have to do that if you’ve reached a point of closure. I know I’ve got your support.

I know, but still…

I mean, honestly, if it was your old girlfriend from high school, I wouldn’t go.

You wouldn’t go? Really?

I mean, she and I weren’t really—

You wouldn’t go?

I mean, I would go to support you, but otherwise no.

You just said you wouldn’t go.

No, I –

See, here’s the difference between you and me. I’m going to go to support you, even though it matters for nothing to you. Whereas if it was me, you, knowing how much I value all this symbolic support and shit, wouldn’t even go.

No, that’s not true at all.

It’s not all about you, you know. I also want to pay my respects to the family.

Well, that’s a reason to go then.

Yeah, it is. So I’m going.

Good.

But I still am not looking forward to it. I had closure.

Update from Monday

The reading on Monday went really well: a lively, hipsterish crowd, many talented people sharing their goods. Fortunately there were only two deliberate comedians, myself included, which made it easier. As I was reading, though, I found that spot where you can hear the audience laughing and you know you have them - you can see when to hold back and draw out a point and when to go in for the kill. When I finished I felt like I had won their goodwill and that I hadn't exhausted their patience with my weird, sort of self-deprecating autobiographical sketches. So it was a success. That night I felt electric, I came home and bounced around the apartment and couldn't fall asleep. I want to write more stuff but I feel like I am still processing a lot of things.

Really it just felt good to put myself out there again, to risk something by asking for a microphone and expecting other people to listen. But it is funny that this blog which began as my own private journal produced stuff which I read to an audience of strangers. Sometimes I look at this life of mine and can't believe it. In a good way, of course.

Glad tidings

Today was Easter, the end of that dismal season of meta-guilt, Lent (actually, I don't want to hate on Lent - I had a great one this year, thoughtful and revelatory, but still). It was a pleasant morning for the early spring. I was in church praying and the first thing that came into my head, honestly, was: Congratulations, Jesus, on making it to another Easter. You rose from the dead. Great.

I did not mean this in cynical way - believe me, the day I begin to pray ironically will be a sad day indeed. But as I prepared to recount my Easter blessings, as I began to offer praise and thanks on the most important day in my religion's spiritual journey, the best thought I could muster was: Congratulations, Jesus, on your 1975th Easter. As if I brought him a sheet cake or something. I might feel guilty about this if I didn't think Jesus probably would appreciate the laugh.

What wondrous love is this, oh my soul, oh my soul...

Hot date

Church Basement Reading Series
Monday, 28 March 2005
8pm
Micky's Blue Room,
171 Ave C between 10th and 11th
No cover, cheap drinks

My friend Jack is organizing this comedy/reading series and I'm participating in it. This is definitely not improv and definitely not like anything else I've done. I'm picking a few selections from this here blog and I'm writing some other stuff too, focusing on some of the issues that have been on my mind lately, and we'll see what percolates. I'm going for a mix of Carrot Top's prop comedy and Garrison Keillor's homespun midwestern wisdom. Hopefully we can all have a good laugh and even . . . learn a little something. About life, about love, about black music and white people. It's not a melting pot, people, it's a mosaic.

Hot dog, I'm excited! To anyone reading this, I hope you can make it.

Time is the space between me and you

I spent the weekend in Lexington, Virginia, visiting a law school. I had a nice time, but I won’t be going there. Too small, too insular. Too many white people. Too many girls with pearls. I don’t know. I have become more citified than I imagined. The place was so similar to Charlottesville – the same aesthetics, the same rhythms, the same climate – I felt myself shrinking back in time, I found myself back in my 22-year old head. I can’t go back there – it would not be a forward motion.

I was disappointed to not see my friends who live in Charlottesville – that would have been very nice. Instead, quality time in the hotel room. Actually, I was very disappointed.

At the law school I ran into one of my friends from high school (and college, incidentally) who I haven’t seen in about two years. It was great to see her and I was thankful for the company. I was sitting in a mind-numbing orientation session and I thought of my friend who recently passed away. I think my high school friend had known her, and I debated telling her about it all. I considered this knowledge as a weapon, a knife I could use to press against her flesh and draw some blood. But I didn’t tell her.

Another of my friends is having some rough times with illness in the family, and I received a message from him two days ago that he was in Los Angeles en route to someplace beyond this country. I am worried about him.

I want to write something funny, but I can’t quite find it. I will hopefully be participating in a reading/open mic event in a week’s time, and I need some material. I have been trying to convert some of this sadness and worry into humor on the website (you may have noticed it, it’s been a bit forced) but the translation of pain into comedy is not as easy as I would hope. I try to think of the lessons I am learning right now: valuing life and friendships? Staying in touch with the ones you love? Not letting rust gather on the relationships that have sustained you? And there is no way to present these in an ironic and entertaining way.

Tonight I was trying to provide a listening and supportive ear to my friend who is especially hurting from this death (sorry to be cryptic) and I didn’t know what to say. I found myself babbling these inanities and considering even stupider things that I didn’t say: “Do you want me to make you a mixtape of pop songs about death? Do you want to to write a letter and tie it to a rock and hurl it into the Hudson? Do you want me to make a collage of women you and I both find attractive, just in the hopes of brightening your day for one fucking second?”

I was looking in my books for some poetry or wisdom or spiritual water to help cope with death but I couldn’t find anything. But I did find this from W.S. Merwin on loss – it is short and poignant and nearly perfect, I think:

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

Goodnight, moon. That’s enough for today. Oh, and the best news of all: I’ve developed a twitch in my right eye! Awesome.

With a smile

Hi, welcome to Matucci’s, my name is Michael and I’ll be taking care of you tonight. While you’re looking at the menu, can I interest you in some fresh Bruschetta or a bowl of our Tuscan Minestrone?

No? Ok, that’s fine. I’ll be back in just a minute to take your drink orders – oh, okay. A Miller draft and an Arnold Palmer for the lady. May I see your license, sir? No, really. I’m not kidding. Great, thanks.

All right, would you like to hear about our specials tonight? We have a super fresh Chilean Sea Bass, as well as some – oh, you don’t? Ok, fair enough. I hear you loud and clear. Roger that. Ok, so we have one Quattro Stagione and a Penne a la Vodka with extra cream. Oh, and another Miller. All right, thanks very much. Let me know if you need anything. Name’s Michael.

Okay, we’ve got a hot plate here – the Quattro? Who had the Quattro? Of course. Here you are, sir. And the Penne for you, ma’am. Oh! Yet another Miller for the good gentleman. I’ll be back in two shakes with the refill. And more bread for the lady, gotcha.

All right guys, how is everything? I see you are making some progress on the Penne, ma’am. Yes, you are putting it away. Woo! I’ll be back with a Miller and another Arnie for you.

Hey folks, I thought I’d bring our dessert platter over here to share with you. Here we have our special homemade Tiramisu; this is our house Cannoli; and we have my favorite, our Sinfully Sweet Chocolatey Cake – it’s a doozy, let me tell you, ma’am! And we also have a selection of gelati and sorbet. Now would anybody like a coffee or a Mochaccino?

Wow, you are doing some damage to the Chocolatey Cake, huh? Man. Good thing I brought those extra napkins earlier! Oh, looks like it’s Miller time yet again. BRB!

All right, I am just going to put the check right over here. Do NOT feel pressure to pay this any time soon! Really! Now I will just remove this dessert plate if you will let me – no? Ok, super. We will leave the plate here. Thanks.

Sir? Sir? First of all, don’t worry about that spill – I’ll have Rodrigo mop the floor and sweep the glass up, and I’ll have another Miller sent over pronto. But I did want to let you know that there was an error processing your card. Yes, I did try cleaning the strip. And I actually did enter the numbers manually.

Sir, I wish I could use that card, but unfortunately we don’t accept Sam’s Club here.

Well, that is quite a lady you have on your hands, sir! Not only can she eat a great meal, but she can pay for it, too! A real gem. Looks like it’s your lucky day! Well, here are your leftovers – well, really just the pizza crust, that was the only thing left. I wrote the date on the lid so you’ll know. Ok, thank you both so very much, it was really a treat. Come back soon now. Buh-bye.

Farewell

My high school friend Denise passed away last night. Today I had been checking my email account and the webpage her family created incessantly to get some news. When I read that "We wish her farewell" my body jerked and I felt a rush inside my head.

I just feel tired and empty. I walked twenty blocks before catching the subway. I feel utterly listless, and selfish too. I can't believe this happened - it is all so wrong. This from U2 - it's all I can think of for her:

Beneath the noise
Below the din
I hear your voice
It's whispering
In science and in medicine
I was a stranger you took me in

The songs are in your eyes
I see them when you smile
I've had enough of romantic love
I'd give it up, yeah I'd give it up
For a miracle drug

A letter to my dentist

Dear Doctor,

Do you remember what happened the last time we met? I do. I remember it because you really hurt me, in physical and psychological ways. That is why this last appointment was so sweet. My successful teeth-cleaning session was not just a victory over plaque and gingivitis – dear Doctor, it was a victory over you.

I don’t think you appreciate the breadth and depth of my neuroses surrounding oral hygiene. I didn’t tell you about the hundreds – nay, thousands – of dental dreams I have endured over the years. Teeth falling out of my mouth like snowflakes, little shards of porcelain enamel collecting in my hand. In high school I wore braces for six months my junior year, and I wore a retainer religiously after that. I have been grinding my teeth since time immemorial, and since I turned 22, I have voluntarily hampered my romantic life by wearing a NightGuard™ mouthpiece every night to prevent the further erosion of my canines.

At our last appointment, it seemed as though you cleaned my teeth with a rusty chisel. Afterwards my mouth was a horrific stew of stale fillings and shredded gum tissue. After that appointment, in which you somehow uncovered two new cavities(!), my mouth bled every time I brushed my teeth for two entire months. I asked all of my friends how they brushed their teeth. How long? Do you floss before or after brushing? What about mouthwash? Am I a bad person? I would stare at myself in the mirror, the chirpy light blue toothpaste swirling with the blood from my gums, trying to convince myself that if I just brushed a little harder, my gums would develop the strength to not bleed.

This turned out to be wrong. But after that visit, Doctor, I adopted a strict, nearly Germanic regimen of oral hygiene. Two minutes of brushing, flossing (being careful to move along the sides of both teeth), and thirty seconds of Listerine (both in the morning and at night).

So when I arrived at the appointment to see you this week, I was already nervous. Then as you did your job, you said, “You grind your teeth,” as if you forgot that I had told you that at our first appointment. Maybe you should be more careful with what you write in your little folder! But I was wondering if you could feel the sharp rise in my blood pressure when you added, “Doing a good job of it.” “Of grinding my teeth?” I asked. “Oh yes,” you said. You said, “oh, yes.”

Then you finished up the exam, and I asked you how I was. I explained about my improved techniques, and you were completely unimpressed. You didn’t congratulate me, or ask me my secret, or even slip me an extra tube of Crest Rejuvenation Effects toothpaste. So I think I can say with confidence that I’ll be ending this professional relationship. I’m moving on to another dentist, and you can’t stop me.

And remember how I never let you take x-rays of my mouth? I’m putting out for the new dentist. He gets ’em. First time.

Sincerely,

M.M.

Things that happen to me that probably don't happen to other people:

1. Two days ago I was shaving along the side of my face, and due to some bizarre muscle spasm in my arm, the razor jumped and cut the inside of my ear. I ended up using tissues and q-tips to blot it.

2. This morning I was absently stirring my yogurt as I read the newspaper on the computer, and I somehow poked the end of the spoon up into my nose. Believe me, it was a surprise. Thus one side of my nose has been running all day.

Look forward to further additions to this list.

A fine balance

I found out today that one of my high school classmates, someone who happens to be an ex-girlfriend of one of my best friends, was in a horrifically bad car accident a few days ago in Alabama. Now she's in the hospital and they don't know what kind of brain damage she is facing. They won't know for a couple weeks, until the swelling starts to go down inside of her head. She is a beautiful and intelligent woman, and yet I am already thinking of her in the past tense.

On the subway coming home today there was a pregnant woman in a sundress - it snowed today, there was an ice storm - and before she could plead for money in front of a subway car full of strangers, she turned to face the doors to stifle her sobs. It was excruciating. I was listening to "Sometimes you can't make it on your own" by U2 and I nearly lost it. I gave her 12 cents, since I spent the rest of my change buying a coke earlier in the day.

And yet:

A few days ago my friends had a baby girl, Caroline Marie. They are a loving couple and two of the gentlest souls you will meet, and they are one of the best-looking pairs I know. This kid will grow up with love and family and a nice set of genes. I suppose she was born somewhere near the time when the car accident occurred.

How does any of this make sense? How does it balance out?

Pray for all of them, pray for all of us. I hope this feels better in the morning.

Part 2 of my confessions

I went to see Jill Scott at Radio City on saturday night. I had wanted to write about the concert - it was absolutely fucking brilliant - the venue was beautiful and she sang the hell out her oeuvre. I've been listening to her ever since with a new appreciation for her music, but it's too late to really sum up how I felt about it - the moment has passed. Suffice it to say that I loved it and felt very affirmed afterwards. Her whole message about love and patience, how to love somebody and be independent enough to rely on them and give yourself to them, really resonates with me. She is so wise. And she's looking aight for a big girl. HOLLA!

She talked about the importance of honesty, and while I acknowledge that these paragraphs seem to suggest that I've gotten my fallopian tubes in a twist, it made me think of those other great thinkers, St. Augustine and Usher, both of whose confessions have been on my mind lately (apologies to any enraged grammarians out there). The idea of making an act of confession, declaring publicly what is true, requires such courage and humility at the same time: passion and repentence, an acknowledgement of doubt and a testament of progress. I want to find this kind of fearlessness, the ability to face the truth and your own failings in the hopes of getting better, leaving behind the secrets and the lies. This is my March 7 resolution.

In other news, I got into another law school. For those of you playing the home game, the record now stands: 3-3-2-2-3.

Oeuvre and out.

For the record

Yesterday, L and I went to the Storycorps booth in Grand Central Station to record a forty minute conversation. James had given me this appointment as a birthday present – basically, you go in with somebody else and they record your conversation with some extremely high-quality equipment. You receive a CD with NPR-quality sound, and another copy is sent to the Library of Congress, where it is catalogued and shelved to begin collecting dust for the next thousand years or so.

Unfortunately my sick competitive spirit contaminated this experience. Our technician, whose name may have been Linda, told us she wasn’t going to say anything – she would just take notes of the questions that were asked, and maybe interject her own question if she found something interesting.

Well, with that, the gauntlet was thrown. The goals of this project – to capture a moment of our lives, to preserve our entangled personal histories for posterity – were trashed, and the focus became: say something Linda finds interesting.

Our conversations were wildly divergent, if a bit stilted. I summarily rejected some of L’s questions (“what’s the most played song on your iPod?”) but didn’t do any better, since I hadn’t come up with preliminary questions at all. Our conversation focused a lot on religion – more than I expected – so I would talk about church or Lent or St. Augustine’s Confessions, and then qualify my statements with a hearty laugh and: “I’m really not a weirdo, religiously speaking,” or, “Enough about redemption, did I tell you what’s on my iPod?”

It was an interesting experience. Linda, of course, never looked up from her clipboard to ask a question. She assured us we did great, though. “Really,” I said. “Great?” “You guys did great,” Linda replied through clenched teeth. L and I both agreed (this is part of the reason I love her) that we need to do it over again. Talk about childhood and noteworthy events, focus on that stuff more than a snapshot of where we happen to be one afternoon. Although, in all fairness, we hit some good topics: what we value, where we want to be in the future, our relationship, our families, our priorities. If nothing else, we mapped out a course that could be followed to some kind of happiness.

The score

I am ready to hear back from all of these law schools I applied to. Each day I approach my mailbox with trepidation - my psychosomatic responses are heightening to the point where I feel physically queasy as I unlock the mailbox. If this doesn't let up, in a week I'll be doubled over with stomach cramps or I'll begin sweating blood. Maybe I'll be paralyzed by violent tremors, or I'll get the thing my boss has where her fingers lose their color and ability to feel. Dead hands, I call them. None of these are good options.

Here is the situation as of right now: I applied to 12 law schools. I have been accepted by two (both viable options, thankfully). I have been summarily rejected by three (two were mildly disappointing, but why dwell on it; and one was completely expected. I don't blame them at all). I have been waitlisted by two (one was a slap in the face - I mean, a hyena could get into this law school, even if it didn't do any extracurricular activities; the other was a major triumph, as I was ready and willing to be rejected outright). Two schools that I deeply care about told me to wait until the spring for a decision, even when I applied early. So that leaves... let's see, three schools I have not heard from it all. So, in sum, my current record is: 2-3-2-2-3. This is sort of ok.

Each day I don't receive a message from law school increases the odds that I'll hear from one the next day. Yet the only things I receive in the mail are bills, magazines, the occasional postcard, and shit from charities who apparently used my donation to fund more mass mailings. But hope springs eternal - this could be the day!

(But it probably isn’t.)

Rat race

This morning I walked to the subway through the snow and slush, making my way around the men who were shoveling the sidewalks. As someone dragged a shovelful behind me, I thought that this was how an elephant in the circus must feel, parading around and having somebody else clean up its shit. I thought proudly, you either shovel snow or snow is shoveled for you. And look at me, I am somebody who doesn't have to shovel anything.

Today at work I've spent most of my time reserving rooms for events, order food to be catered, and updating records of old bills. I thought sadly, you either eat catered food or you cater it yourself. Me, I cater it myself. So maybe I should not be feeling so high and mighty over some dude shoveling the snow.

You either shovel snow or it's shoveled for you, you either order the food or eat the food, you either make the mess or you clean it up. Survival of the fittest.

Compare/contrast

I am currently reading two books: St. Augustine's "Confessions" and Alain de Botton's "The Romantic Movement." Both of these books take a certain amount of effort to read - Augustine demands patience and some thought, which is how I want my religious books to be. His lack of inhibition about sharing his debaucherous youth is actually pretty darn inspiring, and much more easy to grasp than the radiant lives of many other saints, the ones who never stray too far from their stained-glass perfection. Alain de Botton is more of a pretentious young jerk, writing about a romance between two people who shouldn't be together and who are too broken and insecure to be with anyone, really. He peppers the novel with pithy subheadings, charts, and digressions into some philosopher or another (although most of the works he opts to cite in footnotes were written in the two or three years just before his book was published - real impressive, Alain).

But there are common threads emerging in these two books: something about looking for the right things, or how having the wrong idea of love and devotion can lead you very far astray. How it all starts internally, and once you are grounded in yourself then you can begin relating to other people. I was really surprised to see some similarities in these books. But if the character's in the other book would read some Augustine, they would be much better off.

I know this is not an earth-shattering observation, and I realize that so far this compare/contrast is on its way to a solid B-, but it was on my mind. St. Augustine is blowing me away with some of his ideas. He wrote about God melting sin like ice, which reminded me of my dream the other day of water streaming out of my hands. And he wrote that "I had an instinct to keep myself safe and sound, to preserve my own being, which was a trace of the single unseen Being from which it was derived" (40). To me one of the clearest ways I think that our friendly neighborhood unseen Being makes itself known is through the desire of every creature on earth to keep living. Everyone has an innate desire to simply continue existing - and I don't think that could emerge from the ether via a few darwinian contortions.

Not that I'm endorsing intelligent design or anything. But I'm just saying. You think about it sometimes. Seacrest out.

25 reasons

1. My parents and family, the relationships we have
2. L
3. The friends who grace me with their company
4. Generally good health and an able body
5. Independence
6. A life I'm excited about - opportunities that have me raring to go
7. R&B music I love
8. Books that have changed the way I see things
9. The New Yorker
10. The Washington Post
11. NY Times Book Review
12. televisionwithoutpity.com
13. Dance hour
14. Chipotle
15. Fountain soda
16. Going to the movies
17. Going running
18. My Ipod
19. Polo shirts
20. Finding a church I like
21. Living in an apartment I love
22. Having a job I enjoy, with people who are smart, funny, compassionate
23. Being able to travel
24. Having amazing options for the next few years
25. Being able to appreciate a transitional moment, being able to acknowledge those fleeting periods in life when you take a look around and think, "Yes, this is it, right now, this is happiness, and I am thankful."

It's my birthday!

Women we love: Vivian Green

Tonight I saw R&B chanteuse Vivian Green sing at S.O.B.'s. Her first album came out a couple years ago and included two smoky mid-tempo numbers: "Emotional Rollercoaster," which I have to pronounce the way she does in the chorus, so it's actually "E-mo-tion-al Rollah-coastahh"; and "What is Love," a song that is blessed with perhaps the sultriest first 25 seconds in all of neo-soul. These were the only two songs of hers I know, but the concert was great. She only did about 10 songs, most from her new album, but she was charming and funny and self-deprecating. She's a great songwriter - she comes across as a full-blooded woman, not just a dramatically romantic silhouette - and you just know she and I would be close if I, you know, knew her.

The arrangements were good and my neck was doing its back-and-forth work the whole night. Several times I caught myself marvelling at how much I love this music - how I can't imagine being who I am without this music. Hardly any of my friends know Vivian Green or her style, and yet it taps into something that's deep within me. Anyways, it was an interesting crowd, too: mostly a buppie haven, many industry types (including the freakish Wendy Williams ["is she really on fire?" "I don't know, maybe just her weave"]), a few white people, an unexpected contingent of gay men. I suspect we were the only ones who paid full price for a ticket.

But I would do it again! I walked out happy and rejuvenated. Even if you listen to music all the time, it's great to occasionally devote all of your attention to it - to hear it in a communal environment, to feel the bass in your chest, to watch it being created and consumed and reciprocated. Encore, please.

Soup time

Yesterday, at lunch, a man in Milano Market yelled at me unreasonably. He was getting soup; I was trying to maneuver around him to look at the soup selection and weigh it against the sandwiches. I ended up saying "excuse me" three times in my efforts to get by him. He stopped and looked at me and said, "Jesus Christ, have some patience! Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me. Just wait!" I was taken aback. I'm not used to being reprimanded publicly. I sputtered something like, "thank you for your patience, sir." It was all I could do. Throughout the rest of the afternoon I thought of things I could have said - not witty or clever things, but things that would have dripped with sarcasm and malice. Like: "Ok, buddy, don't spill your soup," or "Sorry we can't all live on your soup time, friend." But none of these would have been funny or stinging. (Or would change the fact that the whole thing almost certainly affected me much more than it did him.) The rest of the day this made me kind of sad and definitely angry. I said 'excuse me'! And I meant it! Who yells at someone for well-intentioned politeness?

On my way out of the market, in an effort to restore some karmic balance to the dynamics of the white-collar lunch hour, I tried to be friendly to the cashier. "Hi, ha yew?" I said in my best Virginia drawl, a grin clamped over my mouth. She didn't reply. I said again, "hi, ha yew?" But she didn't reply, or make eye contact, during the entire transaction, speaking in uninterrupted spanish to her colleague across the way.

I don't think this happens in places that are not New York.

Not a compliment

As I walked down the street, feeling basically comfortable with my personal appearance, a man on the street said to me: "You look like Bill Gates. Are you related to him?"

I hope this was the start of some kind of a scam, rather than an accurate reflection of how I look to others. I spent the rest of my walk peering at my reflection in doorways and store windows, muttering Bill Gates' name and trying to figure out if the guy was serious or not. Am I doomed to a middle age of aviator-style glasses and overall jowliness? I would suspect so.

Incredible journey

I have been thinking a lot about Lent lately - I have had church on the brain. I struggled with deciding what to give up or what kind of a commitment to make for the season of Lent, a season which for me often only amplifies the less pleasant aspects of the religion. Faithful readers will recall that familiar question, 'What do I have to feel guilty about?,' and the Lenten journey for me often seems to add more and more layers of guilt. Along with regular bad feelings for not going to church, or not praying enough, or praying insufficiently, or whatever, I can now add guilty feelings for the Lenten promises I have abandoned and the vows I have swept aside.

But this is the wrong way to look at things, I realized with some help. If I am focusing too much on the self-flagellation aspect of the whole thing, I am missing the point and instead fixating on this idea of pain and self-denial for its own sake. This year I am trying to take a more sane route: going to church every sunday at 9 am. This is much more palatable when I have some good brunch plans to follow the mass, as I have had for the last two weeks. And it's been really nice so far, so I think I am making some progress.

Last night I had a dream, though, about Lent. I was going through some kind of crucible - it was like a test or an obstacle course or a walk through fire, to cleanse myself and get right. It was amazing, because I found that when I concentrated hard enough on purifying myself, streams of water would run from my fingers and all of the sin and guilt and darkness washed right out of me. It was the kind of tangible symbol I long for, yet know I will never receive. Ascension was the theme of this dream: as I kept moving forward, the water kept flowing from my hands, and I just rose higher and higher into something good.

It was a really wonderful dream. I am happy how this Lent is going. It's not about giving up soda or dessert, but it is about something. Oh, gratitude! Redemption! How sweet you are. Every day is another chance.

Wild kingdom

Last night I was brushing my teeth to go to bed at 2:20 (don't even get me started) - bleary-eyed and exhausted from doing nothing for three hours. I was reading and brushing when I noticed a flicker of movement on the wall and saw a hale and hearty cockroach nonchalantly strolling up by the shower. I just watched it for a minute, transfixed, and then banged the wall. It skittered away into a small crevice between the plastic shower unit and the wall. I was horrified. Should I buy those cockroach things that probably don't work? Should I put duct tape over the gap from which it came? I felt guilt about that idea, and imagined my horror when I would discover that the bastard had chewed through the tape or peeled it back with its devilish pincers.

I went to bed thoroughly skeeved out. Lying there I thought about cockroaches and their nighttime journeys and imagined them nearby until I could feel the psychosomatic pin-pricks along my legs and back - my head conjuring up ghostly bugs to brush my skin and turn me to dust. When I woke up this morning I felt unsettled, and my first coherent thought of the day, honestly, was:

What do I have to feel guilty about?

Ah, yes. The cockroach. As if this were some personal fault of mine. I think I am losing my mind.

Not quite professional

I went for a run today around Central Park. Brilliantly, I brought long workout clothes to the office this morning. Late in the afternoon I changed clothes in my office and tried to illicitly tiptoe out of the suite in my not-quite-flattering workout pants (the stretchy kind that are not technically leotards, but still make you check with the sales clerk to make sure they are, in fact, men's clothing) and about eight layers of t-shirts. But no, sir! I happily ran into three of my extremely female coworkers on my way out, leading me to wonder: can they see my underwear? are my bits and pieces apparent? do I have any awkward sweat stains?

Well, who would know, since none of the coworkers were too anxious to make eye contact with me. But these fears disappeared like Gatorade stains in a shag carpet as I began the run. I huffed the whole six miles and enjoyed the gates - I'm sorry, I mean The Gates - in the changing light. It seemed as though every hill, every crest, every angle, provided a new pretty view of the park. The setting sun, the wind, the light, made everything great.

I realize I'm turning into a gushy Christo disciple but damn it, I love the Gates. There were some hysterical letters in the Times today from indignant people sneering at the whole thing, since some people apparently hate things like "art" and "civic works" and "things that make other people happy." Relax, homeboy. For two weeks enjoy the damn thing - I love the barren February landscape as much as anyone, but this is a nice temporary change. Central Park is that girl who goes into the expensive store in the mall and tries on a nice dress just to see how it looks. Then you just sit back and tell her it looks great no matter what, and wait patiently until after she comes out in her normal clothes, because then you might get to go to Auntie Anne's for a celebratory pretzel in honor of your unflagging support and devotion. So in conclusion: you look great, Central Park! Very svelte! I'll take mine cinnamon sugar.

Turn the lights down, it's time to get romantic

Ooooh, Valentine's day. How I love thee. How I regret the commercial saturation of this vaguely christian, vaguely pagan holiday; yet how I succumb to your sweet temptations of swoony cards and sugar-laden confections. Be Mine. Call Me. I'm Yours. Eat Me. I shall!

Tonight L and I will have a romantic rendezvous in my apartment. I will light candles. I will carefully select compact discs from my library of nearly 40 compact discs in all. Some songs will be fast, more will be slow. Most will be sung by black people, Sade in particular. The candlelight will glint romantically off the tin foil wrapping of the burritos we shall eat. And we shall have a wonderful romantic and seductive evening, until 10 pm, when "CSI: Miami" comes on.

Can you feel the romance in the air?

"Your love is king, crown you with my heart. Your love is king, never need to part..."

Release the gates

This afternoon I took a stroll through Central Park to see Christo and Jeanne-Claude's new art project, The Gates. They've taken twenty-some miles of paths throughout the Park and put up these bright gates with folds of orange cloth hanging down, thousands of them standing sentinel for the next two weeks.

It was striking to be there. There were a lot of people in the park, more than I would expect for a cold unexceptional day in February, and people were walking about as aimlessly as one can in Manhattan. They were taking photos in seemingly random directions, trying to capture the curve of a path or a billowing gate or the effect of walking through a canopy of orange. It was wonderful to see these staid New Yorkers climbing up the muddy hillsides to find a better vantage point and clicking photos as relentlessly as the tourists. We were easy-going and generous with eye contact. One woman remarked that she would love to have one of these gates for her garden.

I read that they chose the orange color to capture the light and highlight the different trails and boulevards through the park. But it struck me that it is the same color as traffic cones and municipal signs, the color of civic government. To see this art project, 25 years in the making, and to see such a cross-section of the city come out to welcome it on a blustery weekend - it was a civic holiday, a new one, that we had never observed before.

"Read in order to live"

Today my wise and irreverent boss gave me my Christmas present - a small notebook labeled "Books to Check Out," fashioned to look like the card tucked in the back of library books. It has a few clever quotations about books and reading, and has space to list books you've loved, books you covet, etc. But I am using mine to list the books I've read for pleasure. I started keeping this list on loose leaf in December 2000, and I tell you, it is one of the best decisions I've made.

Tonight I transcribed the old list into the new book, and as I did it, all these memories of where and how I read books came flooding back: reading Dave Eggers in the backseat of a rented Malibu in California; William Styron at beach week in Myrtle Beach; Zadie Smith in Seattle; Italo Calvino in the bathroom of my apartment in Charlottesville; Colson Whitehead in Boulder; Michael Chabon at home; Alice Sebold on my first night in New York City; Graham Greene in Barcelona; Leo Tolstoy in Chipotle; Margaret Mitchell in Costa Rica.

Anyways, this made me really happy tonight, to consider where I've been and what I've read. Among the many identities I carry around with me (white, Catholic, male, etc) "Reader" is one that I have come to treasure. Here is the list of the most well-loved books I encountered in the last four years - the ones I devoured, the ones that devoured me. Chronologically:

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
Personal History by Katharine Graham
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Silence by Shusaku Endu
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Washington Square by Henry James
You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
A Problem From Hell by Samantha Power
The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
Why I Am A Catholic by Garry Wills
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
Random Family by Adrian Nicole Leblanc
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Known World by Edward P. Jones
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

.... To remember these books and recall how they affected me, how they changed the way I see the world! To me it's more than a list - it is a spell, an incantation. I am so thankful to be literate.

That title quotation is from Gustave Flaubert, 1867 (as if I needed to tell you that!).

"Un-put-downable!"

This morning in the shower I was thinking about "The Woodsman," a movie I didn't particularly enjoy, but one that made me wonder: what would it take for me to threaten violence against someone - to threaten to kill someone and really mean it?

Then I thought about writing, and how I want to write a story where things really happen, and the pieces started coming together. I want to write a tale wherein the protagonist's sibling had been victimized by the bad guy, but the bad guy was acquitted in the trial. Afterwards the protagonist told the bad guy, in front of witnesses, that if he ever came near the beloved sibling again, he (the protagonist) would kill him (the bad guy).

Well, lo and behold, a few months later the bad guy is murdered. And all signs point to our beloved protagonist, who happens to be innocent. As the merciless hand of the law tightens around him, he must prove his innocence and catch the real killer (who is none other than the bad guy's own sibling! Can you see the parallels? Can you?)

This would be a thrilling story of suspense, complete with: unexpected twists! A thoughtful reflection on the nature of family and sibling relationships! Buxom women! Exotic locales! And a sex scene that will curl your toes.

We'll see if anything comes of this. Not the most original idea ever, but it caught my attention today. One sibling's name would be Rory. There would be a woman named Linda involved. But so far that's all I've got. Don't steal my idea, por favor.

Be mine, valentine

Today I received word from Con Ed that my old account at the old apartment had been closed. They said:

"As requested, we closed this Con Edison account. This is the final bill for service through Feb 1. We enjoy servicing good customers and especially appreciate that the payments were kept up to date."

Awwwww, Con Edison. Thank you very much. I enjoyed being serviced.

A good man: Thomas L. Friedman

I saw Thomas L. Friedman, NY Times columnist I agree with 95% of the time, on Tim Russert's CNBC dog-and-pony show on Saturday. Man, I love this guy. He's one of those people who says the name of the person he's talking to very frequently, and he's got this condescending tone to his voice, like he's trying to explain the differences between Sunni and Shiite Islam to a sheepdog. He uses all of these godawful rhetorical questions and hypothetical monologues, newspaper headlines, etc. But he can get away with it, because he's usually right.

On Saturday Tim Russert sat back and let Big Tom basically recite his Sunday column - about how we should reduce the awards we offer for the heads of Osama and Zarqawi instead of increase them, how we should let the moderate Arabs catch them themselves, how we should use the reward money to create scholarships for muslim students to study in the US. The best part was when he stated that we should reduce the award to a bag of pistachios and an autographed picture of W. [Note that in the column, he said the award should be a lone pistachio - I guess the klieg lights inspired a fit of generosity.] I love it! A bag of pistachios! Can I donate the bag? Where do I send it? Big Tom, can you hear me?

Back home

I went home this weekend and had a very nice time with my parents. It's good to see them doing so well in the empty-nest phase of life. They're both in great shape, they're busy, they are social. Their newest project is researching possible retirement spots - this week they're headed down to beautiful Sarasota to scope it out. I have mixed feelings about this: I don't want them to leave our familial manse in McLean, yet on the other hand, if they go, I don't have to feel any guilt about not living in northern Virginia. Every time I go back I grow to resent 66 a little bit more. But the parents are great.

We went to a "Superbowl" "party" at my great-aunt's house last night. Man, was that a doozy. My 13 year-old cousin and I were the youngest people there by a good generation or two. But it was kind of fun, in that I felt like I was scoring "good son" points. My mom gave me a nice compliment, too - she said I always make people feel good about themselves. That was very touching to hear.

Oh man, my family! I love them so much. It's weird to write about them here in this acidic, caustic, sarcastic, poetic reflection of gritty Manhattan life. But I really love going back to see them, I love the fact that the four of us are all in pretty good places in our lives as individuals and as the group. The transition back is always odd - riding a subway with the professional, the old, the indigent, the lost, the hopeful. Seeing a turd on the stairways to the subway. But these are the choices we make, I guess, and it just helps you realize how good you have it.

An announcement

Ok, so here's my thinking on social security, after half-heartedly watching (and meticulously reading about) the State of the Union last night. There is definitely a problem coming up, and the system, as it is now, is unsustainable. Bush's idea of giving people the option of diverting some of their social security money into private accounts seems reasonable to me - no one is forcing a change, and I feel comfortable assuming that the market will continue to rise overall for the next many decades. (I say this without understanding the fine print - Paul Krugman, please wipe the flecks of spittle from the corners of your mouth and explain this to me.)

The problem is, there's no real debate on the issue because the Democrats don't seem to acknowledge that there's a problem. All of this sniping over when the crisis will actually occur (2018! 2042! Hike!) just begs the question. I want the Dems to be a real opposition party, not this sniveling posse of haters I currently see. Like those two dudes on In Living Color: Iraq War? HATED IT. Social Security Reform? HATED IT. Well, give me some alternatives then - we all see the problem, and Bush is proposing one solution which many people think is idiotic. So what’s your idea?

It was very shrewd of Bush to mention social security reform ideas from prominent Democrats through the decades. It only highlights the current (dare I say it? OK, I will) impotence of the Democratic party. They need to acknowledge that, for now, Bush is setting the agenda, and they need to start being constructive. I saw Harry Reid giving the rebuttal last night and it was depressing, seeing him try to chuckle about Bush's foolishness when, in fact, ho ho ho, there's no problem at all, heh heh heh.

Maybe there's a parallel here to Chicken Little, but I can't quite see it. Maybe Bush is running around saying the sky is falling, and the Dems are standing calmly, noting that the sky isn't scheduled to fall for another ten minutes, so everything is fine. What the hell happens then?

There's only one thing to do: I'm running for Congress.

A new month

I wanted to write a poem about February because it's such a great month, but the only words I could think of that rhyme with February were: apothecary, dromedary, corollary, honorary, temporary, statuary. This was not helpful. May would have been easier.

I find the pleasures of february
Fleeting, brutal, temporary:

Slush alongside sloppy streets
Chapped lips and other wintry treats

Despite short days and frozen slopes
Like the white bright sun there is yet hope:

Winter doldrums are just a myth
Especially on the twenty-fifth.