Damn Flannel Sheets

Ah, the joy of being back home and in bed. On vacation. Still. Joy!

Oh flannel sheets you sucked me in with your warm fuzzy goodness and kept me from taking a great photograph. The morning sunlight streamed through our bedroom patio doors and illuminated a wicker laundry basket and an armoir. It sounds simple enough, but the lighting was just right on the wood and on the wicker and the shadows were varied and there were these nice highlights coming off the wicker...and it was a great b&w photo opportunity not ten feet away.

But the damn sheets. They felt soooo good. And the light, well she moved incredibly fast and like a stealthy center slipped away...

If I'm lucky, the light will be the same tomorrow morning and I'll have another chance at it.

Nebraska - Land Ho!

A quick update:

The homes around here in Columbus, NE remind me a lot of the small towns in PA -- towns like Jessup, Throop and German. Little towns. Old towns. Little old little towns with small houses.

And mini-power lines looking clothes lines.

So, it's a lot like PA here in NE, except for the fact that you just need to drive a few minutes and you are outside of town in into, quite literally, the great wide open. And it's customary to wave at the people you pass on the local roads.

The past few days have gone well with no repeats of the meth-lab visit mentioned last post. Lots of food, lots of visiting and lots of picture taking.

I went out earlier today and shot two rolls of film -- mostly panoramas of the fields right off 81 on the way to York, NE I think. Eventually I worked my way back into Columbus and took some shots along the Platte. The people were very friendly. More than a few stopped to chat with me or comment or just say hi. It's true, people are friendlier out here.

Merry Christmas - Nebraska Style

Holy Crap I'm in Nebraska. It's wider and flatter than I ever thought it would be. The land just goes and goes and goes. My wide angle lens doesn't even come close to covering the horizon.

It's my first Christmas away from my family, so it's pretty odd. The thing is though, I've been soooo friggen busy from Thanksgiving till now that I've hardly had a moment to contemplate it. Yet here I am. In Nebraska. On Christmas. Who'd of thunk it.

I am not freezing -- so that's a plus and an unexpected surprise. It's been really mild.

So far it's been a great time just visiting with everyone and getting to know Clarisa's side of the family a bit better. Today we drove out to an antique store in a town called Humphrey (population not a lot) and caught a bite to eat at a local watering hole. On the way back Clarisa and her aunt, Betty, decided they wanted to stop and check out an abandoned church on the side of the road. As soon as they got out of our rental, a guy came out of a garage type building next to the church and walked over to them. At the same point in time I see a Mexican looking guy come out of the side of the church with big white plastic buckets and the white guy waves the Mexican guy back in. Basically he wanted the curious ladies gone and would not answer any questions they had, at least not honestly. While this was going on, I was in the car getting ready to jump into the front seat and use a Ford Escape in a very literal method because it seemed that we had stumbled onto a place that had a bad vibe going on. Meth Lab? Chop shop? Hard to say - but the ladies are not allowed to be getting all curious for the rest our stay out here.

Welcome to your shootout is not really what I'm going for on this trip. LOL.

Anyhoo, tomorrow will be all about going out to shoot some film in the morning. I'm armed with a plethora of filters and lots of film so there should be more than a few pictures worth printing by the time I'm through here.

Well Merry Christmas, everyone. Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men.

Flu Shot

For the first time since I got a barrage of shots from the US military I actually got a flu shot, but only because it was free and scheduled about 150 feet from my desk, not because in the past few years I've had a penchant for getting sick around the holidays. Certainly not because I missed Christmas two years in a row because I was hacking up a lung. Nah. Free and easy.

Of course I tried about a month ago to get a flu shot. A Doctor at our company thought he had the inside scoop on a free shot clinic. It turns out the info was given to him and ALL of NYC via Channel 4 News. To say the least, the line was looooong and slow and I gave up after waiting 2+ hours with 700 people still in the queue ahead of me. There were a lot of reporters there and a lot of photographers too

About the shot though -- it got me thinking to how horrible a shot used to be when I was a kid. It fucking HURT. I would cry before, during and after the bad man in the white coat worked his cruel medicine on me. My mother would bribe me with McDonalds afterwards, or sometimes tell me I would not be getting a shot and then distract me at the Doctor's office while someone snuck up on me and jabbed me. Oh the betrayal.

These days it doesn't hurt at all to get a shot or give blood. It's really quite painless. But then I got to thinking -- maybe it still hurts just as much as it did, but all the bullshit and pain life has dished out has made the prick of a shot pale in comparison.

You get older. You get tougher. Like my drill sergeants were fond of saying, "Pain is just weakness leaving the body!"

Hoohrah.

Mister Smarty Pants

I don't give myself enough credit. Usually. This time around I'm all about the self-congratulatory arm-breaking pat on the back.

But first, naturally, a little back story.

Six years ago or so I left the horrid world of retail for the world of IT. Well, not exactly. I just left that world not knowing where the hell I would wind up. I just knew that my life would be infinitely better not selling you the extra insurance or telling you where to find the Beano or writing a rain check for the toilet paper that was on sale and plundered in three days. And, I was pretty sure I did not ever ever ever want to drive you home after you pulled into my lot five minutes after I'd closed the office down. In the rain. On a holiday weekend.

Do I convey my derision or shall I go on? I HATED all that.

Moving along then...

I quit Enterprise Rent A Car and went to temp for a coven of witches that ran a personnel agency. The three Macbeth girls pimped me out here and there and eventually I wound up at Texaco's Corporate Planning and Economics Department on a maternity replacement gig for a departmental admin. The duties were light - type, file, book travel arrangements, stock the copier etc etc. It paid just as much as Enterprise and no one yelled at me and the phone stayed blissfully quiet.

In the meantime I decided that there might be something to the whole tech boom deal and started taking some Microsoft Networking courses at the Westchester Business Institute so I could get in on the action. What a rip off that place was. Soooo freaking expensive and the teachers were morons. Lets put it this way -- the head of the networking program had not ever taken one MS networking test or ever worked in networking at all. She had though, worked with some people that might have at one time or another clicked on Administrative Tools. Ultimately the courses were pretty useless, but they did do one thing.

They got me noticed at Texaco.

One day a guy named Ed Feinberg wandered by my desk and commented that he'd heard I liked computers and was taking some classes. He asked me if I would like to build the department's site for the Texaco global intranet. Recognizing opportunity I said yes, even though I had just about no idea how to go about it. Ed threw a copy of Publisher '98 at me and told me to have at it. Eventually I moved onto Frontpage (I know I know, the shame) and even got a Microsoft Certified Professional certification for it. (So very impressive, I know)

There I was though, now the official web guy for Texaco's CP&E. I bought some books and took some notes and met with the one of the Directors, Drew Overpeck. Drew brings up MSNBC and a few other large traffic sites and says that's what he wants. Drew could certainly dream big. I nodded and smiled like a foreigner and left his office terrified. How over my head was I?

Well, as luck would have it, hardly anyone at Texaco new anything about web design. Those who claimed they did had actually just outsourced it. The sites that were built in house were hardly professional so it seemed I could really do no wrong. They wanted me to learn.

Did I mention that this was better than washing cars in the summer in a suit?

Eventually, they brought in another guy that wound up being a super close friend, mentor and confidant, Mister Dennis Derobertis. He was brought in to help out with the CSS, whatever the hell that was. They meant ASP, but they told me CSS. Together we wound up building and managing the flagship site for Texaco's intranet.

Two and a half years or so of Shangri La at Texaco came screeching to a halt when Texaco got bought by Chevron and we were cut loose. Man did it suck leaving that place. Nine months of unemployment later, I landed a gig at Westcon, courtesy of one Ambrose Buldo, Director of E-Commerce. There I learned all about JD Edwards, E-Commerce, Biz-Talk, XML, EDI, Citrix and a host of other crap. I had a lot of leeway in my job. The people at Westcon were great and I really loved it there but I was being really underpaid. So I left the 'Con and my five minute commute for Healthology and a wheel-barrel full of money to become their QA guy, though I really did not have any QA experience.

Let me say this, QA is goddamn tough. Especially when you have no clue, and the department has no clue. So I do what I can with that and try to make up for it with my systems knowledge and sneak in some SQL Server Database stuff.

Ok, so that's the backstory.

Given the preceding, one might think I think I am quite tech savvy, that I am just the bees knees when it comes to IT. The truth is I have really struggled to define myself in that arena. I tend to look at myself as a generalist - someone with a wide range of skills but no real specialty. A utility player, or as I sometimes referred to myself, "Human Middleware". I've been working to change that but the only thing that seems to stick is database performance tuning. Along the way I've become a bit of Jr. DBA, gathering lots of knowledge but without a place to apply it.

Well, my current boss has let me run with it and I just came up with two fixes, one at the application and one at the database level that have had a huge positive impact on our application performance. We freed up at least a days worth of database processing time with fixes. The apps fly now and there is room to grow.

My solution. Me. The English Lit major, ex-helicopter pilot, ex-retail guy, ex-insurance guy, ex-real estate guy, ex-art room guy and the Brett Weston, Ansel Adams wannabe. Doing DBA shit.

Color me, for the first time in my life maybe, impressed. With me. I got a lot going on.

Imagine there's no countries,
It isnt hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the peopleliving life in peace...

You made the mistake of making eye contact.

For the most part I'm always on the train to and from the city at peak hours and for the most part the trains are packed with commuters that spend their time with the MTA sticking to themselves. People sleep, read, fiddle with gadgets, listen to tunes. But its all very quiet. Loud cell phone talkers are often shooshed or told to shut up. Hey man, there are rules to this commute thing. Set a moving pick if you can while getting on the train to assure a seat. If you are not ballsy enough to ask someone to move over, you will wind up standing. Do not be loud and do not make eye contact with a drunk.

Earlier this week I was on a later train than usual. Still peak, but late so the cars weren't so crowded and getting a seat was a snap. Lo and behold a stench of stale beer and cigarettes makes me look up to see a wasted blue collar guy coming down the aisle. He sits right across from me and dammit I made eye contact. Just the briefest of of acknowledgements but contact nonetheless. I became this guys buddy for the ride all the way to White Plains. Any comments or complaints that my new friend had were floated right my way with the finest mix of aromas. Ah. Halitosis. Stale beer. Nicotine. Gotta love it. It's like college!

So there we are, me staring straight ahead and this guy is looking for an opening - a little conversational trinket. Shortly his trinket arrives in the form of a large sweaty balding older and nervous guy that's just passed 5 open seats and stops in front of my drunken commuting associate and gives him one of these:

"Excuse Me.' he said when he really meant, "Move your ass for me now. This seat has spoken to me like the dog spoke to The Son of Sam and I must sit here."

Other people might have moved over. The guy had fulfilled a commuting rule and had the ballz to ask for the seat. Thing is though, my drunken canvas coat with leather collar friend was not a commuter and did not realize the rules. Instead he sat there and stared at the swarthy accoster in a manner that conveyed bafflement. Though drunk, his common sense and inscrutable trailer park logic was still in full effect. The Blue Collar drunk guy said,

"You have to be fucking kidding me. There are like a ton of empty seats everywhere and you want to sit HERE?"

And with that observation the swarthy man muttered in a small voice, "I guess that's true." and moved on.

Then the blue collar guy had me. Just as the swarthy man cleared the space between us he looks at me and says "Can you believe that shit? That dumbass wanted to sit here. HERE! With all these empty seats."

"Yup" I said.

"Really, that guy wanted to sit here. Right here in this seat. Wanted me to get up. Wanted me to get up and fucking move so he could sit here." He gestures to the vacant seats and continues "Look at all the seats....Etc etc....

"Yup."

After a few rounds of that sort of conversation my erstwhile traveling companion got caught up in a phone call and was polite enough to take his conversation to the train car's vestibule and well out of earshot. Maybe it was politeness, maybe it was to make a drug deal or place bet. Who the hell knows, I was just glad to not have to hear it (or smell it).

In the meantime, the train stops at 125th and a woman and a young girl get on the train and sit right behind me. She starts reading to the kid about tigers and lions and stating lots of lion and tiger facts. Then she moves onto some whacked out geography lesson and quizzing the kid about what the capitol of Sri Lanka is and asking the kid if the kid was Sri Lankan. Rinse and repeat for Nepal, Tibet, Thailand and a host of other countries. I'm perplexed because the kid has no idea what the hell a tiger or a lion is but is supposed to know that Katmandu is the capital of Nepal.

Re-enter the drunk guy who has since returned to his seat and is downing a third Bud Tallboy. He's been listening too. He looks back at the woman in the seat behind me and says:

"I don't mean to interrupt, but not for nothing, but since you are being so loud I couldn't help but hear you. How about this though...how how about what the capitol of this state (finger pokes seat). This state (poke poke) right here. What about this country. How about learning about this country FIRST before that crap."

Of course awkward silence follows and of course he looks to me for support. "Am I right?"

I wanted to turn around myself and say that the guy was right and she was being loud and shut up and teach the kid about America first and if you aren't with us you are with the terrorists and dammit the kid doesn't know what a lion is yet.

However, diplomatic me could only come up with, "Geography sure is useful." and stare out the window some more. The guy just continued to needle the lady with questions like "What's the largest lake in New York? What's the capitol of this state?" while she sat in silence. This just egged him on though. "What you don't know? Really?" and he would come back to me and tell me she didn't know. Then he would ask me how fucked up it was that she did not know.

And so it went till we hit White Plains and I got off and left the conflict / quiz show.

Decisions Decisions

What a pain in the ass it is to work on a print all class only to have a piece of lint show up on the final one right as class ends. Grrr.

The class will end soon and I need to pick another class or decide how to otherwise proceed with photography as a hobby / possible part time business. The thing is, as usual, I am betwixt and between what to choose. More black and white? Go for color? Go for digital? Take a portrait class? Everything interests me.

Hell, for the past few days I've flipped through the SVA Continuing Ed. course catalogue and found that the classes in advertising, in film editing and yes, even voice over announcing appeal to me as well. I can make a case for any of them. It frustrates me. I always feel that the one true calling is out there and that I'm missing it while I spin my wheels with whatever my current interest is. Right now it's photography and because I'm not Ansel Adams, Annie Leibowitz or Helmut Newton yet, my mind races.

The sensible thing to do would be to just sign up for the next class in B&W, see how it goes and in the meantime go out and actually get a good 35mm SLR, a digital SLR, a new PC with Photoshop and some other basic equipment like lenses and filters and such and just shoot my ass off , keep learning and give myself some credit.

As coincidence would have it, my cousin Dina, a long time photo-retouch artist, has started a side business of her own doing candid baby, toddler and kid photography. I'm not sure what kind of portent that is, but she's really talented and I'm sure she'll do well with it. Right now the name of her website escapes me -- I'll post it later. Another buddy, Joel Kraft is the proud owner and principal photographer of Catskill Stills (www.catskillstills.com). The good thing is at least I have some people doing it that I can talk shop with.

If I'm not a voice over announcer. :-)

A Thanksgiving Catch Up

Man, what a week.

I caught a cold, got blamed for 20K in ad revenue being lost, prepared for and cooked Thanksgiving Dinner for the Kitcher side of The Family, saw the new Harry Potter flick in IMAX, shot three rolls of color film for a black and white photography class (and even got stopped by the police while doing it) and again found the deep and primal satisfaction of triangle choking someone. Lastly I shit fire all last night.

As far as work goes, generally things tend to shake out like this -- something goes wrong that I have no idea about and is someone else's fault or mistake and then get blamed for it. For a while I think I am about to get canned for it and then the powers that be seem to realize that there are larger issues at play and the issue, while not forgotten, gets dropped. Until the next thing happens. My hope is that I can get some enterprise level monitoring tools going that will help alleviate this type of crapola from hitting multiple fans and be a nice feather in my technical cap. Of course, this is something I want to do, but is at odds with the part of me that wants out of technology and into something more creative like...well like photography.

Speaking of which, my B&W class has me shooting color film for an assignment. The assignment is to take shots "looking down". We then bring in the shots and the Prof. and the rest of the class cull through the roll or two to arrive at 3 to 5 keepers. The idea is to get exposed to editing your work and to experience the freedom of operating within a constraint. I shot one roll earlier in the week and two rolls yesterday. I thought of driving around but settled on a walk down the rail trail right near my condo. On the way to the trail I stopped where Rt. 119 crosses the Saw Mill River to take a couple of shots looking down from the bridge. About two minutes into me setting up I hear the whoop whoop whoop of a cop car right behind me but don't pay any attention, figuring it must be them pulling someone over. Then I hear "Hi there." over the loudspeaker and this gets my attention. There is indeed a cop right there behind me and she kindly and curiously asks me -- "Uh whatcha doing there?" I explain its for an assignment at school and she asked what school and I just gave her my license. Of course, these days the police get a little antsy when they see some guy taking pictures of a water way, bridge, and transcontinental AT&T cable all at once. In a way I was glad she stopped me and asked all the right questions. Nice to know people are out there paying attention.

Of course, I had to be spotted when all this went down. It turns out Clarisa and my cousin Jody drove by as I was being questioned / detained. We joked later about just how great it would have been if they would have stopped and said something like, "Oh man are we glad you stopped this guy-- he's been creeping us out for the past few weeks. He's been at every bridge."

Overall though, the class is going very well. Of course, I tend to think my shots are kind of inferior but that's just me being insecure and competitive. Honestly, my shots are not the best in the class, but then again, the guy I am comparing myself to seems to have a lot more time on his hands and more experience and better access to things to shoot. Me, I'm older, I'm working, and I'm inexperienced. The only way I'll ever get better is to keep shooting and keep learning, especially from the people that are more experienced. The course catalogue for next semester arrived - I think I'll take another class, if not two.

As for Thanksgiving - it really went off without a hitch. Well, there was the part where the roasted garlic paste I made for the roasted garlic mashed potatoes turned into a bit of a garlic cement but that was no big deal deal - I just made plain 'ol perfect mashed potatoes instead. The turkey was brined over night for 8 hours in a nice mix of salt and brown sugar and cinnamon sticks and then stuffed with some lemon halves, rosemary, thyme and cinnamon sticks. No basting. No stuffing inside the bird. Instead I fired that bird of at 500 degrees for 30 minutes to brown it and then took it out, covered the breast with a triangle of tinfoil, stuck a meat thermometer in it and then put it back in at 350 degrees until the breast temperature hit 161. Man, it all worked just like Alton Brown said it would.

Later on that night I chatted with my cousin Will for a bit about BJJ. He's a big pro wrestling fan but I really thought he should see what BJJ is about. So we went into the bedroom and I showed him a few basics of keeping someone in guard and how to triangle them. Of course the lesson turned into a little bit of a match and family started rolling in to see what was going on. My dad laughed his ass off and my aunts joked that sort of activity between family members was illegal. And lets face it, wrapping your legs around another guy takes a ton of confidence. BJJ is not something for those who shy away from close physical contact. Its fun as hell though and it was fun to triangle young Will and show him a kimura and americana and a guillotine. Fun fun fun.

Not everything is fun though.

In a little while I'll get ready to go to Madeline Rizzo's wake. I'll shower, shave, press my shirt and put my suit and tie on and drive down to New Jersey to pay my respects and show my support for the Rizzo's. It's what we do. It's what we must do.

This past weekend I was down in Brooklyn for my 2nd cousin's baptism. It was at St. Anselms (at 82nd and 4th I think) - the same church I have been to for at least one funeral. Since I am not a very lapsed Catholic and a semi quasi Buddhist secularist, I generally do not go to church unless I have to. As of late, its been for funerals and for memorial masses. So, to say the least it's a lot more fun to go to a Baptism.

When and where I grew up it was a singular affair - just one family and the priest. Like for my sister's baptism, I remember the majority of the family hanging out back at the house at Van Siclen Drive and partying while the immediate family and god-parents went to the church. These days it seems that the baptisms are always held en masse. At some point the church must have decided on a Wal Mart type discount for volume head-dip pricing plan. It's efficient, but man, it sure ain't personal at all. I am not a fan.

So there I am at St. Anselms with my family gathered in one pew, waiting for things to get started and quietly talking over the sounds of crying babies and screaming kids when all of a sudden, the priest in charge, or POC, starts yelling:

I am starting to lose my patience with you! You are in a house of GOD! You are NOT in your living room!

Well, I thought, that's an interesting way to start things off. The guy went on a bit more and basically came off as a dick. He went on to insult Mets fans - nothing I disagree with generally, but a baptism hardly seems like the ideal venue. I don't even recall the context because I was too busy thinking, "This guy is a diiiiiiick." He barked some orders about how everything was going to go down and how we better listen or else.

Man, what drama. I guess I am spoiled though. One of our Fordham crew, Russ Murray is now Father Russel Murray, OFM; aka Father Russ and soon to be Dr. Father Russ as his PhD is about complete. Russ can give a mass. Now he's not a parish guy so he's not dealing with people all the time and getting more and more irritated as, evidently, this St. Anselms guy had. Even if he was, I don't see him ever behaving like that. I certainly hope not! Anyhow, the bottom line is that Russ is a pleasure to listen to and the type of guy that people just warm to. He really truly and undoubtedly in love with God and it shows. This other guy -- he seemed more like a pissed off teacher or principal.

The priest not withstanding, Christopher Blaze got baptized and we all went back to my aunt Eileen's for a post baptismal bash. We had Christopher's father there and his family, the Kitcher clan and a host of Carberry's that always seem familiar but that I've never really gotten to know. And of course, there was Gregory. Ah Gregory who brought a bathtub's worth of vodka jello shots. Gregory who fired up the twenty somethings and turned on the music and generally got things grooving. If you have a party and you need to get it going right, Greg is always going to be your man.

I was a bit sick with a sinus cold so I shied away from drinking too much and chose to hang out with my cousin Kerry and get to know one of my other little second cousins - Dennis. I even managed to get a couple nice B&W shots of them outside the apartment. The negatives are developed and I should be printing them next week. My relationship with Kerry is one where we go a long time without seeing each other or hearing from each other but we always seem to be able to pick it up again like we never missed a beat. I dig that. I had that with my sister. Hopefully she comes over for Thanksgiving with Jose and her kids - Dylan, Devon and Dennis. Sure the cats will be traumatized but what the hell.

Work continues to be a bit of a drag. The general thing of it is this - things go wrong and I get blamed because my title says I am the QA guy. Somehow I guess that means everyone else can abdicate responsibility for their work. It's not a lot of fun especially when I'm doing as much as I can with what I've got, which is not a lot. Tomrrow I will be speaking with some upper managent types about recent errors and I imagine I will have to defend myself and recommend some changes.

We shall see.

Spider-Man

When I was a kid, back when Santa Claus was still around and the World was unknown, back when Pop-Pop used to set me up in my little kids chair with a back that folded down into a tray. Back when I used to sit there and on a Saturday morning and eat PB&J and guzzle Pepsi while Abbott and Costello movies played on the T.V. Back then. Back then I used to look for Spider-Man swinging through the streets of Manhattan. I never saw him.

In a small way, I'm still disappointed about that.

For Sfumato

Last Monday I got out of my photography class at SVA late and made it to a train. I finally checked my calls and messages and saw that Sfumato had called but not left a message.

I was happy to see he tried to call me. Maybe he wanted to get together? Maybe chat about the Ultimate Fighter II matches? Go for a run? A hike? With those happy thoughts in mind I called him back.

When he answered he asked if I had talked to anyone and I told him no. Then he told me the reason he called - to tell me he was having the type of day I had just over a year ago. That was all he had to say for me to know that this was not the conversation I wanted to have and that my good friend was inconsolable. My first thought was that something had happened to one, some or all of the triplets or Debbie or her and the triplets. The news was not about them though.

Joe's parents were in a car accident in Virginia on Monday of last week. They were on their way to Florida for a vacation. Joe's father was severely injured but is recovering and has and will, from what I understand, undergo reconstructive surgery.

Joe's mom died in the crash.

I don't know the details of it. That's up to Joe to tell me if he wants to, and even then I won't post it here. What's important is that Joe lost his mother suddenly and tragically and that his father is alive and that they all have family and friends praying and pulling for them.

I just looked back at his blog and re-read his posts when Jenn died. I hate the fact that he had to write it at all but am heartened by his compassion, his support and it stirring him to live a better life. It's a lesson I'm still learning and here it is again. In recent times I've been a wreck even without having to deal with the loss of my sister, Jenn. It's been hard for me. Really hard. I don't wish it on anyone, least of all my friend. More than anything while I know we've both experienced sudden and tragic loss, I know that what he's going through is entirely unique and that there is little for me to do or say to make things better. But what the hell...

Joe,

I told you this before, and you told it to me - It will get better in time. I promise.

You've got the triplets and your family and Deb. You know this. I'm sure it's amazingly apparent to you how much you have them at this point. I'm sure there are wonderful pictures of your parents with the triplets. That means something. Right now it might not seem like a lot and at times like these not a lot does.

The Fordham crew is here for you, too.

You hit the longest non-wind aided wiffle ball home run in the history of Van Siclen Drive wiffle ball. Hell, probably the longest home run ever in wiffle ball history. [Folks, that shot went from one end of my yard, threaded the branches of no less than three maple trees, flew over my parent's driveway, over the first part of my neighbor yard and landed one quarter of the way onto their roof.] It was a moon shot and you did it lefty and whilst doing a impersonation of Darryl Strawberry. A bazillion years later and lbs for the both of us you wrote about it. I love that. You can write, brother. Keep it up.

More than anything I just love you and Deb and the kids and the rest of the Rizzo clan. My heart goes out to you. I'm so sorry.

A long day

All too often "a long day" is a shitty crappy hard one where you just want to collapse at the end of it or punch someone. Or cry. Or cry and punch some and then collapse. Whatever.

Today though, has been a long day but not in the bad sense. Its been a day where I could do anything I wanted to do and had plenty of time. Absolutely nothing has been rushed and if anything, time slowed down for me today. There was time to linger, time to observe, time to enjoy and time to relax. Hell, I even managed to eat right, save for a tiny Halloween sized pack of M&M Minis.

The day started off on a good note with Diego Sanchez beating Nick Diaz in a great UFC fight that featured sweet BJJ technique and a goodly amount of ground and pound. While it did not match up to Griffith vs Bonnar it was damn close. It makes me want to head back over to the Santos school but then I really don't need another injury.

As for my day...

I managed to sleep in a bit and woke up around 9:30 A.M., made some coffee, poured a bowl of Kashi Go Lean and watched some T.V. for a bit while I thought about where I would like to go today to shoot some film. Disinterested in the various talking heads I flipped on my PS2 and screwed around a bit with Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects. It's a good game. I left off with a little teleporting hottie called Femme Fatale (The Wink?) that just kept kicking Wolverine's ass. My skillz have left me it would seem.

I took a ride over to Tarrytown to the waterfront to shoot the Tappan Zee Bridge and the surrounding marina and park area. It was foggy out and the bridge was just a black silhouette in the mist. My first low key black and white photography! Then, a nice treat happened and the mist burned off a bit. Same place, completely different look so I loaded more film and kept shooting until I felt I had exhausted the area. I drove around a bit, took some more pics near the Fordham Tarrytown campus and headed back home. It was only 2PM.

The whole day has been like this - just slow and relaxed and nothing seems to take a lot of time. Right now the clock says 7:26 P.M. - just about the time I usually get home from work. Usually I get there about the time I woke up today. I imagine myself down there in the City today instead of kicking it around here today. Holy Fuck that IS a long day. Yet there never seems to be enough time - not down there.

Here though, there is plenty of time.

Ultimate Fighter II

Kenny Florian dominated Kit Cope and submitted the muay thai kickboxing champion with a an arm-bar after a flurry of punches from the mount -- but Cope's tapout came just fractions of a second after the horn signaled the end of the first round. Cope was game and came out for the second round, but his right arm was clearly hurt. Florian easily took him down at the start of the second round and then submitted Cope a second time with a rear naked choke.

Looking at the two combatants you would think that Cope would dominate just on the strength of his tattoos and chiseled frame. Florian looks like your basic everyman. Bottom line is that on the ground, BJJ will kick your ass if you are not versed in at least defending yourself in the ground game. I'm not sure of Cope's background, but the show touted him as a muay thai champion and I have no doubt that if take downs did not come into play he'd beat Florian around the ring. He could not stop Florian on the ground and got beat.

In the second fight, Stevenson and Cummo had a slug-fest on the ground. Stevenson dominated most of the fight and was able to take Cummo down in each round. The underdog from New Hyde Park, Luke Cummo had his moments though, especially when he managed to hurt Stevenson a few times when Stevenson shot in for a single leg and was game on the ground but could never really gain an upper hand and lost a three round decision.

As I write the third fight of Ultimate Fight Night II is still being pimped. It's Brad Imes vs Rashad Evans. To me, Imes (6'7" and 250+) is a lesser version of Bob Sapp with a bit of knowledge about ground fighting. I really want to see that guy get his ass kicked. I think he really benefited from a trend earlier in the season where the best guy from one team called out the best guy from the other team. The result was a loss of talent. Imes has been boring to watch and Evans favors a greco roman clinch style so I'm not really sure what type of fight to expect. We'll see. Evans has the skill and experience and Imes is a big ass wall o' country beef. If I had to guess, Imes is going to try and wear Evans down. Likewise, Evans just needs to be patient and work over Imes and coax him into a mistake.

The fight introductions are on now and you can just see how freaking BIG Imes is. What a retarded ring name though -- The Hillbilly Heart Throb? Come on!!

Lets go for a play by play.

Ok - Brad seems to have a good jab working, but holy shit he looks stupid throwing any sort of kick.

Rashad is kicking Ime's ass now with 1:10 left in the first but Imes is back up on his feet around 30 seconds. Evan's could not keep the big man down but he clearly demonstrated his ability to tag Imes with a big ass left hand and a right. Imes, to his credit went to a butterfly guard and managed to stop Rashad's momentum.

The second round has just started. A few jabs by both combatants and a half ass kick or two by Imes. But here come Big Country with a flurry of punches but Evans manages to weather it. With two minutes Imes comes at Evans again but Evans counters. He looks tired as hell though.

With 25 seconds left in round two just sent Imes mouthpiece flying but could not finish him before the horn sounded.

Correction, it was not a mouthpiece, but a big slob of snot and blood that went flying. Argh.

Oh shit - Evans just knocked Imes right on his ass and now finds himself mounted but he gets out of it and to his feet. What a big strong son of bitch Imes is. Evans looks really tired now with 2:25 left in the third and is under the slab of Iowa beef.

The fight is over. I'm not sure who won but man it was a much better fight than I thought it would be. Both guys gave it their all and I was impressed by Imes. He's clumsy and not polished but is certainly a good athlete and knows how to use the tools he does have. So I guess that's a partial retraction?

29-28 scores from all three judges, 2-1 and Evans wins it. Boos from the crowd. That's pretty cheezy. How can you boo after a fight like that? It was close -- not a Roy Jones Olympic style rip-off and Evans' won it from what I saw. Jerks.

Next up is Diego Sanchez vs Nick Diaz but I'll have to catch it later. The missus is calling and George Carlin has a new special on right now.

Learning The Hard Way

When I first started mountain biking I always took off without a spare or a pump. I got a flat soon enough but it was right near my house so I did not change my ways. I figured it was freak thing. Just look at those beefy tires on a mountain bike - so much more imposing than a skinny road bike tire. I had ridden road bikes for years without getting a flat - what were the chances of that happening again? In my case it was 1:1 each time I went riding after that. It seemed if I rode over a pebble I would get a flat. Beefy tires indeed. Under that tough knobby exterior was a thin penetrable skin that couldn't stand up to much of anything. Still though, it was only after getting a flat about 9 miles away from home with no wallet and no phone and doing the push the bike thing all the way back home - in the winter - that I figured that maybe, just maybe, I should invest in some equipment. So one weekend I went to the local bike shop and dropped some coin on a Camelback, clips, bike shoes, shorts, shirt and some spares and a compact pump and a most importantly a pair of Tuff-Ez to line my tires and prevent blowouts. Sure enough after I bought the gear riding became a lot more fun. I guess if you are prepared, you can relax and concentrate on the task at hand. So that's what I did.

Nowadays I bike less and the latest interest is photography. If you keep up with this blog (bless all two or three of you) you know I'm in a black and white class at SVA in Manhattan. It's an entry level class with weekly assignments and lab work where we develop and enlarge our own negatives - the basics. So far so good except that I fogged my initial two rolls of film. For some reason after the developer and stopper I decided the best way to add the fixer would be to open the main part of the tank instead of the light safe top. As soon as I had done it I figured out that this was not a Good Thing and slapped the lid back on and hoped that I had not wrecked the film.

It's exactly this type of loss of train of thought and brain fart maneuver that convinced me to withdraw from flight school. Lapses in concentration don't bode well in a flying machine that basically beats the air into submission more than flies.

Ok - back to the negatives.

At first glance the negatives looked good, but the roll from the top of the tank will not produce a negative worth printing. The bottom roll in the tank got fogged as well, but not as badly and I can print off of that one. So far I have one print of the power lines that traverse the rail trail that runs by my house. It's not Ansel Adams but then again why would I really expect it to be? What can be said for it is that it's a good print off of a negative with some issues and that it's my first print. I'll frame it just for that reason.

Like I said before I'm not sure what I want from all this. I'm trying to keep my expectations low and the goal is to learn and progress but not obsess as I am wont to do - I'd burn out my interest in no time otherwise. The thing with photography is that it's a gadget maven's delight - there's so much shit you can buy. And lets face it, gadgets can sure as hell keep you interested. Still, I have yet to go hog wild with the gear. I've got my Dad's camera, a venerable Pentax ME Super SE 35mm SLR and the 50mm and the 80mm telephoto lens he had. My contribution is some film, a wide angle lens and a light meter along with some developing and enlarging stuff.

I haven't burnt through too much film yet - there's been either no time to shoot or when there has been it's monsoon conditions outside.

This morning seemed full of promise - a nice fall morning with pale golden light and scattered clouds. I figured I'd head over to Lyndhurst and reshoot some of the shots I had fogged but by the time I got over there it was gray skies again. Argh. Then on top of that the batteries in the Pentax died. Then on top of that the batteries in my Poweshot A20 crapped out. Double Argh.

Well, it should not come as a surprise that this stuff uses electricity. I should have checked. I should have had some spares or another back up camera but I thought that everything would be fine. No such luck. Just like with the mountain biking I had to learn the hard way. On Monday during lunch I'll trek over to B&H and get a bunch of batteries. I'll get lens cases and some more film and a flash attachment. I'll probably pick up a camera gear backpack too. Sure I don't need it, but it will make my life easier and allow me to concentrate on the task at hand instead of wondering if I have the right equipment or if something is going to crap out on me. Like I said, preparation lets you enjoy things more. It's a lesson worth learning and one I seem to like to re-learn.

The saving grace of the sojourn out to Lyndhurst today was that Clarisa came along to be my assistant and model. Hey - I get to sleep with my assistant! So even though the equipment failed we still had each other and enjoyed the grounds. It felt like a date and after 11 years of marriage I think it's damn cool we can feel that way.

Before the battery died on the digital:

Trailer Park Logic

In his article, "Greetings From Idiot America" in this month's Esquire magazine, Charles P. Pierce writes, CREATIONISM. INTELLIGENT DESIGN. FAITH-BASED THIS. TRUST-YOUR-GUT THAT. THERE'S NEVER BEEN A BETTER TIME TO ESPOUSE, PROFIT FROM, AND BELIEVE IN UTTER, UNADULTERATED CRAP. AND THE CRAP IS RISING SO HIGH, IT'S GETTING DANGEROUS.

He goes onto state that Idiot America (one would think that the title of his article owes a little to Green Day for what that's worth) is essentially a war on expertise and the "...breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is good." and that "In the place of expertise, we have elevated the Gut. And the Gut is a moron."

It's a comprehensive, humorous and well thought out lambastication of, well, Idiot America.
Of course, Pierce is preaching to the choir with me, but it's a fun read nonetheless and isn't there always some pleasure in seeing your own incomplete thoughts coaleseced on the page? Sure there is.

The thing is, while I was reading his piece, I kept on thinking that I'd heard or thought these thoughts before. Not his exact thoughts, but his overall sentiment and this third premise of Idiot America - 3) Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it.

I knew I heard or thought of that before. Then it came to me.

Trailer Park Logic!

Well before Green Day or Pierce used the term Idiot America, I'd witnessed more than my share of what I call Trailer Park Logic. You cannot defeat it. That woman in the stained blue ribbed tank top with the jelly roll spilling over the exhausted elastic stretchband of her lycra leopard skin capris might as well be Daniel Webster. Present facts to her. Offer arguments. Bring a flip chart and Power Point presentations. It's moot. It doesn't matter if the topic is the death penalty or Elvis vs Johnny Cash. Whatever the point of view is - you cannot change it. And forget nuance. You are defeated and she will subjugate you to her superior will.

Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it (Pierce, Esquire, 10/05).

It seems the logic has left the trailer park and made it to the White House.

Like Mr. Pierce I am perplexed and concerned and disconcerted. How is it that we seem to have moved from a rational secular culture to one where intelligent design is being put side by side with science?

I don't have an answer - but as a person who is a fan of Thoreau, Emerson and Mills I hope we shift back.

Welcome Babies

I've been terribly remiss.

Back on September 7th my cousin Christine ushered into the world the newest member of our family - Christopher Blaze Carberry.

What a name. Christopher Blaze. I love it. I certainly love my cousin and I certainly love the little guy and even love the fact that the first time I held him he pooped for all he was worth. For the life of me I can't figure out why I have not thought to mention his arrival here. So - a belated welcome to Christopher and a public Congrats to you, Christine. It was great to see you in September and I got some good pictures of Clarisa holding Christopher. Sure I had my SVA photography class in the back of my mind, but more than that I was thinking that someday he'll be 37 years old and looking back and see this black and white photo of himself before he even knew who he was. Moreover - how great was it for so many of us to get together in Brooklyn on a non-holiday and just indulge in the simple pleasure of an extended walk around the block with a stop for ice-cream. That was really great. On top of that I got to see my cousin Kerry and two of her little ones - Devon and Dylan and even my cousin Will made a rare appearance. And yes, Will, the picture I took of you on your long board came out and you'll get a copy to post on your blog. I just need to do that whole printing thing first. Then the scanning thing. Seeing as how I have no scanner and even no computer - this might take longer than otherwise expected. If you would like the process speeded up - please feel free to meditate on the speedy arrival of the insurance check from Travelers. All of you.

Speaking of babies - Sfumato had his triplets, Dominic, Xavier and Luisa. Just like that he went from zero to three after nine years of marriage. Three over nine. One is a prime, one a square root of the other and there are three periods in hockey and 9 innings in baseball. Does that mean anything? Well, he loves baseball and he loves hockey. Plus Babe Ruth was number 3 and Gordie Howe was number 9. Nine times three gives us a 27 for Kovalev and 2+7 brings us back to 9. Nine plus three yields us a Broadway Joe as well. Fortuitous indeed. And CLUTCH.

Poof! You are a Dad! Congrats!

A Mini Catch-Up

There's been no posts lately for two reasons.

1. My PC died a horrible death. From the looks of things it was electrocuted - zapped right through my surge protector one night a few weeks ago during the 8 Days Of Rain. Maybe the hard drive is fried maybe not. Hopefully I can recover some of the data I didn't have backed up, but I've been too busy lately - which brings me to number two.
2. Work has been a royal pain in the ass. Since there is no glory in being Dooced if you are not Doooce herself, I'll just say I've been there a bit more than I would like to be and leave it at that.

Disconcerting

Scientists decide to set up scenario for real life re-enactment of Stephen King's The Stand

Lovely!

(For those of you who did not click on the link, it points to an article about scientists recontstructing the Spanish Flu virus Actually I think it's pretty cool that they can reconstruct it and hopefully learn enough about it to stop it from recurring. Not releasing it would be a Good Thing as well. Hence The Stand reference. All caught up? Good. You may proceed.)

Meanwhile, the great grandson of the Spanish Flu that killed my biological great grandmother, Mary Petrulyak, along with 49,999,999 other people is romping around enough to draw worldwide attention.

And given the reaction to Katrina - what do you think the results were for the study on how prepared we are to deal with a pandemic were?

That's right. You got it.

(For those of you not clicking the link - "That's right. You got it." means that I am assuming that you will assume that the study shows, as I have assumed, that we are shit out of luck so far in this regards.)

So what's the point? Will I start to wear a surgical mask like Whacko Jacko or some SARS dodging Japanese commuter? Should we all freak out?

Hell no.

It's just disconcerting to read about. And lets face it, there is the much more immediate reality of vague bomb threats to NYC's transit system to not worry about. Avian flu schmavian flu. Bombs? Feh. We have stuff to do!

But then I just read Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, so I perhaps that's responsible for my apocalyptic yet satirical and post-modernist mood. Yeah, yeah, I was a Fordham Lit major and never read it till now - what do you want from my life? Every class I signed up for all I ever got was Edith Wharton & Guest. House of Mirth every damn time. Not my fault.

Speaking of Edith Wharton - if you live in CT or southeast NY - her mansion, The Mount is a nice place to go visit in Lenox, MA - which is about 3 hours outside of NYC and 2 hrs away from Boston. And - if you are going to go to Lenox, you might as well stop in or stay in Stockbridge and check out the Norman Rockwell Museum and or Naumkeag. It's a great weekend get away, especially in Autumn. See? Some good came out of reading Wharton.

The next book on my "to read" list is Kevin Canty's Into the Great Wide Open. Nothing disconcerting about that but not everything can be. Dos Passos will just have to wait. Yeah - didn't read him either. Shameful.

Some BJJ Talk

There's been no mention of BJJ here for a while because I've stopped training while my biceps and shoulder and ankle and neck heal up. I was just getting too beat up to keep it up. I figure my weight and my lack of flexibility had a lot to do with it, so I'm on a diet and doing yoga to lighten up and limber up physically and mentally. I just trying to prepare myself to go back to it where I can work out and not walk out feeling like I just pitched a complete game with each arm. I do miss it though. I miss it especially when I manage to catch Spike TV's Ultimate Knockouts like I did last night. What great marketing by the UFC. Play an hour long show where someone gets their ass handed to them every 5 minutes and use it as a lead in to a live event. Beautiful.

More beautiful than the UFC's marketing was watching Matt Hughes in the knockout reel. Hughes gets arm barred or triangled and then stands up to escape it and carries his opponent, Newton, across the mat to the cage and posts him against it. Newton grabs the cage for a second and then is made to let go. Hughes pauses. Then he steps back and SLAMS Newton to the canvas. Lights out. Hughes wins. The guy is a monster competitor and very very savvy in the octagon.

The other great highlight was Forrest Griffin's rear naked choke victory followed by spooning his opponent. I had to laugh my ass off when he through a leg over the guy like it was a cool Saturday November morning in bed. To Forrest's credit, he joked about it later. You need to be able to laugh at yourself.

Ah - I just remembered one other knock out. I think it was Gary Goodrich in a UFC fight from long ago (he was in a gi) where, just 45 seconds into the fight he basically got this guy in a crucifix and then started lambasting the living shit out him with elbow strikes. It was ugly though too because the ref jumped in a little late.

As for the Ultimate Fighter II - I've caught it here and there. With the exception of the last show, the fights have been dull and the team strategy stupid. Why would you want to fight the other teams best guy? There is really nothing to gain from it in the context of the show. You risk elimination and you risk injury. Even Dana White had to jump in and tell them they were being stupid but they did not listen. It is a contest after all - with the idea being to win your weight class and a contract in the UFC. And, let not forget Dana wants some good fights at the end, not some lopsided contest or two guys that really don't deserve the UFC because the best guys have already eliminated themselves.

One last thing - I have not seen Andrei Arlovski fight yet - but did I see what I think I saw in the promos? He's got fangs a la Dee Snider and the creepy goth vampire folks? Luvit.

Kitchen's Done!

Well, all our rennovations are through and we can finally bid adieu, for now, to our Polish contractors. Here's our kitchen in chronological order:

When we first moved in:

The leak discovered and the kitchen torn to hell to locate it / fix it and clean up the yucky mold:


The new kitchen:

Man, what a relief. We've been dealing with this crap since May but in the end it's worth it because we found and stopped that leak and rennovated our place and we like it better than when we started.

Miracle

I just watched Miracle again. I figure it's the 8th time or so I've seen the film and it never disappoints, although nothing can compare to the day I watched Team USA pull off the greatest upset in sports history. I was amazed and inspired.

A few years later I met Mike Eruzione for a brief moment at a speech and autograph appearance at the South Hills Mall in Poughkeepsie, NY. I brought him my skates to sign - a pair of cloddy molded plastic Microns. Mike signed his name on the tongue of the right one for me and then offered me a bit of advice. Basically he told me my skates sucked and that I should invest in a pair of leather skates. By the beginning of next season I had a new pair of Bauer 100's and a break out year in my high school hockey career.

As for now, my interest in hockey is returning with the the new NHL season that starts in about a week. The Red Wings look good and I'm happy to see Steve Yzerman is back at the Joe for one more season. Here's to them kicking the crap out of Colorado and NJ. Why NJ? For the bragging rights. Sfumato and a host of other friends of mine are Devil's fans and it's always good to chirp about your team over a beer. Or in your blog.

NY Times Select, A Cheap Offer & Bob Dylan

Recently, the NY Times took everything that was worth reading and buried it behind the shiny tall walls of premium content they call Times Select. I used to read Rich, Friedman, Krugman, Dowd, Brooks et al every day and especially on Sundays. I'm not spending 50 bucks to do it though. Thanks NYT for forcing me to expand my horizons. Hello Slate, Salon and Google News.

An old boss of mine called me recently and asked if I would come back and take over my old position. The upside would be a ton more responsibility with exactly the same pay as when I left. In some cases, that might be a gracious offer, but consider that I left because I was grossly underpaid and now make tons more. Consider that I am not unhappy where I am. Consider I am not on the pipe and out of my fucking mind.

Earlier tonight I flipped by PBS and flipped back to it because Bob Dylan was on. It turned out to be Martin Scorsese's bio on him, entitled "No Direction Homee". I just caught the last 20 minutes of it and while there were some great performances in there, the film, at least here at the end, seemed to focus on Dylan and the media. We see him there, smoking and searching for words, joking and playing with the writers - not wanting to be pinned down at all. I'm not the biggest Dylan fan, but it seems to me that this guy has refused to be what we want him to be. While we're free to interpret his lyrics and his messages and ask deep probing questions, he just slips away. He and his art stand alone. He's not going to explain or justify or interpret for you. He's just there. You wanna play the deconstruction game? Go ahead. Bob abides and doesn't give a crap. Or at least he'll never let on.

Anyhoo - I'd like to see the rest of the documentary. It seems like Scorsese really nailed this one. Check it out.

The Catch Up

Ok, so it's been like a month or so. What gives? What's the deal? Why no post? What super duper melodrama is playing out that has kept VJ so occupied he's pulled a Sfumato like month of neglect?

Basically it boils down to self censorship combined with procrastination and its effects alongside a dollop of mild cyclical depression thrown in. Mix and serve. Make sure the depression is cold when you go to mix it in though - just like butter in a cookie mix.

I don't know how many times I sat down here in my office to write something about the debacle and tragedy that was and is Katrina and found my words entirely inadequate or just a recapitulation of sentiments I found better expressed elsewhere. Unable or unwilling to write about it I found it trivial to discuss anything else in the face of such tragedy. On top of it, I watched entirely too much coverage of it which just exhausted me emotionally. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that.

I can say this though - when I am done with something I just tend to put it away or abandon it or put it down for so long that it's almost embarrassing to pick it back up. I told Sfumato that my lack of a post was starting to feel like a class I'd been skipping all semester.

He told me that was silly. Just post something he said. Pick right back up. Other people wrote or asked about the lack of a post. I have no idea about the number of people that read this but a few seemed to notice the drop off and were concerned. Thanks for that. It's really appreciated.

In my last post I mentioned how I noticed a lack of response to the hurricane. Who knew how far that lack of response would go? Of course though, the blogging world caught up with the story and so did the large commercial Internet presences like Amazon.com. At first Amazon ran just a small red cross add in the upper right corner of their homepage. I think by Friday that small ad had finally turned into the same large centered Red Cross donation page that had been put up right away for the tsunami disaster.

A few weeks ago the NY Times ran an editorial piece about a med-evac company by the name of Acadian that seemed to actually be able to respond to Katrina and deal with it effectively while FEMA just screwed things up for them and everyone else. Evidently, teams of Acadian doctors were withheld because they were not "Federalized" and helicopters sat on the ground empty while bureaucrats fought over whether or not the right forms were being filled out.. WTF? The story made me think of my old boss , the Director of the Strategic Management Group, Drew Overpeck. Drew was all about nimble thinking and adapting to the situation. Plan? Sure you need to plan but you also need to plan on the fly because things rarely work out the way you want them to.

On a more personal level - we just got back Sasha's ashes the other day. Sad sad sad. I get thinking about Sasha and that gets me thinking about death and that gets me thinking about my sister. It'll be one year since she died on October 13th. I find myself thinking about her last weeks out there in Oklahoma with a person that was ill equipped to deal with her problems. I wonder if she had a good day at all - some measure of happiness or whether it was all frustration.

I miss her.

For the past few years Clarisa and I have been surrounded by death. I'll tell you what, it certainly helps to put things in perspective and appreciate those quiet times when everything is going generally well. It also makes you more aware of your life. Take work for example - in general they expect you to stay late and "get it done" because that is what must be done. They expect you to work like you are immortal.

Guess what.

So my advice, folks, is don't wait. Do. Not. Wait. Work for sure, but don't forget to live.

As for me? I've signed up for and have started taking a black and white photography class at SVA. I'm not sure where it will lead but I'm along for the ride. We're supposed to be shooting "motion" and practicing panning and blurring and freezing. Right now it's cool and overcast and I have some 400 speed Tri-X film loaded up and I think I'll go shoot.

What's the deal?

Perhaps this is premature, but where's the American Red Cross donation link on Amazon.com? Or the blog donations? Granted, Katrina is not the tsunami that devastated the Pacific Rim, but it's the worst natural disaster to hit the US and it's getting worse as the flood waters rise. More death and disease is sure to follow. It's just a complete horrible mess down there. I can't begin to imagine what all those people are going through and are going to go through.

Can we help ourselves too?

Donate to the American Red Cross

A strange find.

I just looked under my keyboard and found a business card from Cantor Fitzgerald, One World Trade Center, NY,NY. I have no idea how it got there.

The card says he was / is a specialist in Greenhouse Gases. That means I probably met him briefly at some conference at Texaco - probably one on sustainable development. I don't remember him but am really glad to see that he's not listed as one of the victims of 9/11. I was contracting at Texaco when it happened - so he either he was out that day for some reason or had left the company. If he was out, what a lucky guy. Cantor got hit so hard by the attacks.

It's just strange to me that I have this little piece of something that's gone and I'm surprised at how many memories it triggers.

A Sasha Story.

It's been odd around here. No pooch at my feet as I put on my socks and shoes. No black furry blur running to the door in anticipation of the great morning walk, sniff and pee ritual. I figure I walked Sasha close to 80,000 times or so. That's a lot of walking and sniffing. A lot of memories are wrapped up in those walks. A lot of stories are wrapped up too. Here is one of them...

Back in the day - in this case "the day" is an early summer morning about 6 years ago - we lived in Peekskill. Not in the artistic district, but in a bizarre duplex in the historic Depew building at the end of Rt. 6. We had French doors, wood floors, two marble fireplaces and a kitchen and a bathroom that were downstairs and below ground. It was spacious and distinctive but a really odd set up living wise. A big problem was the stairs down to the kitchen and bathroom. It wasn't just a few easy steps, but more like the steps Father Karrass gets tossed down in The Exorcist. They were steep and there were a lot of them. I hated those steps, especially if I ever sprained my ankle or got a heel spur or tore my knee. As for the neighborhood, we had the occasional drug dealer and prostitutes and other suspicious looking folk.

What does that have to do with the story - not too much - I just wanted to paint a picture for you.

Back in the day I also had a raging case of insomnia. Even if I managed to sleep I was sleep walking and even worse - sleep eating. We'd wake up to discover boxes of cookies devoured and all sorts of bizarre concoctions I'd made when, apparently, no snacks were handy. It not unusual to come downstairs to discover some milk in a pot with an egg and a slice of cheese in it. WTF was I trying to make? Thank god I seemed unable to get the stove working or we would have been in real trouble.

I eventually went to my doctor about it in hopes of getting a sleeping pill or other suggestions. He told me I was stressed out (no shit) and sent me on my way empty handed.

So it was early on a summer morning in the hood back in the day and I was in a stupor from a raging Ed Norton Fight Club style of insomnia. Sasha, bless her hyper heart, was up with me so I looked at her and thought we might as well go for a walk. Usually I kept her on a lead because there were cars and kids and the aforementioned suspicious people around, but it was 3AM and no one was around so I took her out off lead.

Right across the parking lot from our building was a hill. The first twenty yards or so were fairly steep and grass covered then came some woods and then a street above us and then above that the house and building of the hit 80's show, "The Facts of Life". The walks were generally relegated to the grassy part of the hill, known to us as "potty hill". Sasha knew where to go and what to do - though when we first got her she had bolted through those same woods and was finally captured by some Lutheran nuns from the convent above us and their Ecuadorian landscapers. But she had sinced claimed us long before and there was no fear of her bolting on this night. So I thought.

We get about half way across the parking lot toward the hill and Sasha bolts across the pavement and right up the grassy hill to the edge of the woods. I had no idea what she was going after or doing. It was surreal, I just watched her as she raced along the edge of the woods, traveling left to right and wearing her home jersey until she just stopped dead in her tracks and did the big "play with me move".

A big-ass white striped tail shot up in front of her. Her new friend was a gigantic skunk.

Oh Fuck. I thought.

"Sasha! Get your ass away from there! Cmon cmon cmon back over here! Get the fuck over here!!" I yelled and miraculously she came back to me over. I hadn't seen him spray her and I still held some hope for the few moments it took her to run back over.

I bent toward and sniffed. eeeeew. Skunky badness. Not a direct hit, but nothing I wanted to live with.

So, we went back into the house and down the steep Exorcist stairs without waking Clarisa. Why bother her?

I toss the pooch in the tub and turn the shower on and just jump right on in with her and start scrubbing away. Anything that was flowery scented got used. It wasn't working though. I locked Sasha in the bathroom and went into the kitchen in search of tomato juice. I'd heard that worked, and was willing to give it a shot. Alas, no V-8, no tomato juice and no tomatoes. Ah, but in the pantry was a cornucopia of spaghetti sauce. We had a few chunky Hearty Italian bottles, Garden N Herbs and an A La Vodka Sauce. This would have to do. I figured it was worth the shot.

I go back into the bathroom with the 3 bottles of chunky sauce and Sasha is still in the tub, blissfully enjoying the water. She'd shook herself though and fur was stuck everywhere. Stinky skunky fur. I climb into the tub and start working the chunky Hearty Italian sauce into her coat and this starts to annoy her. I keep scrubbing and working in spaghetti sauce and she keeps shaking and the fur and the sauce is flying everywhere. First the chunky garden style and then the garden and herbs and the a la vodka.

By the time I was done, the bathroom looked like someone had been blown to bits in there. There was chunky read sauce and clumps of hair everywhere. No matter though, because the pooch was deskunked (mostly) and I'd done what had to be done. I was beat - cleaning up could wait.

Around 5AM I climbed back into bed without telling Clarisa and somehow got to sleep. I figured I'd tell her later and clean up when I got up.

She got up at 8AM. Man was she surprised.

Drunken Blogging

Let me state that I have had three very potent Margeritas at this point. Ok. With that said...

My pooch died in my arms around 5:50 tonight. Clarisa and I held Sasha as she died. All I could say as the drugs took hold (so fast) was "I'm sorry" and "I love you" as I cried. First she just laid down and seconds later collapsed onto her side and she was gone. Just like that.

After she collapsed the vet, crying as well , got up and left us alone and I whispered into her ear a Buddhist mantra - "Om Mani Padme Hung" as many times as I could. For about twenty minutes I held her and talked to her after she'd passed. My pooch. My nervous, neurotic, but oh so loving pooch. Sasha, you will be missed, darling. If there is any sort of universal justice or karma you should be in good hands at this point.

Her last day was a good one. I took it off and spent the day with her from start to finish. Car rides, walks, dog parks, runs, more walks and turkey sandwiches and chips. We spent time frolicking in bed and on the couch. More than once, I tried explaining to her again and again what was wrong and what was going to happen and why. Of course, she had no idea, though she was freaked out in the vet's office once they put the catheter in her right leg. She wanted out of the Vet's office at that point.

In my heart I hope that Jenn finds her. In my heart I hope that all of a sudden Sasha just comes loping up on Jenn and gives her a bunch of kisses and that they are together until either one of us or both shuffle off this mortal coil.

I know I did the right thing, so why do I feel so guilty? We loved her as much as we could.

Again, I'm a bit speechless. I'll let Victor Hugo speak for me then...

Certain thoughts are prayers.
There are moment when, whatever be the attitude of the body,
the soul is on its knees.
Victor Hugo

Suffice it to say I am on my knees. Again. Here on the same day Jenn left for Oklahoma, never to return.

For Sasha

I knew something was wrong because while I was walking home from the bus stop on 119, Clarisa pulled up and was bawling her eyes out. I figured it might have to do with Sasha, our dog, and it did.

I'm a wreck.

She's sick enough that we will put her to sleep tomorrow.

We'd dropped her off at the vet to board her this past weekend and get her checked out - she had a little growth on her eye that had just sprung up. They ran some blood tests and discovered that her kidneys and liver are failing. She also has lymes, despite using Advantix. Ultrasound results show cancer all over the place - her neck for one. So, rather than let her suffer from it, we're letting her go while she's happy.

Sasha's been great. We've had her over 10 years of her 12+ years here and she's been a joy. Sometimes a royal pain in the ass, but a joy overall. She's not a ball fetcher or a trick doer. Though, if you were playing with a ball with someone else, after a bit she'd grab it and go hide it. How DARE a ball get better treatment than her!

When we got her she was insanely submissive - so much so that she would crawl on the floor to you when called and then roll over and whiz straight into the air. With patience and kindness that stopped and she's graduated to just being a nervous dog. A happy, nervous dog that wants to sit on your head and loom the way Snoopy does when he pretends to be a vulture. Nervous, but happy and a fan of humping our big gray cat, Little Guy.

She's been my buddy for a long time and I'm just so sad that tomorrow she's going to be gone. I'm so sad. I really don't know what else to say. Things turn on a dime.

Tonight she's getting boneless pork spare ribs and tomorrow we're going to go the park until it's time.

And to top it all off - today I saw a lady with a small child on the street asking for help. The same lady I saw back on October 12th and had passed by. The same lady I had passed by the day before my sister died.

Today, I passed her again in a rush to get home when it hit me who it was. So I went back around the corner of 39th and 6th and gave her two dollars. I wondered, what, if any, portent was there. Coincidence - probably, but I'm enough of a mystic to think there's much more than we can see here.

I really don't want tomorrow to come...my heart is breaking.

Musings

Earlier this week VH1 was showing a censored version of Showgirls. WTF? How can that sort of thing even be allowed? I mean, really, if you censor Showgirls, what do you have? An impoverished, diluted husk of a film void of any of the licentious and lascivious behavior that in fact made it such a guilty pleasure to watch. In short, you get jack-shit.

Censorship is bad people. Fight it. More boobs, less bombs on the boob tube.

Ok? Ok.

Moving on...

For a little bit I was reading A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin. I say for a little bit because I left it (and my monthly train pass which was playing the part of a bookmark) on the train or on the roof of my car. Considering the trainpass runs me $185 it's a relatively expensive misplacement. I hope whoever found it enjoys the literary stylings of Mark Helprin and free travel on the MTA's Harlem Line for the rest of August.

As for why I lost it - I guess my mind was a bit preoccupied on the way home that day and the reason for that is big enough for it's own post in the near future. Suffice it to say I had bought a turkey sandwich for a homeless guy who looked a bit like Jesus and whose pet ferrets had starved to death / cooked to death in the 110 degree real-feel heat on the street that day. His name was Tim. I'll write about him again.

As for the book...it's reminiscent of Hemingway but Helprin's prose is a bit more mellifluous and Helprin's central character, Allesandro, so far, seems to be a brighter and more evocative character than Hemingway's Lt. Henry.

Instead of getting another copy for now, I wandered back down to the breakroom and picked up another book someone had dropped off. Running with Scissors is a true tale of a kid's fucked up life after his crazy ass mother dumps him off at her eccentric (and that's really a kind euphemism for "crazy fucker") pyschiatrist's house and his relationship with his mother and his new found family. Despite all that, there's enough familiar ground in there for me to be sympathetic, but enough whacked out crazy shit that makes me ever so thankful that I was not him. The day I start examining turds the way a gypsy looks at tea leaves is the day that I really really really better get some medication. If you are confused - read the book. It's a hoot - it's a good story and ultimately about how resilient we can be.

In another post I'll cover The Family 2005 reunion in Virginia Beach. I got to meet family I never met and see others that I had not seen for 30 years or so. A good time was had by all.

It's Friday and its slooow at work.

It's been a while between posts blah blah. There is no procrastination. Just the absence of doing stuff.

Really though, I can't tell you how many times I sat down to post something here and immediately felt like I was getting bonked in the head with a big heavy thing. Of course, trying to post at 12:20AM is not probably the ideal time to put any thoughts down.

The protracted battle to fix the house continues. The contractors have been here all week and working late. It's kind of odd trying to sit and watch a DVD with shirtless sweaty Polish men working all around you. But that's life these days. If you want to watch a DVD, you have to do amidst the symphomic clamor of drills, hammers and saws interspersed conversations in Polish that I'm sure go something like:

"Peter, this wall isn't level."

"No surprise there Michael. This place was
built by retards. The ceiling isn't level either."

"It looks like an interesting part of their movie. I will now turn this drill on."

With luck, the guys will finish up today and we'll be ready for the counter-top guy to install our Maui colored Corian countertop in a few weeks. Then a week after that, the tile guy is going to come back and finish up the backsplash.

At that point, I think we will take three deep breaths, gaze at the rennovations and enjoy them for about 10 seconds and then call Century 21. Atlanta seems to have an abundance of tech jobs and the housing costs are still -- relative to Westchester Cty, NY -- cheap. Who knows really where we will wind up, but I can't imagine staying there too much longer. Of course, if I could work from home two days a week, we could buy one of those McMansions in the Poconos that you see advertised all the time in the Daily News and still put money in the bank. The future is wide open.


Most of last weekend was spent in total frustration as I tried and tried and tried again to successfully install a brand new, kick-ass ATI X800 XL AGP card. After installing a new Antec TruePower 430 psu for the X800 to feed off of, I tried to install the new vid card. Tried. And Tried. And Tried.

To say the least the litany of removing the old ATI software, installing the card, installing the Catalyst Software and Drivers was repeated again and again. All I ever got was screen defects and XP freezes and my monitor going into power-save mode interspersed with the occasional blue screen of death. I tried to upgrade my BIOS, but for whatever reason, the damn thing just won't upgrade. The most frustrating part of all this, is that the damn card actually started to work all of a sudden and continued to work for about 2 hours. Half Life 2 and Battlefield 2 never looked so good or played so well. I was amazed at all the new details, espcially in BF2 where the rotor wash from a helo will bend and shake tree limbs and leaves. Even more amazing was the way the jets and helo's handled in singleplayer mode - smooth and fast. What a difference a new video card can make. I was sooo happy. I thought about all the nice new kill records I would post and how my BF2 stats would climb.

Then the card crashed again and never came back. Tell you what - I really wanted to do a John Lydon on my PC. I wanted to hack it to pieces and whiz on it and give it the finger. But, I managed to retain my self control and put my old 128MB ATI Radeon back in it works fine. But, BF2 won't load now. So now I need to reinstall that. Grrr.

Basically, I know the problem lies with my older mobo and its frozen BIOS. I just need a new motherboard and chipset and to reinstall XP. But then I need to get a mobo that fits my Gateway case, which is going to be problematic. So, I already have a new vid card, a new power supply and a 1GB worth of PC3200 RAM. Throw in a new case and a new 478 pin motherboard with a 3.6 processor and I'm on my way to building a new PC. I could add new drives as I go and eventually pop in a RAID controller and upgrade the RAM. Decisions Decisions.


On a different note....

The guitar playing is coming along pretty well but the licks and rythyms of Robert Johnson continue to elude me. So, for the most part I stick with a master the blues book and CD and another book and CD combo that covers scales over chords. That stuff I am starting to get. Like, I can see how the major scale breaks down into the blues, minor scales and pentatonic. I'm even getting fairly comfortable playing, say a primary form of a scale up the neck, and coming back down with the secondary form. Things are starting to click there. Plus the PODXT is just a blast to work with. I'm always one nob turn away from the clean bluesy tones of a Black Lux to crazy metal tones. Freedom baby.



In a few hours I'm flying with my cousin, Jody, to Newport News for a family reunion with our Virgina Beach folks, the Gradels and Autens. The only downer is that Clarisa is not going. She's staying here and is with her cousins and uncle who arrived here today. The original plan was for all of us to go see Wicked and tour around the city. Then this reunion came up and with it a scheduling conflict. We talked about it and I decided to go to VA. It should be a blast though. The last time I saw these people, I was 5. That's an awful lot of catching up.

Hiking, Boozing and Breakfast Machines

I can't concentrate worth a crap right now.

I will say that last weekend was excellent.. I hiked, golfed, drank margeritas played and played guitar with a friend. Not bad at all.

The hiking at Ramapo Reservation was a blast. I went with Sfumato and his friend, Debra. Great conversation and good exercise. My ankles weren't ready for it. Hoofing it in NYC is not the same as climbing up to Hawk Rock - where we did in fact see a hawk and Sfumato treated himself to some hot stone therapy on cliff-rocks. Along the way we spotted lots of tiny little frogs and though we did not see one - Sfumato was convinced that there was a pheasant about.

Aside from an invite for the next hike, I took away one thing -- comfort in the fact that I'm not the only one who hasn't figured it out. Actually two thing -- the second being that we might actually have an Adventure Race team in the making. Spiff!

Later in the day I got a call from Dave - a long standing friend back from the Enterprise Rent A Car Days. We did an impromptu barbecue at his place and drank a couple of Margeritas and shot the shit outside in his back yard. Later on we played guitar for a bit - always a pleasure with Dave because he's really good and a good teacher. Go figure - he just got his Masters in Education from Fordham and he's a good teacher. Very auspicious. Then in the middle of playing, I get a call from Clarisa and she's all upset and freaked out and wants me to come home. The reason? A chandelier crashed down on our dining room table, just moments after she stood up. At first I thought it might have torn out of the ceiling, since we just had it moved and that the guys put it in wrong. Nope. The actual metal hook holding the lamp just snapped. Totally crazy.

It's fixed now. Clarisa put things back together on Sunday when I was golfing with my Pops. We went to Vassar and played 9 holes with a nice couple, Murray and Eileen. As it turns out, Murray's a Chinese Studies Historian at Baruch. Hey, how often do you meet a Chinese Studies Prof and how often do you actually have something thoughtful to say about Chinese history? I mean what are the odds?

In this case, 1 to 1.

Oh yeah, I finally got to talk about Cheng Ho and the Chinese Navy and the water clock they built and all that fun stuff I read in Boorstin's "The Discoverers". [DuffMan Voice] Oh yea! Putting knowledge to use. Fucking Cheng Ho the eunuch. [end DuffMan] On top of that - Murray was writing a book on electrical engineering with a focus on semi-conducters. As luck would have it, while my Pops knows nothing of sailing Chinese eunuchs, he just happens to have a PhD in Metallurgy and 30 years in semi-conducter fabrication with IBM. So he had something to talk about. Ah - so what does Arleen do though? She works in IT. Systems analyst. What a great networking opportunity. And they were pretty good golfers too!

I'm going to have to look Murray up. How many Chinese Studies Professors can Baruch have?

Finally - I'd like to leave you with this little bit of Family Guy. It gets funnier each time I watch it.

Soldiers. Cops. Bombs. Blues

A day after the first bombings in London - the powers that be posted a platoon of National Guard soldiers at the White Plains train station. The boys are armed and loaded and do a pretty good job of stopping in front of people with bags or backpacks and giving them a bit of a stare down.

After the failed subsequent bombing attempts in London, they added MTA police to the trains and maybe you've heard that they are stopping people and searching them. One of the guys at my job got stopped this morning in Secaucus. I told him it was because of his beady little eyes. Plus he's Spanish, which these days is close enough to match an Arab profile. And yes, I'm all for profiling in this case. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and is carrying Semtex like a duck, chances are it's a duck. Stopping every 25th person, even if it's Al Gore or Tammy Faye is silly. It's being PC to the point of stupidity.

Anyhoo, moving along...

This morning cops were taping off Madison and 42nd. Lots of police and lots of shooing people away. I can only assume it was a bomb threat. Nothing about it showed up in the news, and no news is good news when it comes to terrorism. Speaking of which - Bloomberg is apologizing all over the place for the NYPD storming a tour bus and detaining five Sikhs. You've probably read about it / heard about it or watched on the news. From what I've read, a Gray line worker called it in saying these tourists were suspicious. While it's better to err on the side of caution, is there some way to do a PSA which informs people that turban does not equal terrorist? Casting aside the sartorial splendor of the five detained and scared shitless men, here is a Sikh:


Here is a Shiite:


Note the subtle differences.


Moving on again...


Dammit, despite the recent attacks in London and spate of scares here in the U.S.A. I refuse to let the terrorists win. That's right - today I went and bought something! On the way to pick up some tickets for Wicked in two weeks (we got hooked up with Orch. seats and a backstage meet and greet through a friend!! Nicey Nice), I stopped in at Sam Ash's sheet music place on 48th and picked up a general Blues tab book and a Robert Johnson tab book.

Robert Johnson's blues - that's about as American as you can get.

The Gear Is Here....

Alrighty!

My Marshall MG15CD and my PODxt showed up today.

[Stimpy Voice]

Joy!

All I can say it is soooo nice to have an actual amplifier, even a little one, instead of playing through tiny PC speakers or headphones. I was a little down on my Samick, but the the lil' MG15CD is a major upgrade for it and it sounds much better. Fuller, richer, cleaner and all those other words a stereo salesman might use to describe a speaker's tone.

As for the POD - I didn't get a chance to use it. I forgot to order a second guitar cord and the headphones I have are for the PC only and I don't have an adaptor.

Total Bummer.

I will say this though - it's way way bigger than I thought it was going to be. I thought it would be hand sized, but this thing is the size of Paul Bunyan's kidney. It's all good though, 'cos I wouldn't want to have to be squinting at a tiny display and twisting tiny dials. For the plethora of nobs on the POD, bigger is better.

For whatever reason, Musician's Friend also threw in a 6-Pack Pedal Board case. I don't need it yet, but free shit is free shit. Free is cheaper than wholesale. For now I put the POD in there until I get the free POD case via rebate.

Thor is right. More gear is good!

And it's also good to cut loose a bit and just play. See what comes. More and more often, I'm surprising myself.

Mind Freak on My Mind. On My TV. In the Park.

I'm sitting here fiddling around with a deck of cards I found at work - a little Bridge sized deck that says Puerto Rico across the top and has the picture of a halter top wearing hottie playing a bongo that's decorated like the Puerto Rican Flag. Next to her is a frog waving two rattles that are also decorated like the Puerto Rican Flag. The frog, in a pique of festivity and Puerto Rican pride is wearing a bow tie and a cape.

Total tourist trap stuff. I love it.

Like I said, I'm hear fiddling with these cards and working through a couple of simple tricks and I just remembered that MindFreak is on AE now.

Aside from the barrage of publicity around here in the City and on TV - I wanted to check it out because I'm interested in magic right now, and because two days ago I actually saw Criss Angel perform one of his illusions / escapes in Bryant Park. The illusion was set up on the south side of the fountain in the park. Basically, there was this large box/tank deal with Plexiglas sides and inside of that was a sealed container with a transparent front and Angel was inside it already. The deal was he had 33 hours to escape before oxygen ran out. More like 33 hours of publicity!

When I went by again later that day the tank was a lot more cloudy and bubbles were coming up all over the place in it. Angel was still in it and I could see him responding to the crowd. The next morning I came by a bit late for work and no surprise - the guy was out of the tank and not a drop spilled. Pretty cool and pretty David Blaine-ish I thought.

As for the show tonight, I caught the second half with him doing some powerful card tricks and street magic and a boatload of astonishing levitations. Not one or two little tiny lifts after a huge build up a la Blaine. No odd camera angles a la Blaine. This was up close with people all around and the camera close up and from all angles. Don't get me wrong, Blaine is great but after seeing his specials and then this show, Angel's levitation is better, hands down.

I'm amazed.

On the show tonight, the guy levitated up an escalator, six feet into the air in the middle of a park and then floated a few passersby supposedly plucked from the street. Regardless of whether or not there were plants in the crowd, the illusion was just crazy.

I'm also smiling because I can't help but have the thought -- "Did that guy and those other people actually float? Levitate?" Kudos to Angel for tapping my sense of wonder.

And then I think "I had no idea the guy from RATT knew magic!"

A Secret Revealed. Notes Played. Tricks Turned.

Oh I am so pissed.

Really totally completely and utterly Pissed The Fuck Off. Angry Strapped Muppet Pissed.

I guess it's just my knee jerk reaction to being cheated on. It's just my knee jerk reaction to being cheated on 4 times over the past three weekends.

Like most despicable lies and secrets, this one wormed it's way to the surface in an innocent conversation. Like most subterfuges and ugly canards, it kind of just popped out. In this case it came up naturally in the course of the conversation with a common friend and relation. Poof! There it was. His wife gave him up without even knowing it. Amazingly - she did not seem upset!

Sfumato has been hiking without me!!! GAAAAH! With his brother-in-law!! OMG!!!

Fucking Sfumato and his big secret hiking in Ramapo. Fuck him and his so called Tiki Run which he hikes / walks and stumbles through whilst being swarmed by bloodthirsty mosquitoes bent on giving him malaria and West Nile. Maybe he could go faster if he wasn't stopping to set up a lab to measure the chemical composition of the food he got at the deli in feeble attempts to determine if it's right for his blood type.

All of the time I'm like -- Hey Sfumato, lets go for a ride. Hey Sfumato, lets get together and run. Hey Sfumato, lets go for a bike ride. Hey Sfumato, let me put you in a triangle choke and beat your ass down for a while. Invariably - the guy is booked more than Tony Robbins. Or. Or,if not booked he is:

• not into running
• not into mountain biking
• not into getting triangle choked.
• kick boxing and dreaming of Bob Sapp.

The fucking nerve.


[Dan Akroyd and Steve Martin enter from screen left. They are wearing leisure suits. Georg speaks] "That James, he is such a wild and crazy guy! Such a jokester. He jokes! Funny Funny man. He kids. He is a kidder. Everyone knows that Sfumato is the hippest cat to cruise after Tiki Barber in tight slacks since Claude Lemiuex!"
[They exit. They look disappointed that their writer could not come up with anything better]

:-) Nah - I'm not mad at Sfumato. Not even miffed. I am amused though! Now, if for a brief moment, you or he bought the rant and at first thought I was talking about cheating with a capital C, or thought I was pissed at him --- well, you could describe that as having been "Rizzed".

If you bought it, I'm like 1 - 0 against the Internet.

If Sfumato bought it at all I will have improved my record to like 6 for 375 lifetime against him.

Ok. Now to tie in the rest of the title of this meandering stream of a post....

I'm playing guitar again. Like AGAIN. At one point, ages ago when I was 15 I had a nice left-handed Ibanez Artist ( a double cut with a sunburst finish) and played till I was about 18 or 19 and then dropped it until I was like 26 and dropped it again when I was like, still 26. Then hard times hit and I pawned it and that was it for guitar. A couple of years back, lets call it three + I got an acoustic guitar from Samash.com. Nothing fancy, just a Japanese Fender dreadnought. Strum strum strum. Clarisa, bless her and her supportive nature, goes out and gets me a tuner and a stand. I actually I play for a while. Just long enough to get to sound like actual notes are being played and I lose interest.

Ah, no one saw that coming, right?

So last year I pick up a Samick Les Paul knock-off which goes by the moniker of "Avion". Let's face it, no one knows what that is. Not one to lie, when asked what type of axe I have a bravely say I have a Les Paul knock-off and try to explain that I am beginner. Still. After 20 years. Anyhoo, since I got the Samick I've definitely played more and longer, though inconsistently. I've even jammed out with some talented friends here and there. Each one waaaay better than me. Each one infinitely patient though and very supportive and each with a bit to offer in the way of teaching. A definite highlight was over this winter. I played with my friend Barry and covered the acoustic version of "Times Like These" by the Foo Fighters. It was the first time, ever that I actually played and sang. It even sounded pretty good.

So, I've been playing again. A little theory, a little scale work and a little cover action. Enough practice to get me craving some gear. In the honor of this latest phase I finally went out and bought an amp (I'd been playing it through my PC with a Line 6 GuitarPort which recently went tits up) - a little Marshall MG15CD 15 Watt Combo and a Line 6 PODxt Amp Modeler with Effects. Of course, the price of these two items is more than I paid for my Les Paul knockoff. The amazing thing is I had no problem dropping the cash. Spending 15K on renovations and praying for insurance checks kind of nipped that problem for me I guess!

Perhaps one day I will become enough of a player to get a Gibson Custom or Gibson Standard or an American Strat or some mixture thereof. Until then I'm going to beat on the two guitars that I have and figure out Ten Years Gone by Led Zeppelin, a few Neil Young tunes and some blues stuff. If I could play like anyone it would be like Johnny Shines or Robert Johnson. They are A-mazing.

Another emerging hobby is magic. All I've got so far is a a couple of card tricks, a rope trick and a rather poorly executed vanishing coin sleight. Naturally, I have a book (Mark Wilson's Complete Course in Magic) and when my fingers begin to ache from guitar I can turn to the cards and fumble through some knuckle busting tricks. The funny thing is, as much I enjoy doing it, I always feel like a bit of a charlatan. But I guess that would be right on the money though, no?

Finally, out of my myriad interests there's this blog and you, Internet. Thanks for listening.